Our bumpy electoral system (random data point)

I have missed voting in only one presidential election during the many years in which I've been eligible. It wasn't in 1988, while we were living in Japan -- and when we succeeded in getting absentee ballots so we could vote in Washington DC. My one omission was, gasp, the razor's-edge 2000 election*, but I was voting in California that year, where the race wasn't even close.

I'm getting worried that 2008 may be my second no-show. Something like one percent of the entire electorate is voting from overseas, or so I am told by various expatriate groups. In any case it's enough to make a difference in close elections and close states. My vote is not likely to make an Electoral College difference, as my non-vote didn't eight years ago. (I'm voting in DC.) But I really like voting anyway, and here's how it has gone.

In theory, voting from overseas is easy. The requirements are:

Being registered. No sweat. Fully signed up in DC.

Request an ballot, through this streamlined form at VoteFromAbroad.org. This is a great site that provides a great service. You tell it where you're registered, and it pulls up the right official form to request an absentee ballot from your state. Our your District, in our case. My wife and I filled out the forms to get our DC ballots. We listed a friend's address in DC where the ballots could be sent (if mailed to China they would never get here), and we gave the request forms to a friend headed to SF to mail them in early September. (If mailed from China they would never get there.)

But.... the absentee ballots never arrived. Rather, as of the moment I write, nearly eight weeks after they were requested, have not yet arrived at our US address. So we go to the...

Emergency write-in provision. To allow for circumstances like ours, another site conveniently lets you print out a write-in ballot for president, which you can mail to your home jurisdiction. Write in ballots available here or here (Republican- and Democratic-sponsored sites). To qualify, you have to do what we've already done: already be registered, already have requested the absentee ballot, but not yet have received it.

So, we printed out those absentee ballots, hand-wrote in our choices for President and VP, and gave them to another US-bound friend to mail. Will they ever get there? Will they ever be counted? We will never know. So I just hope the election is not close. At least not in DC.

My compatriots based in America: enjoy your convenient right to vote!
____
* Bizarrely, just before the election I was flying a small airplane across the country to the Berkeley CA area, where we were living at the time. I planned to arrive at the Concord CA airport on the night before the election. But an early blizzard and ice storm kept me grounded in Duluth for four days, and I watched the election and preliminary recount drama from bars in the Lake Street area while drinking Minnesota's own Summit beer.

An essay by someone who has never worked in a political campaign (updated)

From the Wall Street Journal op-ed page:

There is something odd -- and dare I say novel -- in American politics about the crowds that have been greeting Barack Obama on his campaign trail. Hitherto, crowds have not been a prominent feature of American politics.

What???  A general-election presidential campaign consists, roughly speaking, of appearing before one crowd after another all day long. I know this from having worked in one, but all you have to do is watch TV to get the idea.

I know, it is hardly shocking that the WSJ would publish a piece suggesting that Barack Obama is the wrong man for the times. (This one by Fouad Ajami.) Nor that it would reach, Pravda-like, to find the latest argument against him. Haven't looked, but I bet that when Sarah Palin was drawing big crowds the Journal's editorialists noted this with approval.

But doesn't a certain self-protective "wait a minute, can we really say that?" instinct kick in at some point? Are there no copy editors any more?

Update: Actually, there are no copy editors any more! Marge duMond, head of the crack copy editing team at our own Atlantic Monthly, reminds me of this dispatch soon after the Murdoch takeover of the WSJ, which disclosed that the WSJ was laying off large numbers of its editors. The Journal's new managing editor said:

The reformed structure means that it is essential for reporters and bureau chiefs to ensure that copy filed to the news desk is clean...

Yes, that's a foolproof plan.

After the Obama infomercial

Let's review what we have seen from Barack Obama through the two years of his campaign:

- Skills in formal oratory that, in my view, you'd have to go back to John F. Kennedy to match. Bill Clinton could, and can, hold an audience spellbound, but his speeches are a collection of brilliant apercus more than a central argued-out idea. (Illustrative experience: read one of Clinton's books, and read Obama's first book.) In his main speeches, starting with the 2004 Boston convention speech and with a particular highlight in the "Jeremiah Wright" speech about race in Philadelphia, Obama has been both interesting to listen to serious in trying to present a main idea. The other competitor would be Ronald Reagan. I don't think most of his speeches pass the "serious big idea" test, but I know that some people do.

