A president, just like me.

We Americans pride ourselves in being the prototypical democratic society, something we celebrate each July 4.  Our specialness stems in part from the fact that we, unlike most other countries, are a nation made up of immigrants rather than a predominantly indigenous population.  To be sure, some of those immigrants are now in their third, fourth or even tenth generation.  So there is an element of myth to our nation of immigrants story, and also a degree of lip service paid.  Down on the ground, as symbolized by the controversial (mostly struck down) Arizona law, we find some hostility and resistance toward immigrants these days, but that’s really nothing new.  At some point we, or our ancestors, were all looked on as strangers in the land.  We had funny names, strange accents — my mother who spoke perfect English pronounced shopping, chopping, to her dying day — odd customs or an unfamiliar/alien appearance.  Of course, those once strangers have been absorbed in the melting pot, have made their way and place in a now shared national story.  Well, yes and no.

From the days George Washington took office, we have been led almost exclusively by people who embody a stereotyped or, one might say aspirational, just like me look.  It turns out, just like me means Protestant Christian, Caucasian and definitely male.  In a sense, looking at our presidents probably gives us a more accurate picture of the American self-perceptive ideal than all those stories about immigrants and melting pots.  To date, only one non-Protestant, Jack Kennedy, has reached the White House and only in 2008 did we elect, again for the first time, a Catholic Vice President.   Needless to say, Barack Obama was the first elected African American and only time will tell if that is to be repeated any time soon or ever.  Whatever religious and racial barriers may have been breached, one significant barrier has not.  The presidency remains an exclusive men’s club, this despite there being (according to recent Gallup polling) more than 90% of us say we would vote for a qualified woman running for president. .

Gallup has been periodically asking the, would you vote for a ___ for president, since 1937.  Back then the study universe was limited to  women, Jews and Catholics.  Protestant was obviously the of course default.  By 1958 Blacks and Atheists were added (both scored badly) and in 1967 Mormons (reflecting George Romney’s candidacy).  Astoundingly, Hispanics weren’t added until 2007 and Muslims only this year.  Gays and Lesbians made the list in 1999 and 68% of respondents said they would vote for one (they are lumped together as one) in 2012.  There remain gaps.  Ethnic Indians aren’t included even though two are sitting governors and one, Bobby Jindal, is often mentioned as a potential vice president.  So too with Asians, a good number of whom hold public office, among them Chinese American and former Governor Gary Locke, now our ambassador to China.

Polls are interesting to some degree merely because they mirror what we’re thinking or what’s happening at any given time.   The inclusion of Hispanics and now Muslims reflects both.  But polls are often flawed, failing to include important data or asking the right questions in the right way.  According to Pew, another well regarded research organization,  Asian Americans are the highest-income, best-educated and fastest-growing racial group in the United States.  So why aren’t they included in Gallup’s study?  There is also a big difference between how might you vote if the qualified candidate were African-American, and will you vote for Barack Obama?  

Gallup’s list has grown since 1937, but aside from Kennedy and Obama we’ve elected only male white Protestants.  People do act differently when a choice goes beyond the hypothetical and, just as when they are probed about, say church attendance, there is an element of not wanting to be seen in a bad light.  90+ percent of respondents say would vote for a woman, a Jew, a Catholic or an African American.  White, male, Protestant remains the default.  Demographics would suggest that may change in the years to come.  Our Latino community accounted for 56% of our growth rate from 2000 to 2010 and have themselves grown 43% in that decade.  At some point, one would expect the presidency and other high offices to be more reflective of the population.  And in that, no group lags more than women who account for 50.8% of us but 0% of our presidents.

Of greatest interest to me in the Gallup poll, and generally under reported, was that for the first time a majority (54%) of respondents said they would vote for an atheist.  Back in 1958 that number was 18% and by 1999 it had only climbed to 49%.  There are other studies that suggest the Gallup numbers may be generous and that a substantial majority of Americans would be uncomfortable with an atheist in the White House.   Indeed, were it not for younger respondents (18-29, 70% and 30-49, 56%) whose views tilt the total number toward majority, most older voters remain reluctant (an average of only 44% of those over 50 would vote for an atheist).  As  you might expect, Democrats and Independents are more receptive to an atheist than Republicans.  It is also not surprising that young people are more open to atheists as they are to Gay/Lesbian and, for that matter, to all other groups.  That is reinforced by a different but consistent finding, this time from Pew’s Religious Landscape Study.  While 16% of  the general population now identifies with no religion at all, that number rises to 25% among those under 30.  With all the negative news we have these days, including how narrow-minded so many of us are, our more egalitarian young people constitute a ray of brightness and hope.

CNN Journalist Anderson Cooper announced the other day that he was gay.  It was not big news because his identity had long been assumed.  But Cooper felt that a personal revelation like that might have interfered with his professional job.  I think we’re long beyond that, but these are very personal choices and his should be respected, not judged.  Just as gays and lesbians long felt it necessary to hide their identity, my guess is that many more people in public life than would care to admit so are neither religious nor do they believe in God.  Despite my characterization of our presidents being Protestants, the truth is a few including the great Abraham Lincoln had no church affiliation.  Lincoln invoked God, but we don’t know what he meant by it.   Jefferson, who did belong to a church most of the time, might well have not been very much of a God believer.  Again, we can only speculate.  The default in America for politicians remains being religious, preferably a religion just like mine (whatever mine might be).  Our polling has heretofore always confirmed that being an atheist is a political non-starter.  Perhaps, the new Gallup numbers suggest that could change in the future.  Perhaps, one day will bring more people out of God’s closet.  To be sure there is nothing wrong with believing in God, but a society in which women and men can be honest about their beliefs, including their atheism, would be an even better democracy..  Happy July 4.

What a day.

These are just a few random thoughts on a historic day. 

The decision to uphold the Affordable Care Act was taken by an institution that, as of the latest New York Times/CBS poll, only garners 44% of the public’s confidence.  It comes with yet another 5-4 vote, underscoring division rather than consensus.  In this case, to many people’s great surprise, it was Chief Justice Roberts who broke the tie.  Healthcare remains one of this wealthy country’s most perplexing problems and most volatile political issues.  It may be the latter, coupled with the Court’s low esteem, that prompted the generally conservative Chief to side with the more liberal Justices with whom he usually disagrees.  For the moment, Roberts may have saved any semblance of a Court seen as an honest broker.  Beginning with the controversial Gore v. Bush decision, it’s reputation has been in steady decline.  This one vote won’t change that. 

Perhaps a mark of how much things have changed can be seen by contrasting today with the Court’s 1954 landmark Brown desegregation decision taken in an even more charged political atmosphere.  The decision then was unanimous.  That was not so with the controversial Roe decision but it was still rendered by a clear majority: 7-2.  Justice Harry Blackman, a Republican appointee, wrote the opinion.  John Roberts has yet to show that he can build a consensus on controversial issues. 5-4 decisions do not enhance the Court’s reputation for impartiality, something that is desperately needed at a time when the nation is so divided.  Perhaps this vote suggests he may try harder in the future.  The circuitous legal path he took to uphold the mandate, suggests that he worked hard to find accommodation.  This time it was an accommodation of one, himself, but that proved enough now and he might build on it.

The Affordable Care Act is far from perfect legislation.  It’s appalling that this great nation still leaves so many of its citizens uninsured.  Ultimately, only single payer universal healthcare — Medicare for all — will accomplish that goal.  But it’s an important step forward.  One of the most ironic aspects of the current debate is that the mandate, the Act’s most controversial provision, was the 1989 brainchild of the conservative Heritage Foundation think tank.  It was incorporated into the bill as a way of overcoming the objections of the Right's beloved free enterprise insurance industry.  That conservatives so oppose it today is clearly more a demonstration of callous and opportunistic hypocrisy than of any ideological conviction. 

On the other hand, President Obama and the Democratic leadership did a shockingly lousy job of selling Affordable Care to the American public, including allowing it to be branded Obamacare.  Many are equally angered and mystified by this ineptness, especially given the President’s considerable oratorical talents.  Leaving aside that Republicans continue to be much more adept at selling, I think there are two principal reasons for this failure. 

First is that even before it was enacted, much of the President’s base found the bill wanting; indeed they considered Obama a sellout.  They refused to see what remains a giant step forward as anything more than what it didn’t include.  So the President found himself essentially alone when he should have had the wind at his back.   Liberals can be their own worst enemies.

Second, is something more important.  This has to do, of all things, with Obama’s extraordinary oratorical skills.  My own experience with the craft tells me there are essentially two kinds of public oration.  I’ll call the first stadium oratory and the second small screen oratory.  Excelling at one does not necessary translate into excelling at the other.  In fact, stadium orators often fall flat on their face in more intimate settings while masters of the small screen can’t inspire large crowds.  These require different skills.  For example, megachurch preachers who regularly speak before thousands might well fail badly in the intimate church around the corner.  There are of course exceptions.  Franklin Roosevelt was good at the stadium but also, perhaps even better, on the small screen of his day — the radio fireside.  That unique ability may be attributed to the fact that in his later public life FDR was wheelchair bound and thus forced to adapt to a communications intimacy that otherwise ran contrary to his larger-than-life stadium personality.

