Two words.

Andrew Carnegie was a man of steel.  Steel creates jobs.   Henry Ford was a man of cars.  Cars create jobs.  Thomas J. Watson was a man of computers.  Computers create jobs.  Robert Woodruff was a man of beverages.  Beverages create jobs.  Sam Walton was a man of stores.  Stores create jobs.  Bill Gates is a man of software.  Software creates jobs.  Entrepreneurs like them are among the most significant engines of our economy, always have been.  Their creations make things, bring them to market or provide a unique, often society changing, service. US Steel, Ford Motor, IBM, Coca-Cola, Wal-Mart and Microsoft helped transform the country, taking it to a new level and directly or indirectly putting untold millions of men and women to work.

Mitt Romney is a man of financial engineering.  Financial engineering can be clever, perhaps at times even brilliant, but it invents nothing new.  Creating companies that turn innovation of one kind or another into something tangible and concrete is just not what private equity firms do.  They themselves are usually relatively small employers and except tangentially they don’t create other jobs.  Private equity firms may fix broken companies or facilitate their owners cashing out, but they have but a single goal: making money for themselves and their investors.  Sometimes, but not always, that means cutting payroll.  The role of private equity firms, who essentially reshape often troubled existing comanies as contributors to the economy can be debated.  It is probably less significant than the one played by venture capitalists who put private seed money into new and innovative enterprises.  One might argue that Apple, Google and Facebook would not exist without their early financial support.  But no VC would ever claim their role was more than being a smart investor looking for a big payday.  In doing so, and largely out of self interest, they might also offer a modicum of sometimes valuable business advice, but that’s about it.   Steve Jobs, Larry Page and Mark Zuckerberg made their individual companies rock; it is they who can be credited with creating all those jobs.

So it’s kind of silly for Mitt Romney to claim creating jobs and equally silly for others to put him down for not creating them.  Job creator was not in Romney’s own job description, so to judge him as a past or potential job creator doesn’t wash.  If it makes you happy, it’s true that he invited the challenge by making the claim, but going there is beside the point.  That said, since jobs are a key issue in the current campaign, we should put the role of our presidents as job creators in perspective.

In truth, much as private equity executives have no substantive role in creating jobs, presidents have, at best, a very limited one.  For one thing, any program they might devise to stimulate the economy can only be implemented if Congress agrees and, most importantly, acts.  One of the truly weak spots in this downturn is in public sector jobs.  While there has been substantial (albeit, not enough) private sector job growth, government jobs are contracting along with budgets.  For a variety of reasons, they are unlikely to return to their former levels.  Even were that not the case, presidents can’t do much to impact when, where and if jobs might return.  Without funding, presidents can’t expand the federal workforce (Capital Hill controls the purse), much less impact on employment at the state and local level where they have virtually nothing to say.

If we are totally honest with ourselves, and the candidates return the favor, its unlikely that either Barack Obama or Mitt Romney will have much chance of turning this economy around except perhaps at the margin.  The president may promise more stimulus and the former governor may feel that extending, and perhaps enlarging, tax cuts for business and the wealthy class will do the trick.  Even if these philosophically driven changes took place neither is a magic bullet.   I am for the former and against the latter, but stay with me here.  Our economic problems, and that includes the absence of jobs, have little to do with tax incentives or even with short-term stimulus that, by definition, is limited in both scope and duration.  What we’re witnessing now is not that any individual employer or group of employers fear making investments.  Advances in technology have reduced the need for as many employees as before.  Have you ever checked yourself out at Home Depot or a supermarket, made a purchase, renewed your car registration or banked on line?  Some worker is no longer needed to assist you with that transaction.  She or he has lost a job, one that isn’t coming back.  In fact, different technologies will wipe out other jobs as well.  Count on it and know that there is absolutely nothing presidents, Democrat or Republican, can do to alter that reality.

Our economic problems are systemic and in the global economy when Europe or Asia sneezes we are likely to be laid low with a cold.  If presidents have limited control in their own domain, they have far less in other jurisdictions.   The Euro is in deep trouble — defectively created and, as such, hard to fix.  We have little or no role in that, but be assured that last Friday’s job numbers reflect global troubles as well as our own.   Can Mitt Romney and his trickle down (speak of self-interest) approach do damage to our economy?  I think so, absolutely.  Perhaps by Election Day a majority of voters will agree with me.  But, as I’m suggesting, presidents are limited when it comes to the economy.  It’s the economy, stupid was a great tag line but it implied a promise upon which no president could deliver, including Bill Clinton.