- Skills in using technology to raise money for which there is no real precedent (as Josh Green was one of the first to describe, in this Atlantic article).

- Skills in Get Out the Vote organizational efforts that we saw in the Iowa primary and which we're primed to look for next Tuesday.

- Skills in one-on-one debating technique that led to all three presidential debates being seen by the public as big Obama wins. And now, with the informercial:

-  Skills in telling stories (and evoking emotions) through pictures that we associate mainly with Reagan and no one since.

- And (update) skill in personal presentation, which means that the candidate is never seen as being testy, rarely seems rattled, seems to know where he wants to go and makes some progress every day -- the only candidate this really resembles is Ronald Reagan.
 
We can wonder later on -- and, minus something we can't now imagine, we can wonder pretty soon -- about the organizational and analytic skills Obama will display in office. But as a collection of talents brought to bear in a campaign, this is quite remarkable. And the sequential underestimations -- by the Hillary Clinton camp, and now by the Republicans -- will merit future analysis.

A modest step against "security theater" -- in Beijing!

As recently mentioned here, with links to many other articles and posts, the phenomenon of "security theater" that both Jeff Goldberg and I have discussed in Atlantic articles is an unfortunate world-wide trend.

Security theater is typified by make believe measures that make it seem as if authorities are "doing something" about security but that may have little connection to the threats that are most serious or the ways they might be thwarted. In the old days, an example would be the "have these bags been in your possession?..." catechism at airport check-in counters. These days, the reflexive demand to "show ID" before going into buildings or the ignored-by-all recordings in US airports that begin, "This is a security announcement. The threat level is elevated.."

The other classic trait of worldwide security theater is the ratchet-like irreversibility of the process. For instance, as mentioned in my earlier post, some of the "special Olympic" security precautions instituted this summer in Beijing show no sign of ever going away. (Like bag screening for all subway passengers.) There is a bureaucratic/political explanation for this, which is that no one is likely to be blamed for the cost or inconvenience of such measures, whereas any public official can easily imagine the resulting witch hunt if a "precaution" were removed and... something went wrong.

But here's an exception!   A few hours ago, I arrived at the new international terminal at Beijing Capital airport -- the one with the delightful airport identifier PEK -- and found myself simply able to walk in from the sidewalk through the main entrance door. None of the one-by-one machine scanning of bags, wiping them for explosive residue, or sniffing by bomb-dogs that had caused long lines in the entry corridors all this summer. Those practices started about a month before the Olympics, but some time recently someone apparently was willing to take the risk of calling them off. Worth noticing.

This hardly seems sporting

On the right, the brave little USB memory stick of yesteryear, now retired.

On the left, the new, metal-clad, password-protected, online-backed-up, run-over-it-with-a-truck-and-it-will laugh, RSA-encrypted, programmed-to-self-destruct-if-you-enter-the-wrong password-too-manytimes, IRONKEY that is replacing it, kindly sent by a friend. That's the actual metallic ironkey in the middle, sitting on top of its explanatory brochure.

 


The USB stick is heard to say, "But I was pretty strong too! For my size."

Phonetics & politics

As previously noted, foreign names and nouns often suffer badly in the transition into Chinese characters, mainly because Chinese phonetics has no way of rendering a number of sounds common in English and other Western languages. For instance: no good way to render a string of two or three consonants in a row, like the str sound that begins "string" or nds that ends "ends."  Details another time.

As a result, it can a real cryptic/rebus type challenge to figure out what foreign name a Chinese translation is meant to represent. During Olympic basketball games, Kaiwen Jianeite was the local name for Kevin Garnett.

But some foreign names work just fine. For instance, one made exclusively of simple vowel or consonant-vowel sequences. The three Chinese characters 奥巴马 very nicely and naturally spell out the sequence O BA MA.  (The O usually rendered AO, but close enough; it also was used as the first syllable of Olympics.) Thus, from a local Beijing expat booster:
 


Perhaps it helps that "Obama" is not itself originally a Western name? "McCain" is a little more of a challenge, rendered in characters 麦凯恩, or MAI KAI EN. I think of the first character, which literally has to do with grains, as homage to Scotland, since it's also the beginning of McDonald's in Chinese: 麦当劳, MAI DANG LAO.