Obama is a great stadium orator.  It is what caught the nation’s attention in the first place and what carried him on to the presidency.  It isn’t an accident that he set up these huge events during the campaign culminating in his nomination speech in, yes, a stadium, his massive victory celebration in a Chicago park and the million-person Inauguration in DC.  With the exception of his historic Philadelphia address on race, his most persuasive and moving moments were before large crowds.  This isn’t to say that Obama can’t communicate in smaller settings, but that’s not his primary communicative skill, not where he seems most natural.  Selling healthcare suffered from this deficit.  Of course, Romney might have the opposite problem, which on the national campaign trail could put him at the disadvantage.

It will take some time and distance to assess where we are and what impact today might have both on the Court and on November’s election.  More certainly will follow.  At the moment, I join others in savoring the moment and in realizing that some progress is still possible, just when some had given up. 

 

ERA at forty.

On March 22, 1972, in a bi-partisan vote, Congress passed a proposed 27^th Amendment to the United States Constitution.  They sent it on to the states for approval, an arduous process.  Thanks to the Republican Party’s subsequent change of heart and the hard right turn that culminated in Reagan’s election, the Equal Rights Amendment died in 1982 shy of but the three states still needed for ratification.  There is good reason to feel ashamed of this failure and also of subsequent failed attempts to reintroduce as we approach the fortieth anniversary of its passage this week .

Women have made substantial progress over the years even without the ERA.  But anyone who claims they have achieved true equality isn’t paying attention, much less living in the real world.  Despite all the progress in business, a few now sitting corporate CEOs, women continue to suffer a pay and job deficit relative to men.  There are only 17 women in the 100-member US Senate and two of them are leaving later this year.  Thanks to President Obama, we now have three women on the Supreme Court but that’s far shy of the majority needed to decide any case on their own.  The same can't be said about the six sitting men.  Women still lag in academia where there remains a numerical faculty, and most importantly tenure, gender gap.  Even absent hard numbers, I think it’s fair to say that we’re more apt to see a man’s face front and center in news coverage, print and digital, not to mention among the members of their editorial or business boards.

All this, perhaps only more so, can be said for people of color who continue to make great progress but badly lag their white counterparts, male or female.  The then Senator Obama didn’t see a single other African American face on chamber floor and as president, he doesn’t even have that token before him when looking out from the State of the Union podium.  The ERA spoke to federally protected equal rights and that means also the rights of, for example, black and Hispanic men as well as women.  One has to wonder how well state laws against marriage equality might have held up against ERA?  If women and minorities stand out for their underrepresentation across so many strata of our society, it remains something novel to have an openly gay person running for public office.  One of the very few, Barney Frank (who came out late), will also be leaving Congress this year and there aren’t many Christine Quinn’s running for mayor around the country.  The future of marriage equality is front and center in many places these days including here in North Carolina where a mean-spirited Proposition 8-like constitutional amendment is up for citizen ratification early in May.

It is always interesting to consider what is so — that women, African American, Hispanic, Gays and others find themselves behind even when theoretically they should not be there any more.   More instructive may be trying to understand why that is so.  As we proceed toward this year’s election there has been wide coverage of what is, to put it generously, a superficial and disheartening campaign for our highest office.  The shift toward the right that killed ERA has progressed well beyond what even Ronald Reagan might have imagined.  Some have described the rhetoric in 2012 as vitriolic — it certainly lacks civility.  But to some degree, it’s hard to take what candidates say on the stump that seriously.  Unfortunatly, they all pander and they all go over the edge, regardless of party.

What strikes me is not the candidates but the almost irrational anger one hears expressed by citizens interviewed along the campaign trail.  They just want to get rid of Obama and that seems to transcend any particular issue.  Now I know that other presidents have been subject to such hatred, FDR in his time and of course more recently Bill Clinton.  But the level of hatred seems more extreme this time around.   In fact, it has been reported that there have been an unprecedented number of death threats against the president, so much so that the Secret Service is overwhelmed.  It may well be that Hilary Clinton, as a woman, might have faced similar hatred or threats.  The question is why?

For sure racial prejudice, which remains alive and well in America, plays here.  And gender prejudice, albeit in a very different way, remains.  But looking at the object of the hatred is to miss the underlying point as, I would suggest, is attributing it to prejudice against any particular group.  The ERA failed to pass the requisite number of states not so much because people were anti-women per se, but that it signaled a different world.  Think of it this way.  If God wanted the world to be different, he wouldn’t have made it the way it was and had always been.  It isn’t that life might be different for women, which surely is the case, but that it would be different for men.  Let’s remember that throughout history, and that included the history of this great democracy, there was no equality between the sexes. 

As many men saw it, the ERA translated into greater competition in the work place but, much worse, it threatened home life as they knew it.  The women who opposed it, most notably Phyllis Schlafly, the right wing provocateur of the day, saw themselves as protecting traditional values, the same kind that seem so important to candidate Rick Santorum.  What the ERA, civil rights, Spanish speakers in our midst, gays out in the sunlight equals is changing our way of life.  Forget Social Security and Medicare, it goes against what may Americans feel is their real entitlement, the way portrayed by Norman Rockwell, the good old days.  What really makes them climb the walls is when their cherished way is described by the next generation as so yesterday.

Sure the Tea Party represents a highly conservative political view, but what get’s it’s followers out of bed in the morning is an obsession with the idea that things are not as they were and a resolve to turn the clock back, or at least stop it.  They don’t want to live with a redefined life, including redefined institutions.  That’s why they’re so exercised about the marriage issue and even about the idea of global warming which means that, using a seemingly silly example, they won’t be able to light their rooms with incandescent bulbs.  No one has the right to take away their picture of the happy couple — mom and dad — coming down the aisle much less question that the most elemental bit of matter isn’t properly the God particle — god made.

The 2008 election was about change.  Some people make derisive light of that these days, some bemoan that too little change has actually occurred.  They dismiss it as just a slogan, an unrealistic and perhaps even irresponsible promise.  I’d submit that change is what we’re all about in the twenty-first century, and at every level.  To me the change slogan reads as an alert, a wakeup call.  Many of us, perhaps most of us on some level, find change — not the idea but the reality — frightening.  We’re ready to do battle.  I understand, as Bill Clinton would say, your pain.  But before you continue on that journey to reverse what is, give some thought to Sisyphus.  Things are not as they were and will likely never be.  The ERA may have failed, the full rights it intended may experience some more delay.  Change may make some of us angry feeling that we can’t take it any more.  No matter, tomorrow isn’t just coming, it has arrived.  Perhaps not de jure, but de facto the ERA is here and it’s irreversible.  We should raise a glass and celebrate its anniversary.

Who are these people?

New Jersey’s Chris Christie, one of the stillborn anybody but Romney folk and a current supporter, declared on MSNBC: You can’t compromise your principles because people won’t know who you are.  He was referring to Rick Santorum’s going along with fellow Senate Republicans in supporting legislation, which he now contends ran contrary to his own beliefs.  Christie has a point.  Full disclosure, I haven’t followed the governor’s career closely enough to judge how he measures up against that high bar.  Regardless, his comments dovetail with something I’ve been thinking about of late.  Who are these people who run for office — all of them?  

Before getting to that, let me digress a moment to suggest that going along, as Mr. Santorum did while in the Senate, was the norm not the exception; it remains so.  Indeed voting or acting on conscience is so rare that John F. Kennedy devoted his best selling Profiles in Courage to the few senators in our history who did.  I guess you didn’t need to be reminded of that work to know that, his claims notwithstanding, Rick Santorum is no John Quincy Adams.  In fact, what the entire Republican primary campaign brings to mind is not Kennedy’s book but the title of that the long running radio show (1934-54) Let’s Pretend.  It’s a contest in which none of the players, including Christie’s man, seem to be concerned one bit about the even more enduring (on radio and then on TV) Truth or Consequences.  No courage, ample pretend and little concern (to carry my broadcast analogy further) for what Sargent Joe Friday called, just the facts.

Getting back to the identity question, have you noticed that much of this and other campaigns focus on the inconsistencies between what candidates say on the stump and what they have done either in office or in their private professional life?  Romney recently told the CPAC gathering that he was a severely conservative governor.  Then who was that guy who signed Massachusetts’ progressive healthcare program into law?  After leaving the House, the trash and burn faux populist Newt Gingrich raked in huge fees not lobbying for Fannie and Freddie.  While in the Senate, the fiscal conservative Santorum was a consistent supporter of deficit increasing earmarks.  And to keep this non-partisan, Barack Obama was a vocal critic of both Iraq and Gitmo on the 2008 campaign trail.  As president, it took three years to exit the first and he still hasn’t accomplished closing the second.

There is something in our politics or perhaps in any politics that works against a candidate being totally up front on the campaign trail.  We like to attribute this lack of candor to some kind cynicism — you can fool all of the people most of the time.  Focus groups not conviction produce robotic pronouncements telling us what we’d like to hear.  There is much to that argument.  But perhaps something else is at work that may come closer to the truth: an unspoken but nonetheless effectual compact between the voters and the candidate.  We don’t really want to know who these people are any more than they want to reveal themselves to us.  Why is that so?  Because that’s the way we largely function in many, if not most, of our everyday relationships.  For example, if that applies do you really know your boss or the people who work for you?  Do they know you?  Isn’t that not knowing often a matter of choice?