To me this election, and my choice, comes down to just two words: Supreme Court.  I have always felt that way, a view reinforced on June 28, the day of the Affordable Care Act 5-4 decision.  Who sits on the Supreme Court, a lifetime appointment — now that is within a president’s power.  Talk about Iraq and Afghanistan and how George Bush screwed both up all you want, but that president’s most lasting legacy, can also be summed up in two words: Roberts and Alito.  As South Carolina’s Lindsey Graham so rightly said in the face of the now Justice Sotomayor’s nomination, elections do count.  And it did matter a lot that Al Gore (and the country) was deprived of his victory.  The current court’s conservative tilt and balance is the work of three presidents — Ronald Reagan (Scalia and Kennedy), George H.W. Bush (Thomas) and George W. Bush (Roberts and Alito).   As the youngest of the conservative set, W’s appointees are likely to last the longest including a Chief who probably will be in place for decades to come.

So if you’re voting the economy in the fall, I understand, but think your head is in the wrong place.   If your thinking just two words, Supreme Court, that vote and the reason you’ll cast it may really count.  If you want to help the country long term, tell your friends: two words.  If they can’t get to the polls on their own, give them a ride, let them lean on your helping arm.  More than anything else, our future may depend on how our vote defines those two words. 

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.

Religion and politics: version 2012

Exactly how religion will ultimately play out in this 2012 presidential election cycle remains to be seen.   Last time around we had the candidates in both parties clamoring to establish their religious bone fides.  Pastor Rick Warren forced command nominee performances at his California megachurch where each man had to attest that he held Christ close to his heart.  Warren subsequently offered a prayer at the Inauguration, but little has been seen of him in this political year.  To my knowledge, there have been no Billy Grahamesque chitchats in the Oval Office.

With the President running for reelection, Republicans have had the primary season all to themselves.  While religion certainly didn’t disappear — most notably in the days when Rick Santorum had his moment — it didn’t really hold center stage.   That place was taken up as hopefuls focused their energy on pandering to the Teas, the force to be reckoned with post 2010.  Republicans may be attacking Democrats as usual, but they often seem even more at war with themselves.  That was evident in the primary states much as it has been in Washington where radical insurgents seek to gain control from the establishment.  Who knows how that will play in years to come, much of it likely dependent on November’s results.

There may be another more subtle reason why religion has receded somewhat: the emergence of a Mormon as the presumptive presidential nominee, a first.  The potential for getting into a Christian-Mormon conversation during the primaries was something to be avoided at all cost.  No candidate wanted to go there, certainly not the former governor.  You can speculate that the anybody but Romney effort reflected a possible anti-Mormon undertone, but I’d venture the candidate’s lack of color and more so his questionable conservative (as defined these days) credentials probably weighed more heavily.

Religion may have moved back a bit on the presidential campaign trail, but it certainly hasn’t disappeared from the larger political stage.   In fact, as reported by Reuters, we are witnessing a dramatic increase in partisanship from pulpits.  The article points to California Pastor Jim Garlow who defiantly tells his flock for whom to vote from his pulpit, consciously daring the IRS to intercede.  Law prohibits churches from promoting partisan causes and doing so could mean losing their tax exemption.  Garlow is not alone in thumbing his nose at political activity rules.  Far more important are the actions of America’s powerful Catholic bishops led my New York’s Cardinal Timothy Dolan.  The bishops have launched a full throat assault against President Obama (by name) and his administration in this election year.

Let’s put the tax issue in perspective.   Tax exemption status afforded religious institutions costs billions of dollars in annual federal tax revenue and even more, Reuters reports, in real estate taxes lost by now cash strapped municipalities across the country.  So the numbers and the stakes are high.  Of course, most religious institutions and leaders don’t cross the partisan line.  That makes the bishops’ blatantly partisan rhetoric especially noteworthy.  It should raise a red flag as a potential violation not only of the tax exemption rules but also of church/state separation.   So far the IRS is not taking the bait and that’s not altogether surprising.  It’s not that they might want to step in — remember big dollars are involved — but that in some real sense they are functionally being blackmailed into inaction.

Let me explain.  The argument being put forward by the bishops is that President Obama and his administration are hostile toward the Church and toward religion in general.  They object to the Affordable Care Act’s requirement that insurance cover women’s health, specifically contraception.  While this coverage requirement is totally waved for specifically religious institutions (churches, synagogues), it is not waved for hospitals and universities that, church-sponsored notwithstanding, serve the general public and purposes, employing, for example, non-Catholics.  Many of these institutions also are recipients of public funding of one sort or another.  The bishops argue their case within a framework of religious freedom painting the President as its enemy. 

The most extreme statement of their position came from Illinois Bishop Daniel Jenky who disdained President Obama with his radical, pro-abortion and extreme secularist agenda.  Astoundingly, in doing so he likened  the President to notable villains and past church enemies including Stalin and Hitler.  Secularist agenda is a popular accusation made by the partisan right (think Santorum), assumably part of an ungodly conspiracy.  What worse charge can you levy against a leader in this most religious country?  Despite the provocations, the IRS finds itself in an impossible no-win situation.  If the agency pursues what seem to be clear violations of tax-exempt status it may well be seen, or painted, as partisan.  More to the point, acting against these tax exemption violations would only confirm that the Administration has gone to war with religion.  That looks like blackmail to me.