Have seen a number of Happy Meal-themed 麦当劳 apparel on the street during my time in China. Nothing yet with GOP-themed 麦凯恩. And I'm still waiting to see an Olympic/election hybred-themed shirt saying something like 奥巴马 加油!*
_____
 *The story of 加油, "Let's go!" also explained here.

Chuck Spinney makes another call (updated)

Six weeks ago, at the peak of the post-GOP convention bubble of enthusiasm about Sarah Palin, when John McCain was ahead in tracking polls and Barack Obama was buffeted by "Muslim" and "celebrity" and "elitist" attacks, Chuck Spinney, the former defense analyst, made a call that looks very good in retrospect. He said, in part:

"I am beginning to sense that McCain's behavior is destroying himself and that Obama has the good sense or instinct to take a deep step back and let McCain dig a hole so deep he can not get out....I have this vague sense that Obama's goal (maybe instinct is a better word) may be to create an atmosphere (perhaps by looking weak, inter alia)  that encourages McCain to reinforce this self destructive behavior and thereby make his hypocrisy obvious to a majority of the undecided voters."

 His full dispatch is quoted here. An earlier, very prescient call during the Obama-Hillary Clinton showdown in the primaries is here.

Here is his latest judgment, in an email:

How much do you want to bet the Sarah Palin won't replace Ted Stevens after being induced to run in a special election by "popular demand"?

I have learned not to bet against Chuck. This possibility is indeed interesting.

Update: As many readers have politely pointed out, this scenario depends on Stevens being re-elected one week from now, and then leaving or being forced from his seat to open a vacancy. The "being re-elected" part seems increasingly unlikely. Still, Spinney made the right, timely calls in the previous cases!

'My Beijing Birthday,' now in Beijing

Last week I mentioned how much I enjoyed and admired the documentary film My Beijing Birthday, which was having a special showing in Hong Kong.

This week it's having another screening in Beijing -- tomorrow night, Tuesday, October 28. Details below.

The trailer for the film, here, which I didn't mention before, will give you an idea of the approach and tone, including the before-and-after of kids who were playful tots in 1996 and have changed in heartening and heartrending ways since. I can't recommend this highly enough.

EVENT DETAILS:

Date:       Tuesday 28th October 2008

Time:       18:00 Registration

                18:30 Screening 

Venue: Saatchi & Saatchi

The Penthouse 36/F Central International Trade Centre Tower C

6A Jianguomen Wai Avenue, Beijing, China 100022

Our U.S. banker overlords

As my friend Joe Nocera pointed out in his terrific piece yesterday in the NY Times, some of the (shameless) banks that have benefited from the huge public bailout bill are (shamelessly) planning to use the money not to loosen up lending to their client businesses, helping to offset the inevitable damage to the "real" economy that the credit freeze-up is causing. Instead they are using it as cheap capital for their own expansion plans.

Grrrrrrr.  Or as Nocera put it, after hearing a JP Morgan Chase official indiscreetly confess this plan:

[T]he dirty little secret of the banking industry is that it has no intention of using the money to make new loans. But this executive was the first insider who's been indiscreet enough to say it within earshot of a journalist.

 I asked another industry insider about this -- and about whose fault the misallocation (waste, diversion, rip-off -- choose your term) was. This person made clear that the same behavior should be expected from other banks, starting with Citibank, and he gave this explanation:

Frankly I think the fault lies with Paulson (and his boss...). The bankers didn't ask for it. Paulson pushed it on them. (Read WallStreet Journal commentary on the meeting, from witnesses) but after the bankers realized they had no choice but to say yes, they also saw it was an incredible gift which floated from the sky: cheap equity

I don't think there's sufficient public awareness of a profound diversion of $ 250 BILLION which got shifted deftly from "starting to fix the mortgage-backed security crisis" to "relatively low cost equity to banks for them to use however they see fit".

Remember that 35-year old guy who Paulson was going to appoint to oversee the purchasing program of the mortgage-backed securities? What's his job now? I imagine he has little to do anymore (because $ 250 billion of the initial $ 350 billion -- within the total $700 billion TARP program [Troubled Asset Relief Program]-- has already been earmarked for this "nice new equity" deal" hence the 35-year old only has the rump $ 100 billion to play with).

Ps I don't think it was design. I think it was impromptu. Paulson had been fixated on the asset purchase program up until time Congress approved the $ 700 BN TARP. Then Gordon Brown in UK applied the bank equity deal in England for some UK banks. And a day or two later, Paulson followed the UK practice shifting away from asset purchase to equity donation.