The idea that ignorance is bliss is a pretty good description of how we function, and perhaps necessarily so.  I’m not saying that such ignorance is a good thing, only that it’s a reality.  Few of us are totally open books, certainly when it comes to those beyond are inner circle.  And we all have inner circles whether they are comprised only of family or include some close friends and perhaps co-workers.  One of the large issues of our time is whether the Internet and specifically Facebook are invading our privacy, revealing too much about us.  We all know where their children come from, but we really don’t want to know about the sex lives of our family members and friends.  Perhaps Charlie Rose and Lara Logan’s revival of Ed Murrow’s dreadful Person to Person will gain an audience, but few viewers should be deluded into thinking they are really gaining access into the home, much less inner life, of the interviewed celebs.

As the late and charismatic Sarah Lawrence professor William Campbell knew well, we all need myths. And we all recognize that our heroes have a thousand faces.  In that regard, those who lead us tend to be composites of who they are (or may be) and who we want them to be.  They conspire to create an image but we are willing co-conspirators.  In that sense I am always somewhat amused when pundits contrast how reserved/opaque Obama and Romney are in contrast to say Bill Clinton or perhaps George W. Bush.  One certainly couldn’t say either Reagan or Bush Senior, both extraordinarily private people, were open books.  Who are these people?  The answer is we don’t fully know and never will.  Again, that may not be a good thing, but it is probably an inevitable component of public life.

It’s not surprising that generations of presidential historians have written and spoken countless words aimed at unearthing the real Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln  or Richard Nixon.  For them the mystery of public figures has been key to making a good living, for which I’m sure they are each personally grateful.  But it is also hard work.  Robert Caro has devoted nearly three decades of his and his researcher wife’s life just to Lyndon Johnson who, despite his gregarious nature, remains one of the most enigmatic figures of our recent history.  Intimate JFK associates Kenny O’Donnell and Dave Powers published a memoir Johnny We Hardly Knew Ye.  Its title was taken from an Irish ballad and it spoke to Kennedy’s tragically short life, but again evoking a suggestive truth that even their close friend remained somewhat of a mystery.

The irony of Governor Christie’s rebuke is that its subject may be most transparent figure of the current presidential race.  We may not know the real Romney nor necessarily want to know the real Gingrich or any of the other now defunct GOP contenders, but there is little doubt about the identity of Rick Santorum.  To his credit, and perhaps to our horror, he has been totally up front about his fundamentalist religious views.  He decries our educational system — he and his wife have home schooled their children.  He opposes contraception and abortion and, while eight children (one died) is no record, they certainly have more offspring than the average American couple.  While believing the government should pull back, he nonetheless thinks it should play a substantial role in social matters because, like Mr. Justice Scalia, Santorum believes our laws come from God.  Perhaps nominee John Roberts put one over on the Senate with his self-portrayal as a respecter of precedent and settled law, but Santorum hasn’t played that game on the campaign trail (for the most part).  We know that he would bring some modicum of theocracy to the White House, even if in campaign mode he claims that not to be the case.  More on that subject to come.

Which planted seeds count most?

Among the byproducts of the Republican primary campaign is that Bain Capital, and as a result financial firms in general, have drawn new attention, becoming a more substantive part of our conversation.  And then there was that November piece by Huffington Post’s Amanda Terkel detailing how financial firms suck up our best and brightest college grads.  What she described is nothing less than a brain drain with significant long-term implications for American competitiveness.  Finally comes the long expected announcement of the impending and potentially record breaking Facebook IPO.

In some respects, these three — Bain, the brain drain and Facebook — may appear unrelated.  But they are.  Together they raise a very important issue for our country and its economy, namely the role and relative importance of money and invention.  Since the retrenchment of our manufacturing base, service and most specifically the financial kind has become a more dominant force in our economy.  New York City, but also places like Charlotte North Carolina, see them as core enterprises, essential to both employment and their tax base.  When Facebook goes public, Mark Zukerberg will emerge at 27 as one of America’s richest citizens and many of his co-workers will be  multi-millionaires.  The Times dubbed his COO, Sheryl Sandberg, The $1.6 Billion Woman.  But also making many millions will be a group of venture capitalists and of course the investment banking firms who are bringing the offering to market.  This is all part of the capitalist system.

It is easy, and often well deserved, to castigate financial institutions.  Wall Street and the big banks especially have contributed greatly to our current problems.  Their thirst for profit often at the expense of others has been well documented.  Interestingly Terkel suggests that it has employed its brilliant top university recruits to dream up the very esoteric financial instruments that are at the heart of the matter.  But that’s not the subject of this writing.  Rather what concerns me here is the relative value we place as a society on money, specifically those funds put against the development of new enterprises, and on the enterprises themselves.  In our focus on how essential seed money and finances in general may be, have we come to overvalue finance and undervalue what that money is claimed to have facilitated.

To put this in concrete terms, Bain Capital (and I’m using them here only as an example) put seed money in Staples and that undoubtedly was very important, perhaps even critical, at the time.  Likewise, Facebook, but also Microsoft, Apple and Google, relied on venture capital resources to help move their businesses from idea into reality.  The financial people involved, as we have seen in Romney speeches, look at these successes with some rightful pride.  Thomas Stemberg, Mark Zukerberg, Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, and Larry Page wouldn’t deny their contribution or minimize its importance.  It is also true that beyond money, some VC’s offer valuable strategic and management advice, both of which might make the difference between success and failure.  But in the end, what really made these innovative companies and others like them?  I’d say, it’s the creative idea seeds and vision to see what could be realized, not the money seeds.  There is a good reason we all know the names of these inventive icons but would likely be hard pressed to identify any of their investors or bankers.

The reason Mitt Romney is feeling the heat these days is not because of what he or Bain did, but because of the claims he has made.  To hear him one might sometimes think that private equity firms are in an essentially altruistic business — saving companies and creating jobs.  But private equity, and for that matter Wall Street and VCs, have a one fundamental goal — to increase wealth for themselves and their investors.  That may not make for a good presidential campaign message, but it would be refreshingly honest and, as such, might be subject to less criticism.  Warren Buffet, the much admired Oracle of Omaha, controls Berkshire Hathaway that owns lots of companies, each run by professional managers.  I’ve can't remember Buffett claiming that he creates jobs; though using Romney’s model he may be among the nation’s top job creators.   Buffett is an investor — the über investor if you will — and his primary objective is to increase Berkshire’s share value and his own net worth.  He’s done pretty well at that and few of us begrudge his success.  The VCs of Silicone Valley may enjoy working with all those brilliant entrepreneurs and may share their enthusiasm for technology, but make no mistake; they are in it for the money.  They don’t make computers or write software.   I’m not making a valued judgment about what they do here, which is obviously substantial, just stating a fact.

The role and objectives of the people who create businesses is totally different.  Of course they hope for a payday and, looking at what’s in the works for Zukerberg and his colleagues, that’s where the really serious money lies.  But these enterprise inventors, and that’s a word that fits many of the, are in it for whatever the business does.  That’s where all of their energy and passion lies.  For many of them, that business is not only devoted to delivering a product or service, but to changing the game.  Office products were sold long before Stemberg and his partners came on the scene, but their stores were disruptive changing the way we buy those products.  By the way, bricks and mortar Staples is second only to Amazon as an online retailer.  Perhaps Bill Gates didn’t invent the OS, but he made the personal computer it ran accessible and pervasive.  So, too, Steve Jobs may have picked up on a Xerox Parc invention but he brought the mouse in its various iterations into our lives.  Others may have preceded Google into market, but Larry Page and Sergey Brin made search a verb without which many of us could not function, or at least as well.  These people, along with the thousands who work with them, are change agents who touch our lives in a direct and profound way.

Now there is no doubt that there is interdependency between those who supply seed money and those who inventively create seed ideas.  But both their objectives and staying power are vastly different.  The money people may have some ongoing interest in the many businesses for which they provide capital, but it is a finite and timely interest.  Perhaps more important, they provide no direct service to the businesses’ customers or users.  Business creators and the management who succeed them are in it for long-term; their work (much as that can be for any mortal) is timeless.  The millions of people who lend their talent and give their working lives to the enterprise join them in this.  But the real point is that financial engineering of any kind doesn’t keep an economy vibrant.  We may well have achieved some supremacy in global finance, but it has been our innovation that really makes the difference.  Think of it, the functional computer, making information accessible and, most recently, social networking were all created in the USA.  That isn’t meant as a boast, though we should have some pride, but to explain why we are such a central force in the world.  Our inventions are far more important than our financial or military superiority.

The real problem ahead, the one of which Terkel wrote, is that the brain drain that we are witnessing as the best and the brightest enter the financial world rather than becoming inventors of the next Facebook is heading us in a very dangerous direction.  It is also somehow turning our values on their head.  Perhaps we don’t make that much stuff any more, but that doesn’t mean we aren’t making things of equal value and could do so in the future.  If we don’t address that issue in a serious way, the often-exaggerated downward slide of America might be more than just how we feel in challenging times, it may become a self-fulfilled prophecy.  The relative value we place on money and doing does matter.  Some seeds are moree valuable than others.

Unwinnable.

Strangers in a distant neighborhood ultimately lose their way.  On November 1, 1955 President Dwight Eisenhower deployed American military advisors to Viet Nam.  Six years later John F. Kennedy, confirmed our involvement by sending in 400 Special Forces to assist the South Vietnamese army.  The war would end twenty only years later after a series of escalations by two more presidents, Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon.  It cost 58,151 lives and became the first major war that America failed to conclude in victory.