You and I do not benefit from tax-exempt status.  Whatever contribution we may make to political campaigns, unlike what we give to our church or synagogue, is specifically not tax-deductible, and for good reason.  If it were, our fellow citizens would in effect be financially underwriting our partisan political activity.  Having personal experience in leading a religious institution and remaining a strong proponent of a free pulpit, I understand the complexities of this issue.   Priests, ministers, rabbis and imams want to voice what they feel is right and consistent with their beliefs and must be able to do so.  Constraining their speech would fly in the face of our constitutional right of free religious expression.  At the same time, I don’t think that such free expression includes an absolute right to tax-exemption. 

I’m not suggesting that we do away with that exemption — many religious institutions depend on it for their survival — but that the strings attached are appropriate, and that they should be enforced. I could not disagree more with the bishops’ position on contraception or having its cost covered by insurance.  Family planning is an important women’s health issue, but also for society.  Nevertheless, I think they have every right to express their view and to be governed by their own teachings so long as it doesn’t morph into partisan talk.  That is, when it turns political in the specific, when they tell voters how and for whom to cast their ballots in, for example, a presidential election, there should be a cost.  Simply put, as a citizen I can put up with helping to underwrite their faith-related works but don’t want to underwrite their partisan politics any more than they want to bankroll mine.

Money, the subject of an earlier post, is coming at this and all our elections from many places, not all of them obvious.  It isn’t only individual contributors to PACs that are flying below the radar, so too is the abusive use of tax-free dollars under the guise of religious freedom.  The first costs are more obvious and substantial of course, but the second should neither be underestimated nor discounted.  Both, while perhaps for different reasons, are ultimately costs to our democracy.

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. 

 

The money that is really killing us.

We may remain in the economic doldrums with federal, state and local governments cutting vital programs, but money is flowing into political races like never before.   2012 is well on the road to being a record-spending year.  There is something grotesque about that — about this disconnect between service cutbacks and expanded political spending.  Money has consumed our politics.  The unending and relentless fund raising has crippled our government, even more so than has divisiveness.   Today, we are just as likely to encounter a lead story about fund raising as about the many issues that confront us as a nation or as a community.  It’s become just another game.  Score is being kept.  The ability to raise mega-bucks and to outspend opponents has become a key barometer of success.   The emails and letters we get from elected officials or from our political parties are more likely to be about contributions than about issues and they fill our mailboxes day in and out.  The old contention that money makes the world go round seems like a gross and laughable understatement.  No wonder that political office is increasingly the domain of the rich and super rich, the only of our citizens who can afford to play or stay in the game.

In November 2001, barely two months after the destruction of the Twin Towers, we New Yorkers went to the polls.  While still shell shocked, some of us felt a degree of relief in knowing that the often-polarizing man billed America’s Mayor by others would soon be history.  Fueled by a super ego and believing his own hyped press, Giuliani couldn’t quite accept that his time was over.  In fact, he went so far as to promote the notion of an extra-legal three-month term-extension so that he could personally get the city back on track.  It was more than presumptuous, but the man was, and remains, imbued by an exaggerated sense of self-importance.  We can all delude ourselves into thiking his humiliating run for the Presidency in 2008 served as a wakeup call.  Right!

The Billionaire media and information mogul Michael Bloomberg was elected that November.  Many people in New York and around the country think he’s been an excellent mayor.  Given two chances (I had moved by 2009), I could never bring myself to vote for him.  That had nothing to do with his lack of qualifications — he is an unquestionably able man.  My problem with Bloomberg was his self-financed campaign, pouring an unprecedented $73 Million into what seemed to me a bid to purchase the office.   That spending climbed to $85 Million four years later and a whopping $102 Million in 2009 for his third term bid, the one in which he engineered a suspension of term limits — ego is contagious.  It was said to be the most costly per vote expenditure of any election in American history.

Bloomberg is the first and still only billionaire public office holder.  Mitt Romney is among the super rich and officeholders like Congressman Darrell Issa (vehicle ant-theft devices) and retiring Senator Herb Kohl (department stores) are multi-millionaires many times over.  None, however, come even close to Bloomberg’s reputed $22 Billion net worth (number 12 on the Forbes 400).  While other billionaires are not seeking public office, they are increasingly injecting themselves into the electoral process.  The liberal George Soros has been doing so for many years much as in an earlier time did the ulta-conservative H. L. Hunt family of Texas.  These days, we have the Koch brothers who have a long history of supporting right wing causes and of course the infamous Sheldon Adelson, a self made billionaire whose casino and convention center holdings have also brought him to the top rung of the Forbes list.  Adelson (long a huge backer of Israel’s rightist PM Bibi Netanyahu) single handedly financed Newt Gingrich’s unsuccessful presidential bid.  He is among those who are setting a new standard for campaign spending in this election year.  Adelson and the Kochs are major funders of PACs but they are hardly alone.  The Huffington Post recently published a gallery of the largest donors, which makes for an interesting and disturbing read.   The list includes some labor organizations of course, but super rich individuals far outmatch them.

