I am late on the follow-up to this story, already addressed by my colleagues Sullivan and Coates, plus, notably, Todd Gitlin. On the other hand, I was early in identifying the original problem!
The original problem was McCain's flat, obvious, no-two-ways about it, witnessed- by-tens-of-millions-of-people refusal to look at Obama at any point during the debate last week. The problem now is the contrast between that indisputable reality and McCain's flat refusal to admit that this was so, in his interview yesterday with George Stephanopoulos. (Excerpt from interview at end of this post; representative photo, via Andrew Sullivan, right here.)
There are three ways to account for McCain's current claim:
1. He did not remember on Sunday morning the way he had behaved on stage 36 hours earlier; 2. The reasons for his behavior were so powerful, instinctive, and atavistic that he was not aware of what he was doing at the time; 3. He was aware of his behavior at the time, and remembers it, but has decided that this is not a plus and so is telling a lie.
Logically I see no alternative to these three options. All in all, the least damaging to McCain is probably the last, the flat-out lie.
UPDATE. At the suggestion of several readers, I'll agree that logically there is a possibility #4, or maybe #3.5: That McCain has mis-remembered his behavior in a convenient and more positive way, so that he is "sincere" in saying that the worst aspects of it didn't happen. This is less a "flat-out lie" than a common sort of self-delusion. Whatever the genesis, his body-language on stage was unbelievably insulting and classless.
________
STEPHANOPOULOS: You know, during the debate, it seemed that you were reluctant to look at Senator Obama.
MCCAIN: I wasn't.
STEPHANOPOULOS: No?
MCCAIN: Of course not.
STEPHANOPOULOS: Well, we went back through the tape, and some people
were saying that that was showing disdain for him. Is that fair?
MCCAIN: I was looking at the moderator a great deal of time. I was
writing a lot of the time. I in no way know how that in any way would
be disdainful.
The Bush taint becoming the McCain taint? (Updated x3 ! )
A year ago, I polled (reader) opinion on the question of which public figures had risen in public esteem and likely historical assessment thanks to their service in the GW Bush administration. (More here and here.)
Some of the losers were obvious, with Colin Powell at the head of the damaged-reputation list. My proposed winner at that time was Christopher Hill, the diplomat in the middle of negotiations with North Korea. If Gen. David Petraeus had been slightly more careful about allowing himself to be placed in the middle of party-political battles, he would be the clear winner now.
I think it will soon be time to ask the same question about the reputational effect of the McCain 2008 presidential campaign. Let's set aside shifting views of McCain himself, and talk about those around him.
Obviously -- at least to me -- the biggest loser will be Sarah Palin. Two months ago she was the next-generation's hope as a fresh new face for future Republican leadership. Now she is a laughingstock. (Notwithstanding the likelihood that she will do "better than expected" in her upcoming debate.) Some conservatives are warning that her long-term prospects are "in question" because of her performance so far. No, they're not.
But closing fast on her is the once-estimable Douglas Holtz-Eakin, former head of the Congressional Budget Office (ie, Voice of Responsibility) and member of the Council of Economic Advisors. Just now, he appeared on MSNBC to discuss the market crash and failure of the bailout bill, and in the subtlety and fairness of his remarks he was indistinguishable from Tom DeLay in his prime.
"Once again we see the failure of Barack Obama's Democrats to address the nation's true needs," was (approximately) the first thing out of his mouth, when discussing a bill that two-thirds of the members of his own (and the president's) party voted against. He led not with what this means for the real economy; not what the possible solutions were; not the need to work something out fast; but pure spin-room flackery.
This kind of bluster is what flacks are for, on both sides. Their reputations go up when they can say such things with a straight face! Even better, with a face contorted in partisan outrage. It is not the right role for the main economic advisor to a campaign. Somebody from the campaign may need to say this, DH-E. Not you.
UPDATE: The statement just out from the Obama campaign's flacks is more statesmanlike than the interview from the McCain campaign's "substance" guy:
This is a moment of national crisis, and today's
inaction in Congress as well as the angry and hyper-partisan statement released
by the McCain campaign are exactly why the American people are disgusted with
Washington. Now is the time for Democrats and Republicans to join
together and act in a way that prevents an economic catastrophe. Every
American should be outraged that an era of greed and irresponsibility on Wall
Street and Washington has led us to this point, but now that we are here, the stability
of our entire economy depends on us taking immediate action to ease this crisis," said
Obama-Biden campaign spokesman Bill Burton.
UPDATE #2: John McCain's brief statement just now (5:15 pm EDT) was also much more statesmanlike.
UPDATE #3: Here is Douglas Holtz-Eakin himself. As you listen to his comments, starting 30 seconds in, remember that this is someone who pre-McCain had been seen as a reputable economist. And his actual first sentence is, "Today Barack Obama's Democratic party failed the American people." After that party got 60%+ of its representatives to vote for the plan, and the Republicans had ~67% against.
Something you don't see every day (Chinese leadership dept)
It's not posted at the CNN archives site yet, but in a day or two look for and watch Fareed Zakaria's TV interview today with China's premier, or #2 leader, Wen Jiabao. (In the meantime, printed transcript is here. Update: video clips are now available.) Interview appearances by Wen or president Hu Jintao are so rare, let alone with the foreign media, that this session is noteworthy simply for its existence.
It's interesting beyond that for Wen's relative openness and non-defensiveness on a variety of issues, including the Dalai Lama and China's role in Darfur. (I am grading on the curve.) I have an article coming out pretty soon in the Atlantic about how very closed and defensive official Chinese spokesmen usually are when dealing with the outside world. This is an intriguing exception.
Given China's new role as America's banker, U.S. citizens should also pay attention to passages like this:
ZAKARIA: There is another sense in which we are interdependent. China
is the largest holder of U.S. Treasury bills. By some accounts, you
hold almost $1 trillion of it. It makes Americans - some Americans -
uneasy. Can you reassure them that China would never use this status as
a weapon in some form?
WEN (voice of interpreter): As I said,
we believe that the U.S. real economy is still solidly based,
particularly in the high-tech industries and the basic industries.
Now, something has gone wrong in the virtual economy. But if this
problem is properly addressed, then it is still possible to stabilize
the economy in this country....
Of course, we are concerned about the safety and security of Chinese
money here. But we believe that the United States is a credible
country, and particularly at such difficult times, China has reached
out to the United States.
I am not sure I buy the claim that Wen has read the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius 100 times. Still, that he can talk about it at all is impressive. Also, the small-d democrat in me wishes that Zakaria had not wrapped up the interview by addressing Wen as "Your Excellency." (I didn't hear the way the interpreter rendered that to Wen in Chinese.) That's my only cavil with a very impressive and useful interview.
September 28, 2008
At last for Mike Mussina!
My sons adopted Mike Mussina as their favorite player when he came up to the Orioles in 1991 and seemed an ace of limitless promise. At the time, the Orioles were classy and great, and were the only available "local" team for kids in the DC area.
Since then, Mussina has been very good, and has become extremely rich, but has had a kind of asterisk for coming within an inch of a number of unquestionable milestones. Eighteen wins in his first full season, then 19 wins in two other early years. But not 20, for various hard-luck reasons. A perfect game taken well into the ninth inning -- I still remember the screams around the TV in our living room when that blew up. Number two in Cy Young voting one year (behind Pedro M), in the top handful seven other times -- but never the winner. Going from the Orioles, whose descent into mediocrity seemed to deny him a chance at the world series, to the unlovable Yankees just as their era of dominance was ending and just in time to join their gradual descent.
Today, it looked like one more "what might have been" moment. Starting with 19 wins, in his last appearance of the season, he took a 3-0 lead into the seventh. And then, as in the bad old Orioles days, the bullpen came within one run of letting him down. They escaped (thanks to 9th-inning Yankee offense) which meant that he escaped -- and ends up 20-9. Whew! What happens from now on with Moose is impossible to say, but for now, congrats.