Viet Nam had a profound, fair to say watershed, impact on the American psyche.  Its high-cost-defeat undermined the self confidence with which we had emerged from World War II.  It had a far greater impact than the Korean conflict, this despite a relatively higher body count there — 36,516 in just three years of fighting compared to Viet Nam’s twenty.  Korea was also unpopular — the promise of ending it got Ike elected — but opposition may have evidenced a greater war-fatigue than anything else.  Perhaps more important, we were principally focused at the time on the Soviet menace.  It was after all the age of Joe McCarthy, of red bating and black lists.  Beyond shaking our self-confidence, I would argue that to some degree at least, the polarizing divisions within America laid bare by Viet Nam helped sew the seeds of what has come to mark our public discourse today.  It was then that the mantra of, are you with us or against us, was born.  In that, George Bush’s post 9/11 rhetoric was only a copycat.

Memories of Viet Nam were brought to mind this week when both Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta and NATO made statements signally that our and their troops might be out of combat in Afghanistan by 2013 or 14.  This news coincided and contrasted with a report that Taliban captives, far from feeling defeated, contended to interrogators that they were in fact winning the war  — especially with regard to hearts and minds.  History is on their side, not ours.  If that weren’t enough of a reminder, every day brings escalating talk of military action against Iran, ginned up especiallyin this country by the Republican presidential candidates, but mostly by an unmistakable propaganda campaign being waged by the Israelis.

According to the Times, Deputy Prime Minister Moshe Yaalon, referring to Israel’s attack on the Iran Revolutionary Guard missile base, contended that the system they hit was getting ready to produce a missile with a range of 10,000 kilometers.  Referring to Iran’s invoking the Great Satan, he contends that the planned missiles were actually, aimed at America, not at us (Israel).  Yaalon’s point is that we have as much to be concerned about as do they, perhaps even more so.  This follows the January 25 Magazine story (Will Israel Attack Iran?) in which its author Ronen Bergman was given full access to Ehud Barak and other of the country’s key leaders.

I don’t want to address either Iran’s threat, which may be real or Israel’s absolute and legitimate right to defend its national sovereignty.  Nor am I suggesting that the magazine story was in any way instigated by Israel.  What struck me, however, was the similarity between these recent reports and the run-up to our invasion of Iraq.  Let’s all remember that whenever military force is used, and no matter by whom, there are bound to be unintended consequences.  Those who use force, justified or not, will assure us that such consequences will be minimal — always worth the risk.  Don’t believe it for one minute.

We were solemnly told about potentially falling dominoes, but Viet Nam was unwinnable from the get-go.  And of course, the North’s win did not produce dominoes falling or any catastrophe, quite the opposite.  So, too, was Iraq unwinnable and so is Afghanistan.  I said history was on the side of the Taliban view because in end, strangers in a distant land must, of necessity, go home.  Sometimes they go home out of sheer fatigue — Korea following closely on World War II — and sometimes because, well, it’s time to go home.  Time is always on the side of the natives.  Invaders may have some impact on their societies at the margin, but they will quickly revert to their own identity.  That truth can even be seen in Germany and Japan who recaptured their national narrative after 1945 and we can already see it in Iraq.  National pride is strong, as it should be, and foreigners and just that, foreigners.  Incursions in the arc of history are but a fleeting moment of time.  At some point invaders, even those who come with noble purpose can’t long sustain in a land not their own.

One of the reasons often given for the lack of success of conflicts in far off places is the cultural disconnect.  We Americans live in such a different place that we simply can’t understand, let’s say the Vietnamese or the Afghans.  That certainly is true, but hardly the whole story.  Consider for example a decision to invade Canada.  This is of course a far-fetched even preposterous notion, but I’d predict that national pride would still prevail.  Canadians may speak an English that is no more distinctive than what we see within our country, say between North to South and Bronx to Chicago cadences.  But in Ontario or Manitoba we would still be seen a foreigners and the local resistance would likely be no less fearless than we witnessed in Viet Nam or than we have seen in Iraq and Afghanistan.

One of the reasons that Ron Paul has been so captivating to many, especially younger, Americans is that he opposes our involvement in foreign wars.  His rationale for doing so — and to be sure his overall libertarian views — may be different than ours, but this part of his message strikes a chord.  It embodies a truth that many of us know.  It is also a truth, perhaps one might call it a potentially fatal flaw, that our system seems geared to repeating these mistakes.  Moreover, our leaders, despite what may be their best intentions seem locked into the same misbegotten cycle.  Just look at how President Obama has not been able to quickly extricate ourselves from Bush’s two wars.  Even after ending Iraq, we will still have a presence as do we more than half a century later in Korea, Japan and Europe.  Eisenhower attributed that the Industrial Military Complex. 

In the debate over guns, opponents of gun control often argue that guns don’t kill, people do.  True, but having a gun — the means — in hand as an option, is a game changer.  On a more benign level, given the option of using a screw driver or my electric drill, I will always plug in or battery up.  Having the means at hand weighs heavily, and that has played a huge role in the choices we’ve made as a country.  It certainly impacts upon what Israel may be considering in combatting Iran’s perceived or real threat.  And we shouldn’t be totally and one-sidedly hard on ourselves.  Many of our friends, not so armed as we, have induced us into fighting their battles.  We went into Viet Nam (or claimed that to be the case) because the French couldn’t do (or we thought) finish the job.

Having the means is alluring and it’s deceptive.  It often takes us down a path we should never have followed.  Bush and Chaney made the absolutely wrong decision about Iraq, and did so with a lot of bi-partisan and pundit support (Hilary Clinton and Tom Friedman, for example).  But I do think that they honestly thought it would be a cakewalk — remember shock and awe.  We can say with certainly that the operation was poorly planned and understaffed, a product of Rumsfeld’s arrogance, but the Pandora’s box it opened was an unintended consequence.   It represented a lesson of history not learned.

George Aiken, the moderate Republican (remember them) governor and then senator from Vermont during the Viet Nam years is credited with suggesting that we just declare victory and get out.  He never really said that in so many words, but was nonetheless hailed as a wise old owl.  It’s hard to be the biggest and toughest guy on the block and to admit defeat by the pipsqueak down the street.  Claiming victory in the face of the unwinnable battle takes real guts — first in saying those words and then in moving on.  Senator Aiken, where are you when we still need you most?   

Flawed.

In some presidential years, like 2008, both parties have competitive primary contests in play.  That means politically interested Democrats and Republicans are engaged. That’s not the case this year and so roughly half of us, if we are paying attention at all, are mere observers not participants.  I am one of those onlookers.

Some people, including pundits on the right, have painted what has unfolded over the last few months as something absurd, a kind of show business comedy act typified early on by the likes of Herman Cain and The Donald.  Some Democrats watch from the bleachers with a sense of satisfaction, if not outright glee.  They believe the mud slinging is further weakening an already weak field and thus will help ensure the President’s reelection.  Perhaps that’s true, but a word of caution is in order.  Tough primaries, as has been pointed out by others, usually make the victor a better candidate than he or she might otherwise have been.  Both Obama and Clinton were far more potent at the end than was the case when they started out.  The long competitive challenge may have given the president the edge four years ago.  Romney seems to be benefiting from the battle. 

I have a somewhat different take on it all.  By way of disclosure, let me confess that I have not watched a single Republican debate.  Sue me; I just couldn’t get myself to do it.  Of course I have read a range of press reports and have heard snippets.  One would have to be totally deaf and blind, especially if you are an active consumer of news, not to have seen and read enough about the goings on to have an impression of the candidates.   Besides, all of the four men left standing have a history and certainly with the former Speaker of the House, one that stands out in sharp relief. 

What strikes me about this class of 2012 is not that they seem comic, but that somehow each of them, most especially the two top contenders, seems so flawed.  You would think that, as an Obama supporter, this would make me happy, but in some profound way it does just the opposite.  What’s up for grabs this fall is the presidency of the United States; an office that carries tremendous power not to mention that it is the face of government to the nation and to the world at large.  Our leader.  The idea that one of these men would have even a remote chance of taking the oath next January 21 — and it’s more than remote — is disconcerting to say the least. 

Why do I see these contenders as flawed?  Let’s start with Governor Romney, still presumed to be the front-runner and most likely nominee.  In some ways Mitt reminds me most of George H.W. Bush.  His problem is not so much that he has difficulty connecting with voters, which he does, but that somehow he is totally out of touch.  Romney, like many people born rich — yes I know he claims to be self-made — somehow lives on a different planet than the one inhabited by most of us.  Bush’s revealing moment was when a supermarket checkout flummoxed him or when he insensitively went out on his gas-guzzling cigarette boat during a time of shortages.  John Kerry had similar disconnect problems — his mother was a member of the wealthy Forbes family.  Romney has consistently exhibited a tin ear to how his personal story has nothing in common, zero, with those in what is now called the 99%.  Even within his 1% there is a difference between being born into wealth and having become wealthy.  His being out of touch manifests itself in comments like his being currently unemployed or that he somehow started at the bottom, worried about getting a pink slip.  Being unemployed when you’re drawing what we now know is $22 Million plus a year is vastly different from being out of work and collecting (if so fortunate) less than subsistence wage unemployment checks.  And the idea that being the son of a former Automotive CEO and ex-governor doesn’t give you a substantial leg up in the business world or that you didn’t benefit from the kind of safety net unavailable to most Americans is laughable.  But let’s understand, it’s not so much the wealth that counts here; it is rather the out-of-touch tin ear.  FDR came from wealth and lived accordingly, but somehow he viscerally understood that his situation was not comparable to most others.  So he focused on their challenges, not his, and what he had and where he came from was never an issue even in depression torn America.