Much has been written about this year’s extraordinary campaign spending, most recently an excellent column by Frank Bruni.  Much of this accelerated spending can be attributed to the Supreme Court’s striking down much of McCain-Feingold and to its astounding Citizens United decision according corporations the same First Amendment rights as individuals.  Mitt Romney now famously put his own spin on it in declaring, corporations are people.  The issue of equating companies and individuals is an important one, but what interests me here, and why this post begins with Michael Bloomberg, is the unfettered and unchecked ability of billionaires to effectually purchase public office if not for themselves then for those who will represent their interests, translation: do their bidding.  Individual campaign contributors have always had special access to politicians (think Bill Clinton’s Lincoln bedroom guests), but that access has reached new proportions.  Remember, we are not talking about a corporation governed by managers and a board of directors, businesses with employees and often public shareholders, but of individuals responsible solely to themselves.  From that perspective, the Citizens decision is in some ways just as, or more, disturbing with regard to individuals — super rich individuals — as it is with corporations.

That one man can effectively purchase public office — though I’m sure Bloomberg doesn’t see it that way — presents a challenge to our very idea of we the people.  It is just another case, and profound one, of the gulf between idealized and real democracy.  Powerful interests have always played a significant role in both elections and governance.  But the kind of wealth that exists today, or more accurately the number of individuals who occupy that I can buy anything tier of the 1%, is probably rivaled only by the robber baron era.  All this big money spending has fueled the frightening and escalating high cost of campaigns.  

Barack Obama lifted the money bar to new heights in 2008 when he decided to forgo public financing.  The fact that so many of his contributions came in small denominations from a broad spectrum of supporters was heartening, but the total amount raised constituted an unmistakable red flag.  It may not be an exaggeration to call it a political Frankenstein.  That campaign turned out to be the most costly in US history — The Center for Responsive Politics pegs it at $2.4 Billion all in.  Obama’s decision was considered defensive and perhaps it was.  But when history is written, he and his heirs — all of us — are likely to regret it.  I doubt exploding campaign costs will stand as one of the President’s proudest and most positive legacies.  Just weeks ago an extraordinary amount of money went into little Wisconsin’s recall vote, the kind of spending that would have been unthinkable there just a year ago.  That experience alone should remind us how difficult, if not impossible, it is for ordinary people to run for any office these days and at virtually any level.

Among the members of the Supreme Court who are expected to announce some more significant decisions this week are a number of so-called originalists.  They, at least in theory, hold sacrosanct the Constitution, as written.  The Constitution is a great work, as much for its literal components as for the very fact that such a governing document exists.  Amazingly it remains largely relevant and precious.  At the same time, the Framers were just human beings — men to be precise.  They were acting and writing in the context of their time albeit heroically seeking to fashion a document that could endure.  And it largely has.  But they also, being products of their time, made some judgments that made sense then, but in retrospect were probably mistaken, even if well meant.   Among those was life-tenure for the Supreme Court and also the setting of two-year terms for the House.  The first is something to be left to another post; the second is relevant to this discussion of money.

The idea behind the short tenure for House members was to keep the legislators in touch with, and always accountable to, those whom they represented.  It is a noble idea, but one that has contributed heavily to our current legislative stalemate.  From the very early days Representatives, with painfully short terms, were forced to remain in constant campaign mode.  Rather than making them super responsive to constituent needs, it essentially forced them to be seeking support for the next vote almost from the moment they were sworn in for the current term.  That was distraction enough.   Now they have to add to that handshaking burden raising the huge amounts of money it takes to win that next election.  The cash required in large media markets can be and is astronomic.   The combination of non-stop pressing the flesh and filling the coffers is deadening.  Beyond all else, it has become a disincentive to do anything but tow the safe party line whatever that may be at a given time.  It most assuredly doesn’t lead to a profile in courage, something that has virtually disappeared from our political scene.

It could be argued that leaving governance to the rich, those who don’t have to grovel for contributions could reinvigorate political independence.  Michael Bloomberg is beholden to no one and has been able to do some things that others might not have chanced.  His effort to reduce smoking and now the consumption of high sugar beverages are clear examples.  But all that money has a cost.  His kind of independence in a democracy is a mixed blessing.  It affords power that can be abused and it promotes, like it or not, a ruling class mentality that is destined to diminish not enhance the nation.  The disparity that we have these days between those who have much more than they will ever need and those who need much more than they will ever have is growing.  The social implications of this imbalance are hard to ignore.  The money game of politics may be the chicken and it may be the egg.  It doesn’t really matter.  Another record spending election is very bad news for all of us.  That runs across whatever economic barriers may exist and across whatever ideology we may embrace.