Financial press has made it clear that the UK came up with the formula which Washington (ie Paulson) eventually adopted. But US public is very much unaware

This will become a bigger issue.

Subversive Panda II: More freedom, more confusion (updated)

Recently I mentioned the winsome advertising-panda of the Dongsishitiao subway stop in Beijing. (Cameo reminder photo below; previous post here, with link to larger picture.)



I asserted that the English version of the slogan -- "More Freedom, More Happiness" -- was ambiguous in a subtly provocative way. Was the beloved symbol of the Chinese nation really saying, "the freer you are, the happier you will be"? Or saying that only to visitors who could read the English translation? Or saying it inadvertently via mistranslation?

As for the Chinese version of his slogan, 更多自由, 更多欢乐 -- that is, the version that 99.9% of the passersby would pay attention to -- I (wisely!) declared myself agnostic on how that should be read. And I had no explanation for the oddity of a panda talking about freedom in the first place.

The wisdom of the readers:

1) Many people, Chinese and otherwise, said that the ad was really a way of stressing that the pandas of Chengdu and greater Sichuan province now enjoyed bigger, freer enclosures than before and therefore are happier.  Sounds like a stretch to me, but: OK. More on the pandas of Sichuan and the now-destroyed Wolong Panda Reserve in this article and this slideshow and these posts.

     1A) One man suggested that it was an ad for tea. The cup in the panda's hand paw in fact says "tea." 

     UPDATE 1B): John Zhu and some other native-speakers of Chinese have said that the "freedom" implied by the term 自由 really implies the ease, leisure, and kicking-back approach to life with which Chengdu is associated. By this reasoning, the ad is speaking neither about bigger enclosures for pandas, nor wider political liberties for people, but simply a nice-and-easy vacation in Sichuan.

2) I have had a delightful and instructive introduction to the mysteries of language via emails like the two I list after the jump. Basically the pattern has been this: an expert on the Chinese language who is not a native speaker (linguistics professor, long-time resident, etc) writes to say: "Obviously the Chinese phrase means X..." The meaning of X varies from one expert to another. Then a native Chinese speaker will write in to say, "I dunno... could mean one thing, could mean the other."

3) And, with gratitude to all who wrote, my favorite reply was from reader KS who said that Subversive Panda "will be the name I suggest for my son's rock band, when he's old enough to have a rock band."

Illustrations of point 2, below.
________

Continue reading "Subversive Panda II: More freedom, more confusion (updated)" »

More on the lean times / VC / startup front

In three accounts over the last week and a half (here, here, and here), I've mentioned how the chaos of financial markets is spreading to the tech sector, and what that might mean for the timing, scale, and duration of damage to the "real" economy in which companies make products and create jobs. 

Continue reading "More on the lean times / VC / startup front" »

Subversive panda?

A subway ad, at the Dongsishitiao station on Beijing's Line 2, that involves a very interesting language issue. I've passed by this ad a number of times in the last month but didn't have a camera handy until now.



English speakers could, I think, read these English words in two ways:
    1) More freedom, and also more happiness (no causal relationship, "bigger and better"); or
    2) The greater the freedom, the greater the happiness (cause-effect, "the more, the merrier").

I've gotten different views from my native Chinese-speaking friends about the connotations of the Chinese version, 更多自由, 更多欢乐. Some say that it could be read both ways, like English; others, that it mainly means #1. So there are various possibilities here, all interesting: that this is a slyly subversive message in both languages; that it is an unintentional transmission of a subversive message though inexact translation; or that it is a fully intentional and brilliantly conceived transmission in English only, letting foreign-language readers conclude that an increase-freedom campaign is underway.

I can't say, but I'm tantalized by the possibilities.

What is has to do in either language with panda-themed tourism is a different question.

For old times' sake (updated)

Beijing, 3pm, October 22, 2008 -- 32 days after the Olympic/Paralympic emergency "clean air" rules came to an end. Feels like home again!



UPDATE: After a big thunderstorm last night and passage of a cold front, it's beautiful the following morning. Picture shortlybelow.

Here is what a good cold front will do! Same pattern during the Olympics. For the first two days of the Games, despite all the cleanup measures, the air was opaque. Then a powerful cold front brought intense thunderstorms, and behind it clear, cooler dry air. Problem is, the fast-moving fronts are much rarer in northern China than in the eastern two-thirds of North America,where they're moving through every few days. Subject for another time.