Romney has another flaw, one that might not have been seen as such during another time.  Taking him at his word now, his wealth comes not from inheritance but from his work.  To paraphrase what the late John Houseman once sonorously intoned for a Smith Barney commercial, he did it in the old fashioned way, he earned it.  The problem is that, unlike his father who made his money from manufacturing cars, Romney Junior’s fortune derives from financial engineering.  While many of the companies that Bain Capital bought were making things, for example Sealy mattresses, they were simply short-term vehicles for enhancing investor wealth.  It is the old idea of buy low; sell high — in this case at often unimaginable returns, made in relatively short order.  Whatever management may have been involved, it was of the interim kind (done by others, not Romney) and aimed solely at increasing shareholder (Bain’s and their investor’s) value.  In an earlier economic context this might not be a problem, might not be seen as a flaw.  But it is exactly financial engineering that helped produce the collapse from which we have yet to recover.  Romney went on the offensive in a recent debate contending, I’m proud of being successful; I'm proud of being in the free-enterprise system that creates jobs for other people. I'm not going to run from that.  Perhaps so, especially the job creating claim, but no matter how many have been created (the subject of some dispute) none of those new workers, nor those already employed by the companies bought and sold made out like Romney and his partners (some might say, like bandits). 

Finally there is the matter of his 13.9% tax rate.  I'm proud of the taxes I pay, Romney asserted during that debate.  My taxes plus my charitable contributions this year, 2011, will be about 40%.  Come again?  The implication here is that (tax deductible) donations should be lumped in with taxes.  If that isn’t financial engineering at its most disingenuous self, I don’t know what is.  Does Mr. Romney think us all stupid?  Beyond being insulting, it again manifests that tin ear, this time combined with some snake oil selling.

Newt Gingrich’s flaws are manifold.  We may hold politicians in very low esteem, but few, if any, can match him in being callously opportunistic and blatantly insincere.  If you don’t trust me on that, do a Google search of his career record.  Politicians all suffer from some degree of inflated ego disease, but Newt clearly has a terminal case.  There are few great figures in history to whom he has not compared himself; often intimating that he may be the better of the two.  Boasts like this often are symptoms of an underlying, and often severe, insecurity, but let’s leave that to accredited professionals.

No flaw in Gingrich is greater than in his fundamental (a word he likes) character.  Now let me preface that assessment by saying I don’t think either the government or its citizens belong in any one’s private life or bedroom.  We may not personally approve of marital infidelity (or conversely be bothered by it), but unless it impacts on our own lives, we should have the humility to hold judgment — the glass house principle.  The reason that Newt’s history is relevant here is that he holds himself out as such a virtuous soul, the now devout repentant sinner.  It is he, not any of us, who introduced that claim into the campaign.  Remember he was making hay with Callista (and far more seriously) while prosecuting Bill Clinton for Monica.  I could care less about either of their sex lives, but do care about the hypocrisy in putting us all through that.  When it comes to family values, Romney beats Gingrich hands down, yes Gail Collins even if he tied the family dog to the roof of his car on a trip to Canada.

Gingrich’s flaw is one shared by his many devout followers, not to mention the Church to which he now belongs.  These are people who insist that we all should be bound by their religious rules and mores.  The Roman Church is currently going ballistic that the new healthcare provisions mandating the benefit of insurance coverage for contraception should apply to the many non-Catholics in their employ.  At the same time, they avert their eyes when it comes to Gingrich’s infidelity.  The Catholic Church’s mandate against divorce doesn’t apply to him of course since his earlier marriages were consecrated elsewhere and not recognized as valid.  In the same inconsistent vein they have recently welcomed a bunch of married (formerly Episcopal) priests and they have always provided annulments for the right (often rich contributor) members.  This shared flaw in Gingrich and his religious right supporters is just another reason that 25% of America’s young have moved beyond religion.  It’s a real turnoff, one that, fairly or not, tarnishes even those religions who don’t share their invasive attitude or beliefs.

I said earlier that the state of the Republican contest doesn’t make me happy.  I think that the Democrats and President Obama, while far from perfect, have things just about right.  Should more be done about housing, do we still need universal health care and should those responsible for our current economic woes be at least put before the bar of justice?  Absolutely.  But I do believe in an activist government.  Far greater efficiency may be in order, but unlike with science, less is not more.  Look at the condition of our roads and the lack of high-speed rail to mention just two.  By the same token, Republicans who believe in more limited government should be able to make their case with less hyperbole and by more substantive representatives.  No one has cornered the market on absolute truth.  More to the point we all deserve better when we go to the polls in November.   With this crop, we’ll be disappointed.

 

On a personal note:  Jesse J. Prinz’ very provocative and highly accessible book Beyond Human Nature (Allen Lane in the UK and forthcoming in the US) has just been published and will be available on Kindle  February 2^nd.

Undecided.

By the time they got to South Carolina, Barack Obama won the primary with a clear majority, 55.44%.  Hilary Clinton came in second at 26.52%.  Native son John Edwards, who had spent by far the most time and money there, got only 17.57%.  They obviously they knew who he was before the rest of us did.  Seven Democrats were still in the field, compared with four contending in Saturday’s Republican contest. So Obama’s win back in 2008 is all the more impressive, reflecting a level of conviction that is absent in the Republican primaries of 2012.  This is not to say that Obama had the nomination sewn up, which we know he didn’t.  And along the way there were times when things got pretty nasty.  Nonetheless while many Democrats, myself included, supported Obama and were confidant he would prevail, we could enthusiastically support Senator Clinton were that not the case.   That may not be true for Republicans today.

From the outset, Mitt Romney, considered most likely to lead his party in November, has been unable to garner anywhere close to a majority support.  Even on his home turf in New Hampshire he could only muster 39.9% of primary voters.   We don’t know if Newt Gingrich’s surge spells Romney’s end —probably not — but it does suggest a race that will both drag on and whose outcome is more uncertain than ever.  With Iowa, New Hampshire and countless debates on the record, exit polls suggest a vast majority of Gingrich voters made their decision either just before or on primary day.  Primaries are not necessarily indicative of general elections but this certainly suggests a Republican electorate undecided and in flux.

The results of Edison Research’s exit poll are interesting.  98% of the participating voters where white.  That certainly reinforces in the extreme my last post.  To put this is perspective, according to the census bureau 66% of South Carolinians are white and nearly 28% are African American (more than twice the national average).  That only 1% of GOP primary voters were black speaks for itself.  Newt achieved a plurality in most of the attribute areas covered by Edison whether gender, self-identification or views on issues.  The single exception is where he actually got a slim (51%) majority — can defeat Barack Obama.  That number may prove most damaging to Romney, whose argument has largely been built around electability.  Interestingly Newt (9%), the serial philanderer, and Romney (19%), the steady family man, both performed poorly on has strong moral character.  The first’s showing shouldn’t be surprising, the second’s may have more to do with his social issue flip-flopping than necessarily with the business vulture charge he’s endured in recent days.  I would think that Newt’s sordid private life, given a pass on Saturday, might not be overlooked in other places.

Republican voter turnout was appreciably higher this election cycle (601,111 vs. 445.677, up 35%) so you can argue enthusiasm runs higher.  What I found most interesting as a measure of where we are, or perhaps how we feel, is that Ron Paul gained proportionately more.  His numbers increased almost five fold from 16,155 in ’08 to 77,993 this year.  Even more striking is that he had a plurality (albeit at only 31%) of the 10-29 demographic; only 16% of Romney supporters were in that age group.  Those numbers probably reflect work Paul has done with younger people including many college campus appearances, but may also reflect an unease manifest in the next generation of which both Republicans and Democrats alike should take careful note.  The prospects of young people just out of college or starting out in general just aren't very good these days; the much-touted American dream no longer seems within their reach.  Without question, Ron Paul’s rhetoric is both simplistic and misleading, but taken by themselves his rants against government or against overseas wars resonate with many Americans, both young and old.  It is also a reminder that people with no chance of being elected, which describes Paul and in a different way some of his young supporters, have the luxury of saying whatever they want.  They will never be asked to back up their contentions or positions with action.  Any elected official understands the difference between campaigning and governing, except seemingly the Teas in Congress.

Some Democrats may be disappointed with Obama’s performance to date.  Like many others they may feel the country is headed in the wrong direction.  Nevertheless, the President faces no opposition from within his party — no Gene McCarthy challenging LBJ.  He can expect their full and most likely enthusiastic support in November.  In contrast, few Republicans seem to be happy campers.  They jumped on Newt’s bandwagon in South Carolina but were with Mitt two weeks back and more or less, it turns out, with Rick Santorum days earlier.  If you listen to their audiences (ones that pale in comparison to crowds drawn by both Obama and Clinton in ’08) you may hear loud cheers but, if polls are any indication, there remains a serious enthusiasm gap.  More Republicans are turning up this year to vote, but there just is no electricity in the air.  Whatever passion there may be (and it’s very hard to discern much) seems to be fickle and fluid.  That roller-coaster leader-of-the-moment we saw in the earliest days of the contest may say more about where Republicans are today than about this particular shrinking candidate field.  Even with fewer options on the table, the choice remains uncertain and uncertainly taken by voters.