The looming problem for Biden in the Palin debate
I'm not joking about this: in the wake of her catastrophic performance in the Katie Couric interview, Sarah Palin has set expectations so low that she is very likely to do "surprisingly" well against Joe Biden on October 2.
That is, to seem more flustered and incoherent than she did against Couric, Palin would have to move herself into "Eagleton zone," where her presence on the ticket would no longer be sustainable.
Any informed-seeming answer she gives will be her first such answer under press questioning -- which in practice means the Gibson and Couric interviews. This is especially true if it's to a "but what about....?" or "are you saying...?" follow-up question. Those follow-ups, from Couric, were the truly lethal ones. Odds are that Palin will manage to handle at least one exchange of this sort, maybe more, and therefore show "improvement" and beat the expectations game.
Either that, or she and the ticket are mortally wounded.
A military perspective on strategy and tactics
Yesterday I mentioned the irony of John McCain's complaining that Barack Obama "didn't understand" the difference between strategy and tactics, given that the Obama campaign seemed guided by a long-term strategy leading to November 4 while McCain was fighting day by day tactical battles.
After the jump, an email just in from Gerald A. Lechliter, a career U.S. Army officer, with some interesting elaborations on this point. I'll use this opportunity to restate a procedural note:
If you send me a message via the "email JF" button on this site, I will assume that I can use some or all of the contents of your message in subsequent posts unless you say otherwise, but that I should not use your name or other identifying details unless you explicitly say that is OK. [Original version of this post did not include G. Lechliter's name, but I got a subsequent message from him OK'ing its use.]
For instance, I'd remove parts of a message that said "I am a 67-year old man from Wyoming currently living at the U.S. Naval Observatory but contemplating a relocation next January" but might use the parts that said, "I have had several heart-bypass operations, and I've begun to reflect on how they might change someone's personality..."
That is a fake email. After the jump, a real one about strategy and tactics. ________
Putin rears his head and confronts an American air taxi (updated)
From the Albuquerque Journal, this is what it looks like when an American small-jet company (Eclipse) prepares to open a production plant in Russia:
Maybe this is what we've been warned against? Thanks to David Strip.
Update: To clarify matters for several readers who wonder whether I'm alarmed about a Russkie takeover of America's strategically-vital air taxi industry: this whole post is in the "just a little joke" category. It is meant to be a joke concerning Sarah Palin's "Putin rears his head" construct and a joke about my own small jet/air taxi emphasis.
Now if only I could find a photo of Putin boiling a frog while he looks at a Cirrus or Eclipse airplane -- with a Windows Vista computer paralyzed by the Blue Screen of Death sitting in the background.
And, just to round out the joke, here is the standard "Putin Rears His Head" image widely circulating on The Internets:
September 27, 2008
On strategy and tactics
The least self-aware moment for John McCain in last night's debate came at the half-way point, when he said, "I'm afraid Senator Obama doesn't understand the difference between a tactic and a strategy."
In a sense McCain was sticking to his battle plan in saying this -- the plan being on-message hammering-home of the "Obama doesn't understand" theme. In another sense, he lost his way, since he immediately segued not into a discussion of strategic matters in Iraq and Afghanistan but into an anecdote. But that kind of literal parsing of his answer -- tactical analysis, you might call it -- really misses the point.
There has been no greater contrast between the Obama and McCain campaigns than the tactical-vs-strategic difference, with McCain demonstrating the primacy of short-term tactics and Obama sticking to a more coherent long-term strategy. And McCain's dismissive comment suggests that he still does not realize this.
Some examples are so familiar as to need no explanation: McCain choosing the ten-day tactical "bounce" from the surprise choice of Sarah Palin, in exchange for the enormous strategic risk in choosing an un-vetted and now obviously unqualified running mate. Or McCain rolling the dice with his threat to boycott the debate -- and then, once on stage, appearing to be only mildly interested in the financial-bailout deal that 72 hours earlier was the stated reason for overturning all agreements about the debates .
But the personas that the two men chose to present in the debate indicated the difference in a profound way. The truths of debates are these:
Emotional messages, which are variants on "how do I feel about this person?", are all that matter in presidential debates. Issues discussions are significant mainly to the extent they shape these impressions. For instance: a candidate's view on the economy feeds the impression of whether he sympathizes with "people like me." Or views on foreign policy feed the impression of whether he would be "a leader we can trust."
Barring a truly disastrous performance, each side's partisans will think their candidate did well, and will be reinforced in the reasons for supporting the person they already like. Thus John McCain supporters will think he sounded confident and masterful; Obama supporters will think he kept presenting the big-picture perspective on national security and the economy. Which means therefore:
The audience that matters is people who start out undecided or uncertain -- and finally are looking for emotional reassurance about who they can imagine as president for the next four years. In general, such viewers are only now starting to pay serious attention to the campaign -- in contrast to people already committed to helping (or stopping) one of the candidates. That is why the first debate is a unique "re-launch" opportunity for the candidates to present themselves to people who realize it's time to make up their minds.
Everything John McCain did on stage last night was consistent with trying to score tactical points in those 90 minutes. He belittled Obama with the repeated "he doesn't understand"s; he was explicitly insulting to him in saying at the end "I honestly don't believe that Senator Obama has the knowledge or experience" for the job (a line Joe Biden dare not use so bluntly on Sarah Palin); and implicitly he was shockingly rude and dismissive in refusing ever to look Obama in the eye. Points scored -- in the short term, to the cheers of those already on his side.
Obama would have pleased his base better if he had fought back more harshly in those 90 minutes -- cutting McCain off, delivering a similarly harsh closing judgment, using comparably hostile body language, and in general acting more like a combative House of Commons debater. Those would have been effective tactics minute by minute.
But Obama either figured out, or instinctively understood, that the real battle was to make himself seem comfortable, reasonable, responsible, well-versed, and in all ways "safe" and non-outsiderish to the audience just making up its mind about him. (And yes, of course, his being a young black man challenging an older white man complicated everything he did and said, which is why his most wittily aggressive debate performance was against another black man, Alan Keyes, in his 2004 Senate race.) The evidence of the polls suggests that he achieved exactly this strategic goal. He was the more "likeable," the more knowledgeable, the more temperate, etc. (Update: though from here on out he doesn't have to say "John is right..." anywhere near as often as he did last night.) .
For years and years, Democrats have wondered how their candidates could "win" the debates on logical points -- that is, tactics -- but lose the larger struggle because these seemed too aggressive, supercilious, cold-blooded, or whatever. To put it in tactical/strategic terms, Democrats have gotten used to winning battles and losing wars. Last night, the Democratic candidate showed a far keener grasp of this distinction than did the Republican who accused him of not understanding it.
I took a million notes during the debate....
... but let me boil it down to this:
When the details of this encounter fade, as they soon will, I think the debate as a whole will be seen as of a piece with Kennedy-Nixon in 1960, Reagan-Carter in 1980, and Clinton-Bush in 1992.
In each of those cases, a fresh, new candidate (although chronologically older in Reagan's case) had been gathering momentum at a time of general dissatisfaction with the "four more years" option of sticking with the incumbent party. The question was whether the challenger could stand as an equal with the more experienced, tested, and familiar figure. In each of those cases, the challenger passed the test -- not necessarily by "winning" the debate, either on logical points or in immediate audience or polling reactions, but by subtly reassuring doubters on the basic issue of whether he was a plausible occupant of the White House and commander in chief.
I think that's how this debate will be seen. Neither Obama nor McCain made any serious mistakes (except, perhaps, for McCain's churlish on-stage personal bearing); neither had any moments of surprising brilliance or rhetorical flash. McCain performed closer to the top of his debating range than Obama did.