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.

Smokescreen

One can’t help but wonder if they were using some form of birth control when the still married Newt was carrying on a multi-year affair with Callista.  Of course what people do in their own bedroom isn’t any of my or any one else’s business.  To me that privacy is truly sacred.  So I wouldn’t be raising this question were not for the former Speaker’s hypocritically and opportunistically accusing the President of an outrageous assault against religion.  This is the same Mr. Gingrich who was beating the drums for Bill Clinton’s impeachment while he was having that affair.  Now the former Speaker isn’t the only one distorting the Administration’s position on extending equal healthcare benefits to all those who qualify, or put another way, not discriminating against them just because they happen to work for an institution which has Church sponsorship.   The modifications announced by the President will, despite short-term noise from the right, likely put the issue to political rest.

To some degree Gingrich and the other Republican candidates’ hyperbole is just a sideshow, another manifestation of the wild rhetorical excess that has characterized their primary contest.  The real central player has been, and continues to be, the Catholic Church.  Its bishops, according to the New York Times, had been gearing up for months.   And this isn’t the first time Church hierarchy has entered the fray in the midst of a Presidential election campaign.  No less than the future pope, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, ordered that John Kerry, a supporter of reproductive health choice, be denied Holy Communion in the midst of his 2004 contest with George Bush.  Are these two interventions related — coordinated interference with our politics?   I don’t necessarily think so.  True in both instances choice was at issue — the first abortion and the second contraception.  But, unlike as with Senator Kerry, the current uproar would have as easily come in a non-election year.

To be specific, I’d suggest all the talk of religious liberty is nothing more than a smokescreen.  What’s really at stake is something much larger and far more significant than the implementation of the new healthcare legislation.  It speaks to the very health of the Roman Church and perhaps of religion in America altogether.   The key fact to keep in mind here is not that Church doctrine disallows contraception. It is that according to a Guttmacher Institute study 98% of Catholic woman use or have used birth control.   That is an astounding statistic.  Perhaps equally revealing is that while Catholics constitute 24% of the population, they accounted for 28% of abortions in 2008-9.  In contrast, 51% of Americans are Protestants, but account for only 37% of abortions.  These statistics — especially talking comfort from the 98% number —  explain why the Administration may have underestimated the potential pushback against their ruling.  Remember the insurance coverage requirement applies only to religion-sponsored but essentially non-sectarian institutions: service agencies, hospitals and universities.  Each employs and serves non-Catholics, and each benefits from taxpayer financial support in one form or another.  Churches, seminaries and other purely religious institutions are exempt.

The absence of compliance by virtually all Catholic women with such a core teaching speaks to the Church’s diminished hold on its followers.  In fact, each and every one of these women are sinners, assumably subject to discipline.  Remember the Church wanted to deny John Kerry Holy Communion.  By that logic 98% of Catholic women might be similarly punished.  After all, Kerry was merely supporting reproductive choice he wasn’t be necessarily engaging in it.  The same can’t be said for these women.  Since they face no punishment, we have to conclude that the Church, well aware of the statistics, has been averting its eyes from their sin.  It would seem that they opted for a pragmatic decision in that regard.  But the idea that the Church should de facto be sponsoring family planning through insurance simply went too far.

Few concerns have occupied Pope Benedict more than what he characterizes as cafeteria observance.  The idea that individuals should be able to decide which beliefs and customs to incorporate into their lives undermines the authority of the Church and ultimately of its infallible pope.  The Church is not a democracy and its ways are not optional.  But it goes further than that.  Disobedience, a laxity in observance, results in dilution.  It isn’t simply that 98% of Catholic women are employing birth control, but that doing so opens a Pandora’s box leading directly to a religious black hole.  It stands to reason that the Church’s lapsed members don’t come from the ranks of strict observers but from those who take unto themselves how their religion is to be practiced, which rules are to be followed and which are to be ignored.  The same holds true for any religion.

I would submit that, regardless of what they say, it is this treacherous road not religious liberty that evoked the bishops’ reaction.  For the Church, covering family planning is tantamount to officially sanctioning the faithful’s disobedience.  It’s probably not an exaggeration to suggest that their outcry constitutes an emergency measure, applying a tourniquet to stop the bleeding.  We all know that procedures like that can only carry so far.  The source wound must ultimately be addressed.  Interestingly, were it not for the current controversy many of us may not have been aware of this 98% disobedience statistic.  It would be wrong to extrapolate that similar numbers apply to other Church doctrine or practices.  Nonetheless, the statistic exposes a meaningful fissure in the religious wall, one that extends to other faiths who are also losing ground to those opting out of religion.