How the Republicans and Democrats feel about their candidates will certainly matter in November, but the election will be decided by independents.  According to a 2009 Pew Research Study 39% of the electorate now identify as Independents (33% Democrats, 22% Republicans).  Those numbers may have changed somewhat since, but I’d suggest Independents are de facto America’s third party.  They may not have a candidate of their own nor are they likely to be of a single mind, but both major party candidates will definitely be paying them a great deal of attention in the run up to November.  That fact, and the necessary nuance that is required in courting their votes, drives partisans up the wall.  It is precisely why primary contests in which candidates must appeal to a very narrow, often near-fringe, constituency is not only so different from the General but can also be so damaging to the standard bearer who has leaned too far right or left in gaining the nomination.  Barry Goldwater and George McGovern.

South Carolina showed again that unlike Nixon in his day, Romney is not yet The One nor that he necessarily will be in Tampa come summer.  Will his party come together and evidence more than what the columnist Ross Douthat described as weary resignation in selecting their leader?  Hard to say, but they may well yet muster up the passion that now remains elusive.  Will it happen soon enough or be sufficiently intense to win back to the White House in November?  I doubt it, but don’t fully discount it either.  We are living in very fluid and unpredictable times.  Just days before South Carolina, Mitt was a headed for certain victory and we know what happened to that, virtually overnight.  Copies of the current New Yorker and New York Magazine appeared in my mailbox.  Lots of good pieces and, in some areas, as timeless as things can ever be these days.  But on the political front, both offered yesterday’s news and opinions.  Print is dying not because it isn’t wonderful to hold a page in your hand, but because events are moving too fast for it.  Our demands for information with real-time currency are just much more acute than ever before.  We don’t only want it, but can get it minute by minute, and do.  Those print magazines sitting before me as I write are a good metaphor for the GOP race.  Don’t like the weather?  Just wait an instant and it is sure to change and, even then, don’t expect it to be predictive of storms or sunshine to come.

Ah, the…old days.

In a recent column David Brooks reports being struck that Republican audiences this year want a restoration.  America once had strong values…but we have gone astray.  We’ve got to go back and rediscover what we had.  He went on, I agree with the sentiment, but it makes for an incredibly backward-looking campaign. I sometimes wonder if the Republican Party has become the receding roar of white America as it pines for a way of life that will never return.

The idea of restoration is exactly what his audiences probably consider when Mitt Romney speaks of taking America back.  And that back is not to either of the Bushes (who’ve become stump non-persons) but to an idealized Ronald Reagan.  For years Republicans were green with envy that Democrats had FDR’s flag to wave while they had to reach far back to being the Party of Lincoln.  It’s not to discount Lincoln — most of us would gladly and do claim him — but rather that the Great Emancipator seems so, well, Democratic.  Reagan on the other hand is larger than life, seen as a legitimate counterbalance to Roosevelt.  His were the mythical golden years, when the country was set on a course of prosperity and power.  Reagan stands for lower taxes and a strong economy, for winning the Cold War and emerging as the World’s only superpower.  Both the prosperity and the superpower notions are more than just appealing.  They represent an ego-enhancing reassurance about our invincibility, our exceptionalism.

Before we get ahead of ourselves, it’s not only Republicans who look back wistfully to the good old days. We long for a restoration of the time when being middle class meant something, when unions were fighting successfully for workers and when our kids could go to college without obliterating our savings or emerging as debtors.  We all like to think that politics was so much kinder when Ronnie and Tip could do business together or when Mr. Sam (Rayburn) invited Democrats and Republicans alike (well, almost alike) to join him for those famous late afternoon cocktail hours.  Ah, the good old days.

Of course they weren’t all that great and in some respects not all that different from today.  Just take one small example.  In 1952 the columnist Stewart Alsop branded Adlai Stevenson an egghead.  It quickly became an epithet.  Anything intellectual was considered bad and, by implication, out of the mainstream — not like Ike and certainly not like us.  Today Barak Obama is branded professorial (read egghead) — not like real Americans, not like us.  How we view intellectuals in this country, including that universities are increasingly looked to as vocational schools rather than places of learning, is a matter for another time.

Brooks is concerned about a backward-looking campaign.  He thinks we should be thinking and talking about the future.  I couldn’t agree more.  I also concur with his assessment of today’s Republicans as the receding roar of white America and that the life and place for which they (and many of us) yearn will never return.  But insofar as the upcoming election is concerned, I think Romney and his supporters are being more than unrealistic.  Talking about taking (going) back is a serious strategic blunder.  No politician, even with good sloganeering, is in full control of the message, how it’s heard rather than how it is meant.  So Romney’s invitation to look or go back actually runs contrary to (and might cancel out) his storyline about Obama’s poor performance in the present.  It reminds us that Reagan actually sent us on a road to a highly leveraged faux prosperity whose endpoint was the stunning, and in retrospect fully predictable, collapse of 2008.  Moreover it lays bare how ephemeral being the last standing superpower is a modern world where the reality of globalization leads directly to a more level playing field.  By the way, whether we aggressively promoted it or not, in the information age globalization would have happened on its own, probably just as fast.

You can’t call for a return without prompting the question, return to what?  And that’s exactly where Democrats and the President should want voters to look.  It may well be that Republicans have tried to erase the presidential firm of Bush & Bush from our minds, but Americans have shown themselves to have only short-term memories.  It’s been almost a quarter century since Reagan left office, which means that a large swath of the population wasn’t born or old enough to worship at his alter.  In contrast George W. Bush was in office just three years ago and, efforts to erase him from history are laughable.  He remains top-of-mind.  What his presidency wrought at home and abroad — how it impacted on our individual lives — doesn't make for a pretty picture.  Obama will be happy to focus on that past, to ask Americans if they want to return to it.  When Republicans urge us to go back, he’ll remind us again that it was their man Bush who bequeathed him and us a colossal mess to clean up.  As with hurricanes, tornedos and floods the garbage left behind by a financial meltdown is so massive that it isn’t easily or quickly collected.  Just ask the residents of New Orleans.  The cleanup and rebuilding, as they know so well, takes substantially more time than tearing down.  Restoring the past may speak to some who don’t like where we are today or who we have become as a nation, but focusing on the rearview mirror rather than on the road ahead is always hazardous, often fatal.

Brooks may despair of what has become of the party and ideology he largely supports, but he can’t undo the bed they have chosen to make for themselves.  In narrowing their constituency to mostly people like us — few Blacks, Latinos, Gays or any of the others they demonize — it’s unsurprising that Republicans share a sense (and reality) of displacement.  They may find it unnerving, may lash out with an angry Tea Party, but they can’t turn the clock back.  Brooks, himself one of those eggheads they disdain, tells the truth.  Yesterday is really gone.   You can ask Eastman Kodak about that one.  Perhaps neither the rank and file nor their leaders get (or admit to getting) it, but those they paint as the other are fast becoming us.  And it’s the very multidimensional us that has always been America at its best, a nation of others who have kept our creative juices going, given us a unique identity.  Perhaps in this election cycle we’re not yet ready to talk directly and honestly about the real America of 2012, but the time when any one of us can afford to sit with blinders on is running out.   

This election is bound to be about the economy, and perhaps we’ll see a discussion about the role of government — more or less — in our lives.  That kind of conversation is long overdue, but don’t count on it happening.   Part of what will likely drive us as voters this fall is whether or not we want to go back.  What we decide will depend in large measure on how we perceive the good old days and whether we think this nation can manage and, more importantly thrive, in a very different time.  My advice to you is simple.  If you’re yearning for the past — the old days — get over it!

Thoughts at year's end.

Just days away from 2012, a year likely to be totally consumed by an election still eleven long months away, it’s probably a good time to look back an assess.  After reading Charles McGrath’s enthusiastic NY Times story on Meryl Streep’s portrayal of Margret Thatcher in Iron Lady, I couldn’t help but think of 2008 and the marathon contest between Barack Obama and Hilary Clinton.  Thatcher, we all remember, was the first woman to become a head of government in her own right.  The film’s British director Phyllida Lloyd, by no means a Tory, told McGrath, I was sitting in my room at university when the radio announced that she had been asked to form a government, and I went ‘Yes!’ It felt like one for our team.  To which Streep added, I did the same thing.  We all thought if it can happen in England, class bound, socially rigid, homophobic — if they can elect a female leader over there, then it’s just seconds away in America.  Well obviously not seconds, Senator Clinton didn’t make it.

The 2008 primaries were tough for the two candidates but also for many of us in being forced to choose between our equally strong commitments to feminism and civil rights — our dreams of righting inequities and imbalance on both counts.  What a painful choice — the first woman President or the first African American.  As you know, I opted for Obama to some degree because, having experienced the Bush dynasty, I was loath to see a Clinton one.  But perhaps equally so, having sat in the hot sun just feet below the lectern where Martin King spoke of them, I was overtaken by dreams.  I was not alone.