But something similar could be said of the three previous encounters I mentioned. The challengers didn't necessarily "win," but they achieved something significant simply by debating as equals -- especially on national security issues. I think in the long run people will say that this is what happened tonight.
September 26, 2008
The only thing I will say about the debate in real time
Unless it happened when I glanced away, up until this moment, 77 minutes into the 90-minute debate, John McCain has not once looked at Obama -- while listening to him, while addressing him, while disagreeing with him, while finding moments of accord.
This is distinctly strange -- if anyone else notices. Obama is acting as if this is a conversation; McCain, as if he cannot acknowledge the other party in the discussion.
More on non-body-language points tomorrow a.m.
To be serious about Palin and Couric
Gov. Palin's comments about Russia seem to have drawn more attention than any other part of her interview with Katie Couric. I think this is mainly because .. well, they just sound funny. "As Putin rears his head and comes into the air space" and so on.
But, no joke, it is worth spending a little time on what, specifically, we have learned about Palin and her limitations via her attempted answers to Katie Couric. After the jump, three specimens -- one about Israel, one about financial markets, one about domestic spending -- that, as I mentioned after the Charlie Gibson interview, indicate that Palin is disqualifyingly ignorant of the fundamentals of public policy.
After thirty years of meeting and interviewing politicians, I can think of exactly three people who sounded as uninformed and vacant as this. All are now out of office. One was a chronic drunk.
George W. Bush is in a completely different and superior league to what we've seen from Palin. When people made fun of his inexpressiveness in the 2000 campaign (and onwards), it was because he mispronounced words or used cliches. It was nothing like the total inability to express any coherent thought on any issue outside "values politics" that Palin has revealed. (And to be fair: she can talk clearly and with nuance about those values issues, from abortion to prayer, and about some Alaskan questions.)
Details after the jump. The crucial point, of course, is that Palin did not put herself in this position. Her running mate did. ___________
I've now seen much of the Katie Couric / Sarah Palin interview...
... and I genuinely feel sorry for Palin. This really is pathetic. Again it's not a mass/elite matter. Anyone who has been to high school immediately recognizes the terror of facing a pop quiz or an oral exam when you just have no idea what you're talking about.
One hour after her pick was announced, I wrote here:
Let's assume that Sarah Palin is exactly as smart and disciplined as
Barack Obama. But instead of the year and a half of nonstop campaigning
he has behind him, and Joe Biden's even longer toughening-up process,
she comes into the most intense period of the highest stakes campaign
with absolutely zero warmup or preparation. If she has ever addressed
an international issue, there's no evidence of it in internet-land.
The
smartest person in the world could not prepare quickly enough to know
the pitfalls, and to sound confident while doing so, on all the issues
she will be forced to address...
So
the prediction is: unavoidable gaffes. The challenge for the
McCain-Palin campaign is to find some way to defuse them ahead of time,
since Socrates, Machiavelli, and Clausewitz reincarnated would
themselves make errors in her situation. And the challenge for
Democrats is to lead people to think, What if she were in charge?,
without being bullies about it.
My for-the-sake-of-argument assumption was unwarranted. She is not as smart or disciplined as Barack Obama. If she were, she would sound better than she does at this point. And the McCain team has done absolutely nothing to defuse these problems -- nor, to be honest, has Palin herself apparently learned the first thing about successfully finessing questions she is not ready to handle. (Hint: the approach is not the one she has tried to apply with Katie Couric, that of repeating verbatim the answer that did not do the job the first time around.)
Couric deserves better ratings for the CBS news based on the steely relentlessness of her questions. Unlike Charlie Gibson, and unlike Joe Biden in a (possible!) future debate, she has no background complications of the older white man bullying the younger, attractive woman. She was a professional woman who has clearly earned her position grilling someone whose bona fides she clearly doubted.
And Couric displayed one brilliant technique I recommend to all future questioners. When Palin ducked a question about financial-bailout provisions, saying that "John McCain and I" had not yet reached a decision, Couric asked the deadly question: "So what are the pros and cons?" There is no way to fake your way around that. As Palin showed.
September 25, 2008
Something I had forgotten....
.... in the seven years since my wife and I moved away from Berkeley, CA:
This really is the nicest place on earth.
Yes, you have your Tuscanys and your Cape Towns and your Vancouvers and all the rest (including Duluth!). But when it comes to a locale that is actively beautiful and human-scaled and full of creature comforts and with mild climate, and where first-rate work of importance to the world is also underway, Berkeley is hard to beat.
Which leads me to: if you happen to be in Berkeley today, Thursday, Sept, 25, I will be there too. Barrows Hall, 4pm, talking about US-China relations. Then.... back to Beijing to keep learning about that topic.
September 24, 2008
Worst self-inflicted campaign move ever?
Candidates have made a lot of unforced errors over the years. Richard Nixon promising to campaign in all 50 states when running against John Kennedy in 1960 -- and getting sick, tired, and cadaver-looking as a result. Nixon again thinking he had to get those crucial Democratic National Committee records from the Watergate building in 1972. (He obviously made it through the election, but then....) Dukakis getting into the tank in 1988.
But compared with John McCain "suspending" his campaign and trying to postpone the debates? Puh-leeze. None of the reasons below is original, but it's worth adding them up to see how risky McCain's proposal is, in giving people impressions he doesn't want to convey.
The senator with (understandably) one of the lowest actual-attendance rates at the Capitol in the last two years, and who has played little role in crafting legislation recently, suddenly needs to be nowhere but Washington -- exactly now?
The candidate whose strongest claim to office is his experience, mastery, and understanding of foreign policy, cannot handle a debate on that topic, against a rookie, when he has other things on his mind?
The candidate who wants to quash any suspicion that he is not quick enough, not vigorous enough, or not multi-tasking enough to handle a job that poses a new challenge every minute, is essentially asking for everyone to take things a little slower so he can concentrate?
The candidate whose first response to the financial crisis was to propose firing the head of the Securities and Exchange Commission, and whose second response was to run ads linking his opponent (hazily) to former Fannie Mae officials (before news came out that his own campaign manager was still on the Freddie Mac payroll), now wants us to believe that statesmanship and love of country govern his every move on this issue?
The most famously stoic candidate of recent times is willing to have it look as if he's running away from a confrontation while he's behind.
Now, maybe I am misjudging my fellow citizens. Maybe most people will say: Yes, it's perfectly understandable that John McCain, having traveled constantly for years on the campaign trail, suddenly can't make it down to Mississippi on Friday. We respect him all the more! But I don't think this is some mass-vs-elite type question. This involves basic "dog ate my homework" appearances that anyone can understand.
To my taste, the strongest moment in John McCain's long debating history happened more than eight years ago, when he took on George W. Bush in South Carolina. McCain was furious at Bush for the underhanded campaign ads the Bush-Rove campaign had run against him in the South. He excoriated Bush (description of the whole scene after the jump) and, with acid in his voice, said "You should be ashamed."
If that John McCain were still around, I can guess what he would think about the man now campaigning under his previously-good name. ______________
A week and a half ago, when Barack Obama seemed to be floundering and the McCain-Palin team was in ascent, I mentioned Chuck Spinney's observation that McCain might in fact be in the process of destroying himself.
Spinney's argument -- with excerpts after the jump -- was that McCain's tactical, day by day, "winning the news cycle" plan for attacking Obama with often-misleading ads could amount to a strategic, long-term, self-inflicted defeat. The idea was that McCain's entire political identity rested on an image of honesty, decency, and not playing petty political games. So if his campaign seemed to contradict his essential values, it could in the end hurt him more than its intended victim.
By the way: McCain didn't need Spinney to explain this principle to him. It's basically the same point McCain has passionately made in saying that a decent, democratic society committed to rule-of-law simply cannot afford to condone torture as official policy.