Let’s consider one more perspective on the current controversy and the window it may open on why people are turning from religion.  Catholic women don’t live in a vacuum.  They are as concerned about their individual rights and the historic domination of men as anyone else.  It can’t be lost on them that the doctrines that prohibit family planning have been promulgated and policed by men — celibate men who eschew marriage.  Obviously none of these men have experienced childbirth and all that implies nor have they had to provide for their family.  58% of women who have abortions already have one or more offspring.  They know what it takes to bring up children, what challenges and sacrifices are involved in doing the best for even a single child.  And beyond this issue that concerns modern women, the Church also holds fast to its sexist position regarding the ordination of female priests.  In the end, family planning and an all-male priesthood are internal matters for Catholics.  There religious freedom does pertain.  But they do illustrate the kind of disconnect that exists elsewhere and that, among other issues, is turning so many away from religion.  The bishops have these broader concerns of dilution and they are right to feel alarmed.  It’s unsurprising that they are on the defense.

Whatever the underlying reason for the Church’s reaction to the health mandate, the issue of religious freedom has been raised and should not be ignored.  In this current debate and in the one about abortion the rights of the religious are bandied about.  It is a conversation always driven by those who follow religion, and specifically a certain kind of religious doctrine.  But what about the rights of the religious who believe differently and who strongly support reproductive choice?  And more to the point, what about those of the non-religious?  That group of so-called nonbelievers is always left out, effectively treated as second-class citizens.  That’s a serious omission because the Establishment Clause equally protects both the religious and non-religious.  The Administration’s ruling with regard to the coverage of contraception covers institutions that purport to serve all citizens.  So the rights of all have consequence.

The Republican candidates charge that the President is waging a war against religion.  Leaving aside how preposterous that is, let me suggest the reverse.  In invoking religion and religious beliefs as they do in a public context, these men are waging war against those who exercise their right not to be religious.  In evoking God in all of our names, they are infringing on those who deny God’s existence.  Is that the case?  I don’t really think so, but arguing war against the non-religious is just as credible as implying that Barack Obama wants to destroy religion.  And speaking of smokescreens, it shouldn’t go unnoticed that this claim is just another example of suggesting that somehow he is the other — not like us.  You can easily read the war against religion talk as code, and you probably wouldn’t be wrong.

I’m happy that all those Catholic women will be given equal access to cost-free reproductive health.  The fact that they follow a different faith than 76% of their fellow citizens should not diminish their equal rights under our common law.  Perhaps, instead of expending so much energy in claiming a loss of their religious rights, the bishops should turn their attention instead to why 98% of self-identified Catholic women can’t accept this doctrine.  Again that’s an internal matter, but I’d surely be thinking about it.

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!

Pure. Well not exactly.

Even Ivory couldn’t be called 100% pure.  The claim its makers did make (99.44%) was constructed, as much promotional hype as reality.  Take your pick, neither 100 nor 99.44%  necessarily means the best or even better cleaning.  And that’s even more so with politics.  As said in my last post, if you want purity, get out of the political kitchen.  Linking purity with politics is an oxymoron.  Clearly that’s something those engaged in the unfolding Republican Presidential primary either don’t know or want us to forget.  From Iowa into New Hampshire and now South Carolina, claims of purity are getting a real workout.  One contender after another is promoting himself (the single herself has left the stage) as the real, or shall I say pure, conservative.  That’s of course in contrast to his impure opponent.  It’s a uniquely Republican debate.

Pure in a political setting suggests being in possession of the truth, the kind of absolute truth claimed by the religious right with which some of these conservative candidates closely identify.  Democrats and especially liberals are more circumspect about possessing the truth.  But there is another reason they don’t engage in this purity rhetoric.  Thanks in large measure to Ronald Reagan, liberals and liberalism has been demonized — the L word.  While there is more than ample reason for Democrats to explore liberalism and to re-identify with it — a subject for the future — for now we should be grateful that the GOP’s great (and seemingly only) hero saved us this public pursuit of purity.

Like anyone who preaches a message of the only truth, these absolutists see their political ideology as 100% pure and thus somehow sacrosanct.  Their truths include that only smaller government, lower taxes, and less social programming will solve all our ills and bring on prosperity.  It’s a pure truth that lends itself to no compromise and no one represents it more clearly and purely than Ron Paul.  It is that purity, and most especially his being so up front and consistent about it, that has made Paul so attractive.  To be sure, many of his most loyal long-term followers and more so his recent converts (which include some very strange bedfellows) don’t spend much time considering the consequences of his pure message.  Considering how change-resistant we Americans really are, it’s unlikely many (if any) of them would welcome how translating the rhetoric into reality would impact on their individual or communal lives. 