For now, the view on October 23, 2008, at noon:

Must-see in Hong Kong: 'My Beijing Birthday'

If you're in Hong Kong tomorrow night, October 23, and you're not hospitalized, in jail, running the control tower at Hong Kong airport, or otherwise in possession of a good excuse for not attending, please get to the Hong Kong Arts Center by 7pm to see a screening of the wonderful hour-long documentary, My Beijing Birthday. Details here.

My wife and I saw a preview screening of the film before a small audience in Beijing back in July. (The audience was small mainly because of the pre-Olympic Beijing security hysteria. Authorities were discouraging or prohibiting gatherings of any size, for any reason, on grounds of general paranoia.) My main reaction after seeing it was the hope that very large audiences would be able to see it soon.

The set-up and plot-line sound bizarre when described. Howie Snyder, a New Yorker and skillful Mandarin-speaker now in his 40s, was in Beijing twelve years ago attending a school for traditional Chinese "cross-talk" stand-up comics. All the other students in the class were Chinese eight-year-olds. They specialize young here. Part of the film is footage of Snyder and his classmates back then; the other part is a revisit to the school this year, showing very dramatically what the passage of time has meant for Snyder, for the city of Beijing, for the tough-but-heart-of-gold director of the school, and for the kids, now age 20.

The film is funny and poignant in its own right; it made me fonder of Beijing than I would otherwise be; and it is one of the most powerful demonstrations of a theme I've tried to get across in most articles for the Atlantic: that this is a great big country not of a billion-person mass but of a billion-plus highly individualistic people.

See it in Hong Kong, or see it someplace else, as Snyder continues to work out distribution deals. (I believe it is now on the film-festival circuit.) You will thank me.

Sobering news dept: The Hobbesian world of startups

Twice in the last week (here and here) I've mentioned the presentation that a leading California VC firm, Sequoia Capital, gave to CEOs of the companies it had funded. The message was: severe turbulence ahead, strap yourselves in, and to survive you must throw every bit of surplus weight and cargo (ie, employees and expansion plans) off the craft.

My friend the business strategist Lawrence Wilkinson (who is involved in a company with one of my family members) recently posted a fascinating item on his "Scenarios and Strategy" site about the other side of this interaction: the ways some private equity firms are using tough times to get very tough on the companies they have backed.

The tension between funders and entrepreneurs is familiar and well-explored territory. Any interesting account of the tech economy presents it as a major theme. To take one example from many possibilities: Charles Ferguson's High Stakes, No Prisoners, the tale of creating and selling his own tech company. Yes, this is the same Ferguson who last year produced the influential Iraq documentary No End in Sight. The basic tension of course arises from the fact that VCs want to use the scarce resource they control -- money -- to get more of the scarce resource that company founders control, namely shares of corporate ownership, including the cut of the rewards if a startup makes it big.

But Wilkinson, who has seen many rounds of this battle before, says it has taken on a newly nasty tone. According to him, many of VCs and other funders are now saying: bad times mean your company isn't growing as fast as we hoped. So, we will take more of "your" share:

I've been awash in reports, some in the press, some from friends, of private equity investors leaning on the companies in which they have stakes to reprice those stakes- to give the investors more.  The arguments from one case to the next are idiosyncratically different in their details, but they all have the same general thrust:  "we made our investments expecting more growth than it now seems likely the company will achieve, so you (the company) should give us a bigger stake."...

The issue is in no way misrepresentation... The issue that called the question was.. the sudden dramatic downturn in the economy:  credit is tight; anxiety is high; spending has dropped like a rock...  a situation triggered- and to some extent at least, abetted, if not indeed caused- by the excesses of the very financial firms now doing the demanding.

I've been around long enough to have gone through several busts; I've learned that many (if not most) investors understand opportunism to be not just their right, but their obligation.  (And indeed, I've seen some forms of opportunism contribute powerfully to turn-arounds.)  But I've never seen opportunism practiced in such a rapacious way as these recent days- nor, I'd suggest, so desperately nor short-sightedly selfishly....

It's a situation all too resonant with the first version of the Paulson Bail-out Plan: privatize the upside; socialize the risk.