(Why didn't the same Swiftboat scorched-earth tactics hurt GW Bush? Well, given the extreme narrowness of the margins in 2000 and 2004, perhaps they did. But the real point is, Bush never relied on a reputation for bipartisan, above-the-fray, national-interest politics the way McCain has.)
I'll have more about McCain's latest debate "plan" and financial proposals later this evening. For the moment I say: the obvious, desperate, 100% transparent stunt of ducking the first debate for the "good of the nation" exactly fits Spinney's analysis. For each voter who believes McCain's explanation for this proposal, ten more will say: Are you kidding? How gullible do you think we are?
It is a long, depressing, and self-inflicted descent for a man many people, including me, once respected.
And by the way, whatever McCain does, Obama should show up as scheduled at Ole Miss for the debate.
I mentioned yesterday my general sympathy for whatever hapless underling in the McCain camp had cranked out the now-notorious article for Contingencies: The Official Journal of the American Academy of Actuaries.
But in expressing comradely support for a beleaguered staff member, I did not mean to suggest that the article was a mis-representation of McCain's views, or that it was unfair for the Democrats to pounce on it as part of their economic argument against putting McCain in charge or extending Republican rule:
On the contrary! The episode was a "gaffe" only in the sense classically defined by my friend Mike Kinsley: the ill-timed utterance of what you really think. This was the political equivalent of saying, "You know, what I really hate about Fred is..." even as your friends frantically try to signal that Fred has just walked up behind you.
It's completely fair for McCain to be judged on the article -- which reflects his views, just not views he would have chosen to emphasize in the middle of a banking panic -- and for reporters and Democrats to force him to explain where, exactly, he thinks regulation is still needed for the health-care industry or in finance. (It would be fun, but in some sporting sense unfair, to get Gov. Palin to answer the same question.) Still, I sympathize with the staffer who "wrote" the article assuming it would vanish into neverland and now is inevitably taking the heat.
If you happen to be in Claremont, CA today...
... that's Tuesday, Sept 23, I will be there too. Will be speaking from 6:45pm to 8pm at the Marian Miner Cook Athenaeum at Claremont McKenna College. Free and open to all comers; location here. Stated topic is the right foreign policy for whoever succeeds GW Bush. Also intend to talk about recent news out of my current homeland of China (Claremont being part of my original homeland of the SoCal "Inland Empire"), and even the upcoming presidential debates. See you there.
Edging back into politics: "My First Kill"
Many people have noted that this past week was a bad time for John McCain to have published an article promising to deregulate the health insurance industry, "as we have done over the last decade in banking," given the collapse of the banking industry due in part to that deregulation.
True enough. For later, something "serious" about the relationship between financial chaos and the McCain/Palin predicament in this race.
But my immediate reaction to the flap was to sympathize with whatever poor schlub had actually cranked out the article in question, which appeared in Contingencies, the closely-followed journal of the American Academy of Actuaries. The article just before it in Contingencies's newest issue was "An Actuary Weighs the Proposals." I love the magazine business.
Back to the future: Beijing after Sept. 20 (updated)
I'm temporarily out of China, but like all other Beijing residents I am acutely aware that today is the day when all the Olympic/Paralympic "blue sky" rules come to an end. No more even/odd license plate restrictions on how many cars can drive each day. No more limits on construction and construction dust. No more sweeping shutdowns for the cement plants, smelters, steel mills, and other heavy-industrial operations anywhere upwind of Beijing.
The emergency clean-up rules -- plus strong seasonal winds out of the northwest, plus what is usually the nicest time of the year -- have made a real difference:
Just before the rule change:
A month later:
Back in August, the Imagethief blog offered an instantly-popular (if slightly premature) simile for the impending change:
Like a giant kid who's been holding a fart in during a three week
[now eight week] elevator ride, Beijing has apparently relaxed its many industrial
sphincters and let a big one rip.
I'll next see Beijing when the city has had a week to get back to "normal." Can't wait to get a look. It's been nice while it has lasted!
Update: Jim Bishop, who lives in Hebei province southwest of Beijing, writes to report on Day One of the new era: "The air went completely to hell here in Baoding this week.
As bad as I have ever seen it in over six years." Hmmm.
September 20, 2008
Air taxi chronicles: bad news
Over the months, starting with this article, I have chronicled the ambitions and operations of the most highly publicized of the new air taxi companies, DayJet. Late last year, it began service in Florida and rapidly expanded to nearby southeastern states. This past May, it laid off some pilots and scaled back flights, saying that the worldwide credit freeze kept it from getting the working capital it needed to expand its network. Two months later, in July, it was expanding again, taking passengers to more than 60 cities. (General air-taxi background here and more broadly here.)
Yesterday, DayJet announced that it was flat-out suspending operations, grounding all but one of its Eclipse EA-500 jets and laying off virtually its employees.
The stated reason was the intensifying credit crisis. As the founder and CEO Ed Iacobucci put it in the company's press release:
"Twelve months ago our team launched a new regional transportation model. During the past year, we have demonstrated, beyond a reasonable doubt, that customers will sign-up, purchase, and become frequent users of this new service - the DayJet 'Per-Seat, On-Demand' model works. It is unfortunate that these developments have come at the same time our nation has fallen into the most serious capital crisis of our lifetime. Regrettably, without access to growth capital, we have no choice but to discontinue operations."
To me that is plausible as far as it goes. My posting today, hammered out during momentary access to The Internets, is explicitly a "to be continued" starter entry, because there are so many rich themes worth further exploration. I am already receiving leads about and will pursue them soon.
I mentioned one month ago that a friend in the FAA had warned me in 2006 that there was something funny in the way that Eclipse Aviation, pioneer of the very light, very cheap small-jet movement, had just gotten rush FAA certification for its breakthrough EA-500 jet.
Now a Congressional inquiry into the approval process is underway. Being still mainly off-grid, I am not able right now to go through the ins and outs of the arguments. But this report from Mary Grady of AVweb contains links to all the essential documents --the FAA Inspector General's statement, streaming video of the latest Congressional committee hearing, and much more. And here is Eclipse's statement on the topic.
Until I learn more, I am agnostic on the merits of this inquiry. Updates later, but for now here are the links for those who would like to inquire themselves.
September 16, 2008
Three from the archives
In the middle of Hellzapoppin news developments on the political and economic and photo-journalism fronts, I am more or less off the grid for a few days -- out of touch, ironically, because I am immersed in meetings at a company that is all about the internet. For the moment, please indulge me in references to three past Atlantic articles I think are relevant to the day's news:
1) From three years ago, Countdown to a Meltdown, in the Atlantic. Some parts of this imagined-history of the great American real estate and financial collapse of the late Bush era now seem amusingly dated. But I submit that as a primer on the factors behind the real estate and financial collapse of the late Bush era, it's not bad and is worth another look.
2) From nine months ago, The $1.4 Trillion Question. The ordinary people of China, via their government's investment of the country's accumulated trade surpluses, are tremendously exposed to the American real estate and financial meltdown. The difference between those Chinese investors and the Americans who have lost their homes, pensions, jobs, etc is that the Chinese are on average so much poorer. Again I think the article stands up all right in explaining how this arrangement happened, and how long the Chinese will put up with it.
3) From this month, How the West Was Wired. Ok, this isn't immediately connected to the breaking news. But, for me, it puts some of that news in perspective -- and describes a part of China and a slice of the human experience that left a bigger emotional mark on me than anything else I have seen in the last two years of travel through this country. On the chance that it will be overlooked in Lehman/AIG/lipstick frenzy, I mention it once more. Along with this slide show and this link to a charitable organization that is doing very impressive work and deserves support.
Back to Hellzapoppin in due course.
September 13, 2008
One time only: Java-Javascript smackdown
Truly nerds only.
Twice in recent days (here and here) I've mentioned my reactions to Chrome, the new browser from Google. A number of dopes "low information readers"* have written asking what I have against this new entry in the browser wars.