In a short New Yorker piece, Enemy of the State, Nicholas Lemann spells out where government-shrinking, the purist kind espoused by Paul and that echoed by Republicans out on the hustings, leads.  If rigorously put into practice …Paul’s vision, he writes, would mean …A minimal state, without welfare provisions for the unemployed.  A quarter of a million federal workers…joining those unemployed.  Foreign policy and national defense reduced to a few ballistic-missile submarines. The civil-rights legislation of the nineteen-sixties repealed, and in a financial crisis …no regulation that might have prevented it, no government stabilization …and no special help for working people hurt by it.

Oh, but that’s in the fine print, and to focus on logical implications is to miss the point.  Talk is cheap.  Paul’s edge comes in large measure because he never has to deliver — as say does a president, governor, or mayor.  No need to put up, so none to shut up.  And in Paul we can see the polar opposite of what we simple mortals face.  Most of our problems don’t lend themselves to pure solutions.  Our everyday real world and how we address it has more in common with President Obama or any one of his predecessors than those purists on the campaign trail.  Sure the Tea Party folk who were elected to Congress will tell you that it’s possible to remain pure, but look at the result, the havoc they have caused.  Having the objective of halting the wheels of government makes great headlines, but its pontificating purists don’t have to get social security checks out, fill pot holes or send someone’s loved ones to war. 

So all this debate about purity rings pretty hollow, a sharp departure from reality.  I’m no fan of Mitt Romney, but the charge that he is a flip-flopper is totally disingenuous.  Not only have all his office holding opponents made pragmatic adjustments in their public lives, most (including Saint Paul) have likely done so at home.  Navigate a marriage or raise a child without the occasional flip-flop and you’ll deserve a place in Guinness.  There is no purity in the life of, by definition, imperfect human beings.  The purity espoused in all those pronouncements and debates suggests a stubbornness that obviates the give and take that make America what it is, that make it possible.  And this isn’t a matter of ideology.  It would apply to pure liberalism as well as pure conservatism, neither of which have a lock on truth — the right and only way.

My purpose here is not to suggest that heartfelt beliefs and core principles are not important.  There should be options that go beyond the pale, places where we take an absolute, even purist, stand.  One would hope that all those who serve, or seek to serve, in public office live by some purist ideal, that they possess core values.  In a fundamental way, we depend on that being so, which accounts for why we are so often disappointed.  It’s that experience and disappointment that suggests each and everyone of those self-proclaimed purists engaged in the who is the pure conservative debate is blowing smoke. It's not that what they're selling isn't pure, just that its pure malarkey.  What is it they say about glass houses?

Change out the Veep time.

Franklin Roosevelt had three Vice Presidents — John Nance Garner, Henry A. Wallace and of course give em hell Harry S. Truman.  Since then only Richard Nixon had two — Spiro Agnew and Gerald Ford — and that was born out of criminality.  Tobacco chewing Garner famously said the office was not worth a bucket of spit, and for years it was hard to argue with his assessment.  Our vice presidents were mostly understudies on deathwatch with the odds of ever taking center stage stacked against them.  Nonetheless, nine such watchers did move up including the forgettable Millard Fillmore, but also Truman and Lyndon Johnson.  Teddy Roosevelt, unquestionably one of our greats, came to office when another president’s heart stopped.

One would think that eight in-office deaths would have put greater pressure on presidents to better prepare their Veeps, to bring them more into what one called the loop.  Truman was famously uninformed, this despite FDR’s having been in such poor health that his succession was considered a foregone conclusion upon nomination at the 1944 convention.  It took the ninth, John F Kennedy’s, and a subsequent 14-month vice presidential vacancy to command the proper attention resulting in the 1967 25^th Amendment.  Its importance came into play almost immediately in the dual Agnew-Nixon disgraces resulting in two vice presidential appointments in succession: Ford and then Nelson Rockefeller.

In the wake of that experience, Jimmy Carter literally transformed the office by making Fritz Mondale the first authentic vice presidential partner.  Neither Reagan nor the G.H.W. Bush went quite that far, but clearly Clinton, the younger Bush and Obama did.  Al Gore, Dick Cheney and Joe Biden have all been major, at times decisive, players in their respective administrations.

Perhaps most of our vice presidents haven’t been more than frustrated understudies or the office more valuable than that bucket of spit, but it seems every time a president faces reelection talk abounds about changing out his number two.  The argument usually goes that the president would be a stronger second term prospect with a different running mate.  Nixon, as Ike’s Veep, was haunted by such talk, as were both Quale and Chaney.  Lyndon Johnson was never a favorite of the Kennedy crowd and talk of his replacement began the day after he was sworn in as number two in January 1961.  So here we go again.

Bill Keller is only the latest pundit to suggest that President Obama consider rearranging his administration by switching Joe Biden and Hilary Clinton’s seats around the table.  That particular idea was floated back in '08 when some saw the then Senators as better candidates for the offices they didn’t get than for the ones that they took.  Biden, the Senate Foreign Relations Chairman, seemed a natural for State; with a near nomination win, many Clinton supporters felt she was entitled to be vice president.  An Obama-Clinton pairing was seen to be a dream ticket, but unquestionably one that presented all kinds of issues, not the least a Bill problem.