Clinton and Obama were both compelling candidates, both highly qualified to lead the country.  As Senators, a position that has rarely led to the White House, one couldn’t argue that one was more electable than the other.  Clinton rested her campaign on experience, which she surely had.  Obama, focused on change, something the country desperately wanted.  It struck a chord and in the end his argument carried the day, supported in great measure by his personal charisma and star quality.  Cranky old-looking John McCain didn’t have a chance.

There is no more favorite game political junkies play than, what if?  How might things have turned out if the now Secretary Clinton had won in ’08 and Obama had not?  Specifically, how might she have addressed the economy, the still raging wars, healthcare and all the other problems we’ve had in these last three years?  Hilary Clinton, as her campaign and history in public life have clearly shown, is an unabashed Centrist.  She supported the Iraq invasion and is generally hawkish.  Since many of us saw hers as a race for a third Clinton term, one also has to take her husband's presidency, (in which she was deeply involved — part of her experience) into account.  Clearly, some self-inflicted wounds clouded Bill Clinton’s tenure and, like Obama or more so, he was the object of irrational hate from the far Right.  Even so, Clinton had some significant accomplishments including a successful intervention in the Balkans and most notably leaving office with a budget surplus.  Nonetheless, he failed to deliver on healthcare, gave in with the disgraceful don’t ask, don’t tell policy and shepherded the repeal of Glass-Steagall, something that has led to disastrous and fully predictable consequences.

If there is one word that one hears most about the Obama presidency it is, disappointment.  Hilary Clinton might not have suffered the same assessment.  No one had the expectation that she would govern from the Left, and aside from the aspirational hopes for having a woman as president — finally — illusory dreams played little role for her supporters or the country.  Change was not her theme, and when she tepidly tried embracing it toward the end of a campaign falling short, it just wouldn’t play.  So in that regard, Ms. Clinton might have had an advantage relative to the President who, as I’ve said many times, suffers from not living up to our perceptions of him.  He, too, is a Centrist and always was, but I still think one to her left.  He opposed the Iraq invasion and, if reports are correct, has been less hawkish than his Secretary of State.

Bill Clinton campaigned on the Economy Stupid, and has been hailed for delivering on his promise.  He was surrounded by a financial dream team led by Rubin and Summers, men who were seen as walking on economic water.  We all know where that went.  Bush certainly had a big hand in our economic melt down but, with the benefit of hindsight, it’s clear the seeds of catastrophe were planted deep in the ‘90s, most especially in overturning Glass-Steagall.  Obama has been roundly criticized for essentially retaining Clinton’s economic team.  Is there any doubt a President Hilary Clinton would have done the exactly same?  In fact, I have always thought that bringing in those people was in part a political nod to the woman whose campaign so valiantly and almost successively shattered the glass ceiling as well as his buying into an economic miracle story, that turned out to be somewhat of an overblown myth.  Miracles have a way of doing that.

Clinton’s healthcare campaign proposals were much more robust than Obama’s, something that cost him some support throughout.  Regardless, both promised healthcare reform as an early priority and certainly Obama delivered, even if with substantially less than was wanted by his supporters or needed by the country.  Hilary Clinton ran on experience, and when it comes to the White House days her singular experience, managing the proposed healthcare bill, was an utter failure.  She was seen as heavy handed and secretive, pushing against the legislative process to the extent that no bill could be passed, probably partly out of jurisdictional pique.  The irony is that she was elected a Senator before Bill Clinton left office and, despite a skeptical reception by colleagues, turned out to be a highly effective and respected member, dare I say, one of the boys.  With that experience she might have had considerable success with healthcare this time around.  But it is also true that Obama’s decision to stand back, some would argue too far back, during the healthcare process may have reflected his style but undoubtedly was heavily influenced by the Clinton experience.  At the end, he succeeded where no other president had, and the difference between what might have been under her stewardship is probably more marginal than many of us would hope or assume.

We have ended the Iraq War.  Yes I know we have a big embassy there and continue to employ mercenaries who look and act like soldiers — quacks like a duck.  A second President Clinton would likely also have ended the war, which had long lost the support of the American people.  Obama escalated in Afghanistan.  She would have done the same and is reported to have wanted more than he was willing to commit.  Obama essentially turned the War on Terrorism into a hunt for terrorists, and with substantial success.  With the same capabilities of Special Forces and drones at her disposal, a President Clinton might have done the same and as Secretary of State (a very effective one) she certainly has been actively engaged in developing that policy.

The old argument of whether leaders or the times count most always plays into assessments like these.  I happen to believe that who is in charge makes a big difference, but the truth is that the stage on which she or he performs plays a critical sometimes-determinative role.  No one will question that both Obama and Clinton would have been handed the same terrible hand with cards heavily stacked against success.  The public was frustrated when they ran against each other and has shown itself, if anything, more so since.  These are two very different people who share similar political visions, though again I do think Obama leans intellectually and otherwise more to the left.  Having gotten three quarters of the way through a first term, both would be facing a challenging re-election bid.  In politics, especially with a nation bitterly divided, it’s hard to predict with certainty whether Democrats will prevail in ‘12, though I think he will.  Whatever happens, it’s likely the next five years will continue to be tough sledding for whoever is President and for us.  One can always hope things will turn out for the best not the worst.  For sure, there will be much to write about and hopefully with more regularity.

Happy New Year!

Class warfare...but who started it?

When President Obama proposed raising taxes on big earners, Republicans quickly called it class warfare.  The only problem is that their name-calling was pointed in the wrong direction.  Don’t’ get me wrong; I’m not suggesting that they should have been pointing at themselves.  Truth is that, their vastly different approaches to governance notwithstanding, Republicans and Democrats alike are merely tools and themselves victims of profound class warfare.  It is one that, even after the big bust of 2008, continues to be shamelessly and systematically waged by a group of individuals and corporations whose greed and bounty has reached unprecedented heights. 

It is a war in which a tiny minority of Americans have used their wealth and leveraged the complacency of others to tilt public policy in their favor.  Whether wealth is itself corrupting or not, unfettered wealth has been employed to corrupt the system, rendering much of our government effectively dysfunctional.  Money determines who will occupy public office from county sheriff to the Supreme Court.  It should not escape our attention that the controversial Citizens United decision, agree with it or not, reflected a harsh truth.  Corporations are not really organizations but the personal fiefdoms of their absurdly overcompensated and empowered upper managements — individuals — supported by far from independent boards.  This is not meant as a generalized anti-business assertion, but to deplore what so many of our businesses have become — what we have let them become.  It is a system uncontrolled and corrupted.

Let’s just consider the wage gap between those very few at the top and their company’s employees.  In 2009 average CEO compensation was $8.47 million, the average worker just over $32,000.  For Viacom’s 2010 fiscal year Chief Executive Philippe Dauman was awarded salary, stock and other benefits totaling $84.5 million.  Sure these are leaders with great responsibility, but do they work that much harder and smarter than everyone else?  While there are good reasons to respect and admire him, Warren Buffett made about $62 million last year.  Was his work worth more than say the President, whose decisions impact on all of our lives, and who received a comparatively paltry $350 thousand (plus a $50K expense allowance)?  Let’s not even talk about the failed chief of Hewlett Packard Leo Apothekerther who walked off with about $25 million for less than a year on the job.  What was it that Willy Sutton said?

As documented in a just released CBO study, the top 1% of the population have increased their wealth by 275% in the last thirty years.  These same people have also seen their portion of after-tax income rise while most Americans have suffered a decline.  That will come as no surprise to the average family.  I’d venture, that in many of those companies where CEO compensation has escalated and cash on hand ballooned, overall payroll is down.  Jobs have disappeared.  Those who glibly talk of class war piously decry income redistribution.  Hello, what do you call the statistics I just cited?  Redistribution can go both ways and guess whose coming out ahead.  In the class warfare that has engaged us for three decades the very rich can comfortably claim victory and they won’t be blowing smoke.

The problem is that our political leaders, regardless of party, don’t really get it — or if they do, can’t afford to say so.  The opposite is true for those at the barricades of Occupy Wall Street and similar protests across the globe including the tent cities that were erected in Israel (the subject of an earlier post).  University of Chicago political scientist Bernard E. Harcourt, writing in an October 13 NY Times Stone essay characterizes what’s happening in Zuccotti Park as Political Disobedience.  He calls it a paradigm shift and, while still early, I think it runs far deeper than what we’ve experienced before.  It’s about time.  Further, I’d suggest that what we’re witnessing here is not the instigation of class warfare, but a reaction to it. 

Paul Krugman and others have suggested that Occupy Wall Street is finally pointing in the right direction both figuratively and actually.  Others say the protest is vague with no cohesive list of grievances or demands.  Harcourt addressed that issue in his excellent Times piece, so I won’t try to repeat it here.  Rather let me try to put these protests and expressions of outrage in context.  In various postings I have suggested (as have others) that the problems we face today are systemic.  That makes them, as the President constantly reminds us, very hard to address, much less solve — certainly with any dispatch.  But more important, if they are systemic than it’s difficult, and perhaps unproductive, to apply conventional norms — including making specific demands — to the protest.  Doing so would imply that addressing this or that detail would suffice, make things all better.  The problem is that the system to which such conventions apply is itself so deeply flawed.

In that regard, even the idea of class warfare seems inadequate to describe what we — and that includes the vast majority of us — are experiencing today.  We usually think of class as a closely defined and homogeneous group, say the rich, the middleclass, the poor, the educated, blue collar, white collar etc.   In fact virtually all of those, people with very different backgrounds and even aspirations, find themselves in the same boat.  So the OWS protesters most recent expression 99% may express it best.  It should serve as a wakeup call, as if we really needed one.