Nothing at all! I am now using it, alongside Firefox, on all three computers here in the Beijing HQ -- one ThinkPad, two Macs. (I am composing this post via Chrome, on a MacMini.) Chrome is Windows-only but runs fine, like all other Windows programs I've tried, under VMware Fusion on the Macs. It is a very interesting program with some immediate advantages over Firefox. Most obvious one: when you have a lot of web pages open, a freeze in one page or "tab" is unlikely to make all open pages freeze, as can happen in Firefox.
My point, to clarify for those who can't read benefit from repetition, is an "enthusiasts versus civilians" distinction. If you are a computer enthusiast, of course you're going to find this fascinating and worthwhile. If you're a civilian user -- not interested in the process, just in getting the results -- I say, there are enough transition difficulties that you should wait a while. Wait, for instance, until Chrome can easily handle RSS feeds, or has extensions like Firefox, or runs in native-Mac version, or has improved bookmark handling.
Now, the promised smackdown. Recently I posted comments from one tech veteran, Ken Broomfield, about what Chrome's emergence says about the "early days" of web programming, ie the mid-1990s. In included the argument that if the Java programming language had developed the way it could and should have, a lot of latter-day workarounds would not be necessary.
After the jump, the Other Side of the Story, from another tech veteran who doesn't want to be named. This is an one time only "fairness doctrine" airing of a contrary view. I lack the expertise to referee future rounds of argument, and there are other places where nerds can hash it out. But since Fox News is not the only institution that believes in fair and balanced coverage, I post this response below.
* Apologies to anyone who took offense! A splenetic little joke, based on too much email from people who, in my view, were not trying hard enough to understand previous posts.
1) If you feel as if you'll drink the hemlock if you have to hear another discussion about the short-knives tactics of the campaign -- which negative McCain themes are working, whether Obama needs to get more negative fast -- I highly recommend instead listening to this 40-minute Fresh Air interview, originally aired two days ago. In it, Terry Gross draws out Andrew Bacevich, of Boston UniversityCollege [brain-freeze typo, sorry] on his views about America's strategic situation. Bacevich, whom I have praised many times here before, is no pinko or softie. West Point grad; career Army guy; self-proclaimed conservative; and, a delicate point, the father of a son who was killed in combat in Iraq.
Listen to the interview, reflect, and moan about the way these issues generally get discussed when we choose our next crop of leaders. I will also mention, because it's relevant to Bacevich's outlook, this cover story, by me, in the Atlantic two years ago. Update: This interview with Bacevich, on Bill Moyers Journal last month, is also worth watching.
2) On the same strategic level I recommend a dispatch, after the jump, by Chuck Spinney. Spinney, who is now on an extended stay outside the country, was for decades a leading "defense reform" advocate inside the Pentagon and close collaborator with the legendary John Boyd. One of Boyd's great insights was that the moral element of conflict -- between nations, companies, or even political candidates -- had tremendous importance in the end. Spinney applies that logic to the McCain-Obama race. ______
1) Basic up-down decision: After a week of using Chrome on my Windows machine and under VMware Fusion on my Macs, I restate my original triage judgment with even more conviction. If you're interested in software, by all means check it out. If you mainly want to get your work done, don't bother -- yet. For ordinary non-nerd civilian users, the improvement touches in Chrome are outweighed by the inconveniences. For instance: can't use any of the numerous invaluable "extensions" for Firefox. And RSS feeds work poorly if at all.
2) Nerds only:This article in Network World does a very nice job of explaining the philosophy behind and implications of Chrome's technological design.
3) Browser nerds only, concerning i-Rider: I have long had a soft spot for a $29 browser called iRider, from the company Wymea Bay -- which, as it happens, is based in California rather than Hawaii. When introduced five years ago, iRider was way ahead of Firefox and IE i browser-convenience features and still has a number of slick touches, mainly for dealing with a lot of open pages at once. (Feature overview here.)
And to illustrate the company's "cut the BS spirit," here is what its page says about compatibility with different operating systems (it's Windows-only):
As will surprise no one who follows the technology press, we still
cannot recommend Windows Vista. If you're using Windows XP, we'd advise you not to upgrade
to Vista, and buyers of new computers should consider having XP installed, which is an
option many manufacturers still offer.
After the jump, on a nerdy-nerds only basis but very interesting for that audience, a message I received from Ken Broomfield. He is iRider's founder and earlier was one of the key developers of the indispensable XTree Gold. He has a note about the ironies and the potential of Google's introducing Chrome. Skip if you're bored by inside-baseball details - but if you're interested, read on. ______
It is embarrassing to have to spell this out, but for the record let me explain why Gov. Palin's answer to the "Bush Doctrine" question -- the only part of the recent interview I have yet seen over here in China -- implies a disqualifying lack of preparation for the job.
Not the mundane job of vice president, of course, which many people could handle. Rather the job of potential Commander in Chief and most powerful individual on earth.
The spelling-out is lengthy, but I've hidden most of it below the jump.
Each of us has areas we care about, and areas we don't. If we are interested in a topic, we follow its development over the years. And because we have followed its development, we're able to talk and think about it in a "rounded" way. We can say: Most people think X, but I really think Y. Or: most people used to think P, but now they think Q. Or: the point most people miss is Z. Or: the question I'd really like to hear answered is A.
Here's the most obvious example in daily life: Sports Talk radio.
I have a slight modification to propose to the International Olympic Charter. I suggest that the Olympics, and the Paralympics, be run back-to-back, nonstop, month after month and year after year -- and always in Beijing. It could be tough on the athletes, but think of the golds they could win! And with this system, the city might continue to enjoy the phenomenal blue skies and beautiful weather that have prevailed for most of the last four weeks. This morning, Sept 12:
Yesterday afternoon, Sept. 11:
The traffic and factory shut-down rules that started on July 20 will still be in effect for eight more days, thanks to the Paralympics. The Paralympics have been moving and impressive in ways I'll describe later. For now, we're enjoying these moments while we have them; assuming nothing about the future; but hoping that the Chinese citizenry and leadership have noticed how transformed the city is when it looks like these pictures -- and not the one from two months ago, mercifully after the jump.
As recounted previously here and here my doughty little 8GB USB stick has now survived two inadvertent but complete trips, two months apart, through the washer and dryer. After a day-long bath in WD40 and a thorough air-drying process, it is now back in duty... and again working like a champ!
I had been sobered by the expert view that, despite its brave initial recovery from the trauma, the USB was already doomed because corrosion of its tiny circuits had begun. It was bound to fail in four to eight weeks. Then another expert said that WD40 could reverse the process...
It's now 10+ weeks since the first wash-dry cycle. Every four weeks or so I'll report on its health -- until I get bored, or I have to report its demise.
Meanwhile, I have received a note about a kind of "Survivor" USB stick designed to go through the washing machine -- and nuclear winter, and whatever other torture test you have in mind. I'll try to take this in the right spirit -- and not as if I were a diner in a restaurant being offered a bib after repeatedly dripping food all over myself. Thanks, I think, to Dave Proffer for the tip.
September 10, 2008
A controlled experiment: Hillary Clinton, Sarah Palin
Twice in the last six months we've had the spectacle of a candidate clinging to a provably false personal narrative. Each tale was meant to show something admirable and significant about the candidate's character. But in each case the press had the goods to show that the tale was too tall to be believed.
One, of course, was Hillary Clinton's "hail of bullets" account of her arrival at the airport in Bosnia.
The other is Sarah Palin's "thanks but no thanks" claim to have opposed funding for the "bridge to nowhere."
In Senator Clinton's case, the more often she repeated the story, the more relentlessly the press said the story was not true. All parts of the press did this: right, left, middle. They didn't say that there was a "controversy" about her story. They said it was false. And eventually she bowed to the inevitable and stopped telling the story any more.