Three years in, it’s more than fair to say both Biden and Clinton have substantially out performed expectations.  Biden has been among the most active and effective of vice presidents.  Beyond all else, he has served as an important counterbalance to the hawkish generals whom Obama, like all Democratic presidents must, has had to pay due deference.  Clinton has been a remarkably adroit and effective diplomat walking the walk (or flying it) and gaining respect both at home and abroad.  Few thought he, the unbridled talker, and she, the thwarted candidate, would be an easy or disciplined fit in subordinate roles.  It is a tribute first to them and also to the president that such calculations were unfounded.  It is no less a tribute to this trio that the idea of a switch is so viable, whether or not it is desirable, possible or probable.  Perhaps some people had trouble thinking of Biden or Clinton going into their current roles, but no one questions for a moment either taking on the other’s job today or doing so with distinction. 

So it appears that nothing should stand in the way of making this switch.  For sure Clinton’s many dedicated 2008 supporters would be delighted to get their dream ticket at long last.  In what is likely to be a challenging, some say inevitably close race, it could make the difference between victory and loss.  Neither is this a novel argument nor is history on the side of a switch.  Sitting vice presidents simply don’t get dislodged.  Carter/Mondale, Bush/Quale, Clinton/Gore, Bush/Chaney — the first two pairs lost their reelection bid the second two won.  Regardless, both teams remained in tact.  Talk of replacing vice presidents was often rooted in dissatisfaction.  Quale, for example, was never more than a mystifying choice and Cheney had taken on his Darth Vader persona.  Nothing like that exists today. Quite the contrary, the hopes of Clinton supporters notwithstanding, Joe Biden’s selection was greeted positively when first made and his performance has only enhanced his image.  He is neither seen as a lightweight or as a Star Wars villain.  But perhaps most important, the Vice President seems to like his job and, by all accounts, the President feels the same in having him at his side.  End of story.

Talk of switching out vice presidents has been a favorite parlor game for both political junkies and the opportunistic manufacturers of news who live off it.  It has always been a sideshow and distraction — and likely to remain so.  Nonetheless, there is one aspect this time around that makes it both different and deserving of some serious attention.   In fact, it presents an opportunity for a discussion that shouldn’t be missed.  Secretary Clinton is a woman.  Switch outs may never have happened, but seven twentieth century vice presidents moved on to the presidency and two more were their party’s nominees.  Holding the office is not inconsequential.  Possession has proven to be nine-tenths of the law.  In that, replacing Biden with Clinton might present our best shot of finally getting a Ms. President into the White House.  I think Mondale had that in mind in picking Geraldine A. Ferraro (who died last March) as his 1984 running mate.

It is a sad commentary on our country that a decade into the twenty-first century there are so few women — some might argue virtually none — politically well positioned for the presidency.  We can make all the partisan jokes we want, but that John McCain had to select a Sarah Palin reflects badly on all of us.  The reality is that he had no deep or even viable candidate bench. The Democrats remain equally impoverished in that regard.  Just try and make your pick.  I’ll give you the minute McCain seems to have taken and be assured that aside from Hilary Clinton no name will come instantly and easily to mind.  Let’s remember that an African American’s rise to the presidency in the ordinary elective way was the exception, not the rule.  Fundamental change — in this case bringing a woman in striking distance of the presidency — often, if now always, has to be force-fed in this great country.  To our shame, we badly lag behind other democracies in female leaders.  And before we give them too much credit, that may not have happened either absent the precedent established when women ascended to the throne — that only because there was no male heir.  Elizabeth, and the few but notable queens before her, laid the groundwork for a Thatcher.  Possession is nine-tenths of the law.

I don’t think an Obama-Clinton ticket is in the cards, or that his re-election is anyway dependent on replacing Biden.  At the same time, I can’t help but being somewhat disappointed that we will, for very good and understandable reasons, miss this opportunity.  We can’t really have change in America or fulfill its dream until women have been mainstreamed into both the circles and the pinnacle of leadership.  Considering that the hypothetical dream ticket is more than likely to win in November, the election that’s all about the economy could end up being a tangible and most necessary game changer, dream fulfiller.  That possibility is, at the very least, worth contemplating.

Don’t believe the partisan left-right rhetoric, there is no black and white in political decision-making.  To paraphrase good old Harry: if you’re looking for pure, get out of the political kitchen.  So Obama, even if he wants to make history, will likely stay the course.  Bill Clinton always characterized his big decisions as the right thing to do.  Some (not all) of that could be discounted as hyperbole.  It’s intriguing to think Obama might consider Hilary Clinton as his 2012 running mate.  In the ideal world — wherever that may be — it might turly be the right thing to do.  Right for him — yes.   Right for the country — absolutely.