The whole thing is worth reading, and is another illustration of the ways in which the recent  financial turmoil, serious enough on its own, is taking on a more destructive and longer-lasting form as it begins to burden the operations of the "real" economy.

I don't quite believe this, but... (USB finale+1)

This really is the last chapter in the saga of the brave little USB stick. (Multi-part background here.)

To helpful friends writing in to say that it is time to give the poor thing a rest, leave it on the shelf in its treasure box, don't risk shorting out the whole laptop, and for God's sake use some of the other USB memory devices sitting around the house, I say: Thanks! Got it! Already put this plan into effect!

But before it goes away for good, this final USB achievement to note. Yesterday, one day out of its WD-40 bath, the USB stick would properly store and list files, but apparently had something wrong enough with it that it could not pass the integrity test for Windows Vista's "Ready Boost" function.

Today, it passes that test. Proof in the Vista screen shot below. The ReadyBoost cache is the next to last file listed, 4GBs in size. I won't say "USB Stick, heal thyself!," but something happened.

And as soon as that shot was taken, the plucky device was "Safely Removed" from its slot and placed in its satin-lined box, where it watches over the rest of the tech establishment. Talk about going out on top.

USB: Finale

It is time to revisit our friend, the brave little USB.

As previous accounts have described, it has been a difficult couple of months for this blameless device. Two inadvertent trips through a Beijing washer and dryer, each followed by restorative dunks in WD-40; loss of protective carapace, rotted away by this same WD-40 or perhaps the local air; and most recently and alarmingly, a heart-stopping pop, spark, and instant shutdown when drops of Chinese beer "somehow" got on it the USB's naked circuitry while it was plugged in and operating.

Sigh.

This morning, after a weekend's thorough laving and drying, I plugged it in once again, expectations low. I powered up the computer, and -- see for yourself, this time on a Mac:



Different-angle live action shot:

In case it's not obvious, the red light in the middle shows that the USB is still working. For further proof, here's a screen shot of the files on USB stick, done just after I created a new file with today's date and saved it directly onto the USB. If I had a live-audio feature, you could confirm that I am now playing "Sittin' on the Dock of the Bay" from the MP3 file shown:
 


So, what have we learned from this heartbreaking, inspiring, and unavoidably embarrassing set of mishaps? Relevant questions and answers after the jump.
________

Continue reading "USB: Finale " »

Non-politics: David Allen's 'GTD Times'

It was only four years ago that I wrote in the Atlantic about David Allen, the "productivity expert" and inventor of the influential Getting Things Done (GTD) approach to life. I say "only" four years because it feels as if Allen and his outlook have been with me for a much longer time.

It's hard to top the wonderful LifeHacker blog as a source for practical tips about gadgetry workplace tools, habits, and shortcuts, many in the GTD spirit. But for the last six months, David Allen's organization has been operating its own "official" blog, called GTD Times. I like it -- and as a sample, I direct your attention to this recent post, arguing that you really do become dumber and slower if you try to do too many things at the same time. This applies not only to that modern plague of texting-while-driving (or walking) but also to having a zillion IM and other popup windows on your screen while you work. For doubters, there is a sobering online test to demonstrate the point, taken from the book The Myth of Multitasking.

What other point was I going to make? I forget, I was thinking about something else...

The little USB stick...

... is going to make it! (Background here.)

Photos and case report when it comes out of the recovery room.

Phew.

Three colleagues

Often I make some explanatory or background comment about my own article in each new issue of the Atlantic. But I don't like to say much about other articles, because on the merits I'd end up saying: Hey, read them all, they're all great! Usually, and especially in this issue, they are.

For special reasons I want to mention three current items by my colleagues.

1) Jeffrey Goldberg's hilarious-but-serious takedown of the TSA. The wasteful spectacle of "security theater" has been on my mind for a long time, as the folly of this system was evident from pretty near the start. Very soon after 9/11, the only two airline-security measures that really matter -- fortified cockpit doors, and the vigilance of a flying public that now knows what a hijacking can mean -- were in place. Since then we've erected an edifice that imposes a huge indirect cost on the traveling public while (as Jeff points out in the article) doing very little to discourage serious terrorist threats. Two years ago in the Atlantic, I quoted John Mueller, author of Overblown, to similar effect:

The widely held view among security experts is that this airport spending is largely for show. Strengthened cockpit doors and a flying public that knows what happened on 9/11 mean that commercial airliners are highly unlikely to be used again as targeted flying bombs. "The inspection process is mostly security theater, to make people feel safe about flying," says John Mueller, a political scientist at Ohio State and the author of a forthcoming book about the security-industrial complex.