In Governor Palin's case, the more often she has repeated the story, the more abashed the press has seemed about pointing out its falsity. The accurate version would be more like: "I said 'Yes, please!' until the Congress said 'Sorry, no.'" As best I can tell (from my distance in China), the right-wing press has played no part in this truth-squadding. The mainstream press has seemed to treat it as a "controversy" rather than a falsehood. And there is no evidence of Palin hesitating to use the story again and again.
There can't be any difference in gender or race bias in treatment of these two cases: they both both involve successful, married white female politicians. There is no essential difference in the falseness of their claims, though there was a greater comic potential in the film footage of Sen. Clinton's "harrowing" arrival. The major remaining difference is that one case involves a Democrat (though the more conservative of the primary-campaign finalists) and one a Republican.
So here are the controlled-experiment questions:
1) At any point will the right-wing press join the effort to hold Palin accountable for her false claim, as all of the press held Clinton responsible?
2) If Palin keeps making the claim, will press critics redouble their debunking, as they did with Clinton, or taper off for fear of seeming biased or boring?
3) At any point will Palin herself -- or, far more significant, McCain -- acknowledge that there are such things as fact and fantasy, and stop making a demonstrably false claim?
I pose it as a set of questions rather than an assumed conclusion. For now.
New hope for the dead (USB dept.)
Ten weeks ago, I revealed the heartening news that a little PNY Optima Attache USB stick had gone through the wash-and-dry cycle in a pants pocket, and had come out working fine.
Or so I thought. Several correspondents soon pointed out that the tough-seeming device was actually on a terminal watch. The corrosion had started, and it was a matter of time -- maybe four weeks, maybe eight -- before the circuits rusted all the way through and the device simply stopped. In the words of the Book of Common Prayer, "in the midst of life we are in death."
Then another reader suggested that a bath in WD-40 could hold off the inevitable... maybe indefinitely! I got a friend to bring me some from the US, and about a week after swimming in hot, soapy washing machine water the USB stick was being gentled laved with the balm of WD-40.
That cure seemed to work for ten weeks, until today, when - for reasons still being litigated here in the Beijing HQ -- the same stick went through the washer and dryer AGAIN.
When it came out -- amazingly -- it worked AGAIN. But taking nothing for granted, I have plunged it immediately an inch-deep pool of WD-40 and will put it through a careful resurrection process. If it's still alive in two months, I will report this achievement. Or I'll report its demise.
______ * To spare the usual readers the effort of sending the usual email: Yes, I do realize that USBs are inanimate objects and therefore can't technically be "dead." This is similar to my being aware that, despite making a light reference to Marie Antoinette, there are significant differences between my situation and that of an 18th century queen of France destined for the guillotine. Every now and then I recklessly employ the concept of "whimsy" or "a minor joke" in online posts.
Yellow Sheep River
The new issue of the Atlantic is in subscribers' hands and up on the web. It includes my story on a touching and quixotic effort by two businessmen / idealists to bring the good parts of modern technology to a remote village in Gansu Province called Yellow Sheep River. Here is one of the people I write about, Kenny Lin, on horseback near a Tibetan prayer-flag structure in the 11,000-foot highlands outside Yellow Sheep River.
There's an accompanying slide show, here, narrated with my best Beijing-air-induced chronic rasp, that gives an idea of how completely different China's far western regions look from the images of Shanghai and Beijing now familiar on TV.
The story talks about an odd-sounding but intriguing effort to lift children from rural poverty via ...blogging! In effect, it gives them scholarships that allow them to stay in (public) school, and in return they chronicle their lives in words and pictures on web sites, developing tech skills along the way. Here are some the children he is trying to help:
The main Chinese site for this project is here; the English language version is here. It includes an easy way to sponsor students for this work, as my wife and I have done and will continue to do.
September 9, 2008
Two air taxi updates
1. Miwok: As mentioned recently, yet another air taxi company has started up. This one, Miwok Airways, is using small, posh Cirrus SR22 propeller-driven airplanes and serving Southern California roughly between San Diego in the south, Oxnard in the northwest, and Palm Springs in the east.
The Air Taxi Law blog -- yes, there is such a thing, a sign in itself -- has more interesting info about the thinking behind Miwok. It also includes a service area map and this comment about its strategy:
Miwok's business plan is making several interesting assumption. First,
one assumption is that people will use an air taxi for much shorter
trips. While Miwok has entered a partnership with Enterprise Rental
Car, will the added factor of a rental car (even with a premium no wait
service) or a taxi at the destination outweigh the pain factor in just
driving your own car for such a short trip? Second, another assumption
is that the passenger is willing to trade low fares for a shared
airplane although Miwok will price the trip higher if no one else joins
your trip. Sharing an Eclipse is one thing. Sharing the back seats of a
Cirrus is a little more intimate, but still much more comfortable and
more room than a center seat on an airline coach class flight!
Also, I see that AVWeb has just put up an interview with Miwok's founder, here.
2. SATSair: This note from an employee of probably the best known air-taxi service that uses Cirrus airplanes:
I read your original article about Air Taxis years ago [2001] while I was a UPS driver. Now
I am a pilot at Satsair. They still have a way to go but it is a
brilliant plan almost like when fedex came out with the overnight
letter. Everyone needs the service, sometime they just did not know it, same way with air taxi.
This faith in the "ahah!" potential of the small-airplane taxi model is what motivates people trying to get these companies going. My thinking is: if times get tough enough in the print journalism business, like the ex-UPS driver I can consider other career options...* ______ *Note: this is a little joke, based on my having flown a Cirrus for many years. And things are actually great in this part of the print journalism business!
September 8, 2008
In which I reveal myself as Marie Antoinette (VPN dept)
Through the past year-plus I've discussedseveraltimes the value of Virtual Private Networks, VPNs, for avoiding the hassles created by China's internet-control system generally known as the Great Firewall. I won't give one more plug for the for-pay service my wife and I have been using, since I've mentioned it so often. But at $40 per year, per computer, to us it is worthwhile.
In an Atlantic article six months ago about the Great Firewall, I noted that $40 per year meant different things to different people:
An expat in China [me!] thinks: that's a little over a dime a day. A Chinese factory worker thinks: [$40] is a week's take-home pay. Even for a young academic, it's a couple days' work.
My reaction to a new VPN offering shows that I may have forgotten my previous point. The service is called Hot Spot Shield, from AnchorFree. It's effective, extremely easy to install and run, designed for both Windows and Mac -- and absolutely free. (To download, and for more info, go here.)
I first heard about this from my friend Simon Elegant, and then from other China-based users. I tried it and found it technically very nice and efficient. But I didn't like using it at all. The reason is its "ad-based" business plan. In order to underwrite its free VPN service, it inserts an inch-high banner ad, often flashing, at the top of every new web page you load or visit. There is a "close" button on those ads, but unless you click it every single time, you have an extra, flashing ad wherever you go.
To me, on a day at the desk when I might open hundreds of new web sites, it is worth a total of 11 cents not to see a flashing banner at the top of every one. But the recent surge of interest in Hotspot Shield within China suggests that for lots of people, this is an attractive tradeoff.
Update: Peter Bollig reports that the Opera browser automatically ignores the banner ads. Probably others can be configured the same way, but I didn't take the time to figure out how to do so with IE or Firefox.
For years and years now -- nine years, to be precise, since this 1999 article in the NY Times magazine and my subsequent Atlantic article and book Free Flight -- I've been arguing that the mounting hassles of airline travel, and the emergence of radically cheaper, safe small planes, would make "air taxis" increasingly popular.*
DayJet, the best-funded and most widely-known of these services -- plus the one I have found most interesting -- ran into setbacks this summer during the credit and fuel-price crunch, but it now is expanding again. SATSair, which uses new, small Cirrus SR22 propeller airplanes for routes on the East Coast, has seen a significant rise in business this year.