We Americans pride ourselves on building a great democracy and creating an economic engine that has powered our own success and that of many others around the world.  We have set forth the notion that both dreams and fulfillment are within the reach of every citizen.  For sure that doesn’t work for everyone, but it has for more individuals and families than has been the case in most societies.  Sadly the past doesn’t insure the future.  Current trends are, to say the least. discouraging.  They are discouraging, but we need not fall victim to them.  Occupy Wall Street, if only as a material expression of outrage transformed into activism should give us some hope.  The question is if the rest of us are ready to face where we are, not the dream of it, and do something to get us back on track.  Remember those inalienable rights?  They need to be exercised. 

I was so wrong.

Early last week, Carol Bartz sent a four-word email blast to all Yahoo employees: I’ve just been fired.  It caused quite a stir in the corporate world where both executives and companies are wont to spin firings with face saving euphemisms.  The now former CEO told it like it was — the bold and simple truth.  Only time will tell if she will follow-up with a more extended explanation of her tenure, including what she may have done wrong.  By all accounts, Dick Cheney’s new book In My Time doesn’t include admissions to any wrong thinking or wrongdoing during his time in Washington.  Telling the unvarnished truth, as Bartz did, and admitting being wrong, as Cheney didn’t, is rare in our world.  That’s sad.  We desperately need the truth, but perhaps even more so, we need to admit to what Kathryn Schulz so thoroughly explored in her excellent 2010 book Being Wrong.  We can learn and teach so much from being wrong, and we should.

The narrative and images of September 11, 2001 are forever embedded in our minds.  They require no repeating.  For those of us who lived Manhattan at the time, the memory is particularly vivid: where we were, what we saw and what impact it had on us, personally and as a community.  To get a sense of the unique experience endured by those who lived in real proximity, read Neil Tyson’s harrowing email written from the refuge of his parents’ Westchester home the day after.  And then of course there was the endless written and spoken analysis.  The opinion consensus: everything had changed for America — we would never be the same.

I dismissed what had come to be that conventional wisdom.  In blogs I even rebelled against the term 9/11 and refused to call the place Ground Zero.  To me both smacked of the tabloid-speak that has so overtaken, cheapened and impoverished our language.  Mine wasn’t a matter of denial or a sense that what happened wasn’t profoundly important.  No American, especially living in New York, could dismiss the stark reality of those days.  It was rather that I felt we were getting ahead of ourselves in predicting things would never be the same.   To me it constituted of-the-moment analysis driven by sensational 24/7 coverage.  We were prematurely making a historical judgment before we had the necessary time and perspective.  This is not to suggest that I felt we would be untouched.  That would be impossible.  The Civil War, Great Depression, and three major 20^th Century conflicts (hot and cold) all left indelible marks.  Nonetheless, we had always picked ourselves up, not merely recovering but gaining even greater strength — better than before.  American ingenuity and exceptionalism I thought would win out as it always had.  I was so wrong.

We are not what we were.  To be sure we certainly can’t attribute all of our now diminished state to the 9/11 attack.  The seeds of change were sown much earlier and more broadly than a single event, no matter how wrenching, and it will likely take historians many years to unpack and sort through them.  Some of the decline can probably be attributed to the natural ebb and flow of history.  Empires and the like have always had a finite shelf life — ask the Romans or the Brits.  In our case, losing the edge can in part be attributed to a systemic rebalancing of a once dominant economy upended to a degree we never fully anticipated by post-industrialization, lightening speed technological advancement and truly competitive globalization.

But Bin Laden was a player here.  Despite one major miss, the targets his suicidal agents hit — icons of our economic and military might — were astute and in their way serve as tokens for the never-be-the-same prediction.  Ten years out our undisputed financial preeminence is severely challenged and, all our high tech weaponry notwithstanding, we are increasingly seeing the limits or our military power.  But the ironic, and ultimately saddest, thing is not what Al Qaeda did to us that September day, but we have done to ourselves since. 

There is an odd kind of euphoria that accompanies collective trauma, an emotional high that draws us together.  We certainly experienced it in the first days after, when even a president and a mayor not known for eloquence were somehow able to unify and inspire us.  That this togetherness dissipated virtually overnight should have been a tip off.  I may not have been in denial about what happened in my city ten Septembers ago, but I was blind to what would happen and with what consequences.  So this writing in September 2011 isn’t a matter of I told you so, but rather a reminder that I didn’t.  I was so wrong.

Would things have turned out differently had Al Gore rather than George W. Bush been in the White House?  I’d like to think so, but am by no means sure.  I doubt we would have gone to war with Iraq, but would we have done any less in Afghanistan?  Perhaps it would have not been so named, but a war on terrorism would likely have been declared.  It’s hard enough to parse what actually happened in the past — memory is selective — but speculating on what might have been is a waste of energy.  In fact, it can be distracting when we have to deal with reality, the product of what did occur.

Of course the leadership we had in place played an enormous role in how we reacted to 9/11.  It always does.  But in a democracy, as I have written often in these posts, we the people share fully in that responsibility.  Let’s remember that post Afghanistan and Iraq George Bush was reelected with 50.74% of the popular vote.  Moreover, no meaningful, much less sustained, protests on either the Civil Rights or Viet Nam scale have been mounted on our streets or in Washington.  That is striking given the unpopularity of our wars, but not that surprising since so few of us, as I and others have said before, have skin in that game.  And there may be another reason for our lack of activism, this one directly related to 9/11.  The first attack on mainland American soil, one that mostly took the lives of our fellow civilians, has cast a shadow on protests against military action that, despite Iraq, continue to be seen in the context of retaliation.  Protesting Viet Nam, a war rationalized by some theoretical and distant domino theory and a questionable Communist menace, is different than protesting one that avenges our personal hurt, even if opportunistically exaggerated.

Speaking of military conflicts, another thing that may never be the same after 9/11 is nature of war itself, previously fought between nations.  Again that change, in which the opponent is a rogue band of terrorists, had been in the works years earlier.  Much has been made of the warning signs missed by the Bush Administration, but in truth few of us recognized a sea change that had already taken place.  Bin Laden exposed what was potentially our, and with it most nation states’, Achilles Heel.  We, like major powers throughout history, have (mostly) been good at fighting big.  We were relatively unprepared and inexperienced at fighting small.  Shock and Awe was our way and its ineffectiveness was not only missed by political and military leaders but by a public that had happily bought into the notion of antiseptic quick wars.  Bomb the hell out of them and it’s over.  Right.

Some analysts have pointed to the Arab Spring as a repudiation of Bin Laden’s way.  That may be true relative to exploiting religious extremism and employing terrorist tactics to intentionally kill civilians, particularly non/wrong-believers.  But what Al Qaeda also demonstrated was that relatively few people could cause real and effectual havoc even in an authoritarian country.  I would suggest that what we’re seeing now, Libya excepted, is a non-violent manifestation of insurgent people power, another new normal if you will.  For sure Gandhi deserves some credit here, but Bin Laden’s contemporary example turned on its head may be more, even if ironically, to the point.  That it’s taken this particular less violent turn is heartening, but let’s remember we’re still in the early stages of a still moving target.

Other than in a metaphoric sense, it’s hard to attribute our never will be the same economy to the destroyed Trade Center.  Whatever disruptions that event caused were fleeting — a precipitous market drop with a quick recovery.  At the same time, Bin Laden certainly had a beef with the economic hegemony of what he considered the godless West.  But our economic woes have much deeper roots and are largely of our own, not his, making.  What is true is that the decade following 9/11 certainly has exposed them, perhaps like never before.  We may still mouth that this is land of opportunity, but can no longer be certain.  Things may truly never be the same.

Being diminished or experiencing decline, whatever you want to call it, is hard to take.  It brings with it an environment often described as one of uncertainty.  In fact it’s any thing but uncertain.  The wars our troops are fighting abroad may be remote, but our economic downturn is not.  The unemployed live or lived next door and they often include our near and dear.  That's certain and it makes us frantic.  That certainty about our dire condition may best explain the poisonous political atmosphere that abounds, and the increasingly vitriolic blame game.  It also accounts for monumental swings in voting that may have more to do with unrealistic wishful thinking than anything else.  Both parties seek to exploit this situation.  Republicans ask for power, holding out the promise that they have the magic bullet solution to all our problems.  I think many, if not most, of them honestly believe that to be the case.  And Democrats are no different.  Just replace Bush and presto, Obama will fix it all.  Such promises, made or imagined, are not only unrealistic they lead to huge, often unwarranted, disappointment.  Perhaps before, using 9/11 here as a token, there were fixes that could make a relatively immediate difference.  A drop or rise in interest rates could do wonders.  But today everyone is stretched and even the experts are flying somewhat blind.  I think Obama’s jobs plan (forget if you feel its big enough or perfectly focused) generally makes sense.  Conversely, the detail-poor Boehner Jobs approach seems much of the same old Republican formula that helped get us into this mess.  But who can say so for sure?  That the old rules seem obsolete and that things are not what they used to be and may never will be again is all I’m willing to say with some certainty.  

I was so wrong about the future back in 2001.  With that lesson in mind, I could be wrong again in 2011.  At least that gives me some modicum of hope.