Now comes Miwok Airlines, run by a software entrepreneur and Israeli AF air traffic controller named Gad Barnea, which will provide short-haul service using Cirrus airplanes in and around the LA basin. LA Times article on Miwok here; analysis by my friend Chet Richards here. The company plans to serve 40 small airports from roughly Oxnard to San Diego. According to a CaltTech professor quoted in the LAT, "It's not competition to the airlines but a competitor to driving."
I have absorbed enough Protestant sermons, homilies, and parables over the years to think that I can usually pick up Christian "dog whistles" in political speeches. Those are the words and phrasings that signal to some listeners that you are part of their "faith community," but that other members of the audience don't hear at all. Simplest example: when George W. Bush talks about "Providence" in his speeches, he doesn't mean a city in Rhode Island.
But I guess I must have really lost some of my high-frequency hearing. Because I entirely missed the cue in what I previously described as the "weird" and illogical homily in Mike Huckabee's convention speech.
As a reminder: Huckabee told a shaggy-dog story about a teacher who wouldn't let students have their school desks until they explained how to "earn" a desk. The punchline was that they didn't have to earn desks at all! US military veterans had earned them for the students, through their sacrifice.
At face value, this simply makes no sense. If the U.S. had no brave veterans and had lost every single war, it would still have schools and desks, since even conquered countries do. (It would be different if the story concerned voting booths, the free press, protest marches, or other signs of liberty that American veterans had defended things that on the battlefield.) But, as explained in this post at the Taking Steps site, the story makes perfect sense once you assume that its real subject is eternal salvation through the grace and sacrifice of Jesus:
This is the doctrine of "Grace, Not Works" or "Grace Alone," a theological position expounded during the Reformation, cuddled by Calvin*, and popular among evangelical Christians. It's not a desk, it's a place in Heaven. And it's not soldiers we're talking about, it's Jesus Christ.
The post goes on to interpret the whole allegory. Of course that's the explanation, as anyone who has listened to religious radio shows should know. I feel silly to have missed it. (Why else would Huckabee, an ordained minister and very smart person, keep using the story in his stump speeches, despite its surface-level pointlessness?) Thanks to Karen Seriguchi for the lead.
At one level, I feel better to see that Huckabee was getting at something with this tale. At other levels..... _____ * One could argue that Luther works better here than Calvin, but that's not the main point for now.
The wages of cockiness
I mentioned just after Sarah Palin's speech that her tone of outright mockery toward Obama compounded the gamble represented by her selection as McCain's VP candidate. Her Limbaugh-style sass was likely to make the conservative base all the more enthusiastic, which has indeed happened. But it held the potential of mobilizing an opposite, larger base of people who had been tepid about Obama but didn't like the tone, beliefs, or qualifications of Palin - or, more important, who were concerned about what this last-minute selection revealed about McCain's deliberative process and weighing of risks.
Also, I said it opened the way for a No More Mr. Nice Guy approach by her VP counterpart Joe Biden. I had in mind something like what Biden said a few hours ago in Pennsylvania. This clip may have been widely distributed by now, but it was new to me and was an interesting specimen of how Biden can fight back -- without being drawn into the trap of arguing about Palin's qualifications or taking the focus away from McCain himself and the issues involved in the election.
To me, the phrasing comes across as Biden's natural human reaction --"you remember that kid in school...?" -- rather than the product of teamwide strategy sessions to find the right image. In any case, students of rhetoric will find it interesting to compare this clip with Palin's speech.
Non-politics: Google Chrome, first in a series (updated)
If you're interested in software just because it's interesting, you should definitely check out Google's new web browser, Chrome, at the download page here.
If you're interested mainly in using your computer, rather than tinkering with it, there's no huge rush. Also, Chrome is Windows-only for now, XP or Vista; Mac version in the works. _____ (From the wonderful comic book-style user's guide:) ____
About community organizers, mockery, and the youth vote
As mentioned before, Sarah Palin's speech was heavy on the mockery of Obama, including his self-evidently ludicrous role as a "community organizer." As a data point, I received this email just now from someone whose identity I know -- in his late 20s, religious, works in the US national security establishment, not necessarily part of the liberal base. He makes a point that rings true to me, about the generational as opposed to strictly partisan implications of the mocking pose:
I have been following the conventions. I think the GOP ridiculing of the Obama's "community organizer" experience will resonate poorly with many in the under-35 crowd. If they continue that attack line they will likely lose a large number of young voters (which they are struggling with anyways). Conservative and liberal Generation X/Y and millennials generally respect those who sacrifice who devote careers to community service. In my mind the GOP showed the real elitism on this particular issue. We'll see if they keep this up but it really riled me up.
He whose name must not be uttered
It was classy of John McCain to say this of Barack Obama, reciprocating what Obama said about him personally in his acceptance speech:
Finally, a word to Senator Obama and his supporters. We'll go at it over the next two months. That's the nature of these contests, and there are big differences between us. But you have my respect and admiration. Despite our differences, much more unites us than divides us. We are fellow Americans, an association that means more to me than any other.
(Here was Obama on McCain one week ago:
Let there be no doubt. The Republican nominee, John McCain, has worn the uniform of our country with bravery and distinction, and for that we owe him our gratitude and our respect.)
Of course that note in McCain's speech clashed with all other references to Obama -- that I heard -- from the convention podium. It did remind us of the innocent days when people thought a McCain-Obama contest might mainly be about principles of government and ways to solve impacted problems, rather than a reprise of the Culture Wars that is becoming surprisingly more acrid than it was in 2000 or 2004.
On the other hand, another part of McCain's speech was consistent with what the other speakers said:
I'm grateful to the President for leading us in those dark days following the worst attack on American soil in our history, and keeping us safe from another attack many thought was inevitable..
The President? Hmmm, I wonder who that might be? Could it be, perhaps, the sitting two-term incumbent of the same party holding its convention? The person whose economic and military policies shape the environment the next president will deal with?
As best I can tell, in the tens of thousands of words making up the combined remarks of John McCain, Sarah Palin, Rudy Giuliani, Mike Huckabee, Mitt Romney, Fred Thompson, and Lindsay Graham, the Name That Must Not Be Uttered appeared exactly once, in this sentence by Romney:
George Bush labeled the terror-sponsor states the Axis of Evil.
Perhaps Mitt's speechwriters did not get the message. Or perhaps it would be more comfortable for all involved if we applied the theological solution devised in Old Testament times and remove blasphemous potential from the name by rendering it B-SH.
Update: I wrote this hours before seeing the very similar reference to He Who Must Not Be Named --same guy! -- in Paul Krugman's column just now.
September 4, 2008
Mea culpa
I mentioned yesterday (here and here) that I remembered listening, in my schoolboy Goldwaterite days, to the powerful speech by Ronald Reagan in 1964 that didn't get Goldwater into the White House but that did bring Reagan to national political prominence.
I thought it was at the Republican convention at the Cow Palace in San Francisco. It wasn't; it came after the convention was over, as a nationwide TV address during the campaign. Apologies for the mistake.
Some other effective convention speeches
I mentioned earlier that "twice in modern history" convention speeches had elevated the speaker into the ranks of future presidential contenders. The two I had in mind were Ronald Reagan's at the 1964 GOP convention in San Francisco and Barack Obama's at the 2004 Democratic convention in Boston.
Readers Frank Gallagher and Scott Rifkin point out that, depending on how you define "modern history," two more speeches might go on the list. They would be Hubert Humphrey's brave pro-civil rights address at the 1948 Democratic convention in Philadelphia, and William Jennings Bryan's renowned "Cross of Gold" speech at the 1896 Democratic convention in Chicago. Bryan technically doesn't qualify, since he was the presidential nominee that same year. Still, it was an important convention speech.
Some video clips of Humphrey delivering that speech here. Amazingly, the Encyclopedia Brittanica has a 35-second audio clip of Bryan giving his speech 112 years ago, including a few seconds' worth of video of him speaking, here.
For what it's worth, three of these four Big Speeches were followed by
the defeat of the candidate chosen at that convention. Bryan lost to William McKinley in 1896;
Goldwater to LBJ in 1964; and of course Kerry to GW Bush four years ago. Only Harry Truman
held on for victory, over Thomas Dewey, after Humphrey's speech in
1948. Which we'll take as an omen if McCain loses this year, and an anomaly if he wins.
A word more on Palin and the riskiness of mockery
I have received a number of emails to the effect of: I'm a conservative, and I can't tell you how fired up and excited I am by Sarah Palin's speech. Finally we have a fresh, new face who will tell it like it is.
Noted. As I wrote just after Palin finished speaking, in the jet-lag blur accompanying the latest 14-hour flight back to Beijing, the speech was effective, funny, and strong in summing up the views of "the base." It would be as if Barack Obama had chosen Al Franken as his running mate -- and Franken had let rip at the convention with the anti-Bush, anti-Republican one-liners he refined in his Air America / "Big Fat Idiot" days.
But, as suggested earlier, there are two problems with this approach, which seem more evident as clips are played and replayed.
Twice in modern history very strong convention speeches have elevated politicians to an entirely different level of future potential and prominence. One, of course, was Barack Obama's keynote at the convention in Boston four years ago. The other, which I remember watching as a schoolboy Goldwaterite, was Ronald Reagan's speech supporting Goldwater at the San Francisco convention in 1964.
I don't think Sarah Palin's speech will be in that category.
She passed the "expectations" test -- despite coming after the very effective Rudy Giuliani --and brought the house down with cheers. She had a number of strong, biting lines -- including the one about John McCain being the only person on the ticket who had literally fought for the country, Here are the potential longer-term problems:
- No more Mr. Nice Guy. The speech was surprisingly negative and mocking. You can see why Rush Limbaugh has been such a fan of hers: if these words were delivered by someone older, less attractive, and male, they could have come straight from a Limbaugh radio monologue. The upside here is making "the base" much more enthusiastic than it was before. Potential drawback: having taken this tone, she's exposed herself to more direct, aggressive attack by the Dems than she has received so far. (So far, the Dems have been able to stand back and let the press do the anti-Palin work.) No more Mr. Nice Guy from Joe Biden or anyone else.
- The Hillary factor. The day-one theorizing about her selection was that she might draw some disaffected female Hillary supporters. I can see how the speech would motivate some previously-tepid conservatives. It is hard for me to imagine a lot of HRC Democrats -- either long-time feminists or people mainly worried about economic trends -- being attracted by the content or the tone of the speech.
- Fact checking. The speech took the "press is the enemy" theme to an extreme in dropping in a bunch of claims and factlets that the McCain team knows will be immediately picked apart by the press. For instance, her claimed opposition to earmarks and "bridge to nowhere." I guess they figure, they'll stick with their side of the story and say "there you go again!" when the press points out errors and holes.
- Abqaiq. The foreign policy grace notes in the speech, including pronouncing the phrase "Abqaiq facility in Saudi Arabia," struck me like George W. Bush's dropping in the names of foreign leaders during his 2000 campaign -- as a way of showing that he knew them. This doesn't remove the peril of what the first actual press conference on international issues, or the first debate with Joe Biden, might hold.
- Nothing off limits. Barack Obama has used his family as a prop from time to time -- most recently, bringing the charming girls onto the stage at the end of his convention speech. That's life in politics; everybody does it to some degree.Very few politicians do it as all-out as Sarah Palin just did, from citing the disabilities of her youngest child as part of her resume to including the shotgun groom of her elder daughter. I can't recall any spectacle comparable to Baby Trig being passed from Cindy McCain, to Trig's 7-year-old sister, to Palin herself when she ended the speech. Her husband looks charming, I have to say. From this point on it will be hard for her to declare anything about her personal or family life out-of-bounds.
- Throw the bums out. The policy/content heart of the speech was the idea that the old ways and old gang in DC need to be shaken up. This is another doubling-down bet on the base rather than an appeal to independents, because it depends on people not stopping to say: Wait a minute, what party has been in charge in DC for most of the last eight years? Where exactly are McCain's policies really different from Bush's?
To return to the main theme: both Reagan in 1964 and Obama in 2004 were effective because, apart from their personal skills, they added something to their party's constituency that had not been there before. Reagan began recruiting the "Reagan Democrats," starting with white Southerners. Obama tried to recruit people tired of divisive partisanship.
Sarah Palin, at least tonight, did not seem interested in bringing anyone new into the fold. A speech that was great in the convention hall. We'll see how it affects the electoral lineup.
September 3, 2008
Giuliani's attack speech: credit where it is due
I was not a big admirer of Rudy Giuliani on the campaign trail, since (as Joe Biden pointed out) his foreign policy boiled down to variations on: "9/11 -- any questions?"
But he is by far the most joyously effective speaker so far in making the anti-Obama/Biden case. His little riff on "Maybe Gov Palin's home town is not .... cosmopolitan enough for Senator Obama" had its nasty undertone but as delivered was pretty funny. If the Republicans know what they're doing, they'll have him as point man of the attack machine for the next two months.
OTOH: By the logic of his "zero" passage -- Obama has never led or run anything, zero, a passage that was wildly popular in the arena -- what, exactly, has McCain ever run? Unless he was head of a unit of naval aviators, it would seem that his managerial experience is identical to Obama's: They biggest thing each has run is a nationwide campaign this year. Still, an effective job by Rudy.
UPDATE: Did I hear this right? Early in the speech, Giuliani quoted the old saw about jury trials, which usually goes: "If the facts are against you, cite the law; if the law is against you, cite the facts." But as I heard it, Rudy said: "If the facts are against you, change them."
Could he really have said that? Freudian slip??
Back to politics: Huckabee's weird rhetorical flourish
I like Mike Huckabee, but the emotional big-finish aspect of his speech just now was one of the weirdest such homilies I have ever heard.
If you didn't hear it, it was a long, folksy story whose moral was important and completely true: every generation of Americans owes its liberties, its institutions, its prosperity, and many of its other bounties to previous generations who have fought for, built, and preserved the elements that make America free, rich, and strong.
(Story in a nutshell: on the first day of school, students are puzzled to see no desks in one classroom. The teacher won't let them have desks until they explain how students "earn" a desk. Punchline, delivered as a row of decorated veterans bring the desks in: You don't have to earn them! These people already earned them for you.)
Why the story is weird, apart from the fact that the teacher was putting the question in a deliberately obscure way: Every country has desks in the classrooms! This has absolutely zero to do with what makes America great and what Americans have died to protect and defend. Burma has no freedoms, but I have seen its students sitting there at desks. I have seen the same in Kenya and Vietnam. There are school desks in Cuba and North Korea. The old Soviet Union was full of 'em.
You want to make this story work, you tie it to something that actually is unique to a free society: Eg, a voter registrar tells people "You can't vote, until you tell me how you earn the right to vote" -- and then ushers in veterans to say, We earned it for you. Or a jury trial. Or a church service Or the right to complain about a government policy. Or a seat in a university that has been allowed to flourish despite official government doctrine. Or people being sworn in as naturalized citizens. Or a thousand other touches of real American freedom.
A minor point, so why mention it: somehow a little portion of each of our brains and souls is zapped away each time a prominent figure says something that is obvious nonsense -- remember, the Nazis had school desks too! -- and knows he can count on a cheer by a closing reference to country and flag.
Now on to watching Rudy Giuliani, who I am sure will employ no such b.s. tricks .
UPDATE: This post a year and a half ago from World Wide Webers explained the full background of the strange desk story. I thought the story was just nonsensical. It turns out to be both nonsensical and cliched.