But there seems to be a ratchet effect in "security theater" projects. Once a "safeguard"  is adopted, no one dares propose taking it down. Here in Beijing, X-ray screening for all handbags, briefcases, and other parcels taken onto the subway was introduced as a special Olympic-security measure last July. The games are gone, but the screeners (and the long lines of people waiting in front of them) are still there. If logic and evidence had any power to change a system, Jeff Goldberg's article would have some effect.

2) Barbara Wallraff, in the latest entry in her new Atlantic blog, asks for a word to describe people whose street etiquette takes a certain form. My nominee is "the people of Beijing and Shanghai." I was actually planning to write something about the mysterious difference between Chinese and Japanese walking-styles on the street. (Pedestrians in Tokyo, in general, act as if they're aware that ten million other people need to fit onto the same streets, and make themselves small. Pedestrians in Shanghai or Beijing, in the same overgeneralization, act as if they're the only ones walking and make themselves big.) Details, theory, evidence, and photos for another time.

3) Andrew Sullivan, in this item, has very nice and accurate things to say about the Atlantic's elegant redesign, and about the virtues of actually subscribing to the magazine. He is right on all counts -- and also has a very polished and non-bloggish essay about blogs in this issue. As for subscribing, in the short term the physical magazine really is an important complement to the (ever more important) web site, in that it can combine photos, art, and text in a way not matched on screen. I feel this difference very keenly overseas, where I get print issues five or six weeks late. It's simply different to read a magazine like this on a designed page. And in the long run, this is part of how businesses like ours survive.
 

Intersecting arcs: McCain, Powell

The plotlines and character-motivations of the two Bush Administrations, 41 & 43, are perhaps too broad and obvious ever to support a first-rate novel. At least that is what reviews of Oliver Stone's W suggest to those, like me, who have not seen the film. (Not yet on the pirate-video market here in Beijing. Maybe next week.) Or if could be simply that Stone and other Bush chroniclers have taken a family saga of Shakespearean scale and presented it without corresponding richness and nuance.

Still, someone will eventually do something compelling with the intersecting stories of John McCain and Colin Powell, including the latest chapter that began today.

Close contemporaries, born eight months apart; both headed toward military careers, but from very different starting points -- immigrants' son, versus son and grandson of admirals. Lives changed by the Vietnam War, including ultimately putting both on the track to top-level politics.

Powell declining to take what could have been a promising path to the Republican nomination in 2000; McCain trying hard for that nomination but losing out to a slime-rich campaign by GW Bush and Karl Rove. It was during a debate in this campaign that McCain delivered his famous and withering line directly to Bush's face, about his campaign's character-assassination ads. The line, spat out with more contempt than anything McCain later displayed toward Obama, was "You should be ashamed" -- and, when Bush tried to answer, "You should be ashamed."

After that, diverging arcs: Powell providing cover and legitimacy for the Bush-Cheney WMD argument in favor of the Iraq war, and despite acclaim for his record as Secretary of State clearly understanding how his historical standing had been diminished. McCain increasing his "maverick" reputation, before that term became a joke, right through his defense of John Kerry against the Bush-Rove Swift Boat ads in 2004.

And now the arcs reverse again. Powell, with his endorsement of Obama, taking a cleansing step not because he is endorsing a Democrat or the person who, instead of him, has a chance to become the first black President. But rather because Powell is at last free to say the many "Cut the crap!" things that his fealty to the Administration had kept him from saying publicly while in office or until now, ranging from the perverse effects of anti-Muslim hysteria to the dangers of scorched earth political campaigns.

Meanwhile, John McCain, once laid low by those very tactics, embracing them as his best chance for victory this year. Powell, tainted by his association with the Bush Administration, choosing at age 71 to restore his reputation for recognition of higher principles. McCain, who earlier opposed Bush tactics, choosing at age 72 a path that in the end is likely to bring him both defeat and dishonor. Maybe we need a Shakespeare to do this story justice.
 

On Obama's steadiness

As mentioned yesterday, what struck me most, in reviewing Barack Obama's oratorical and debate performance since the first cattle-call, Gravel-equipped televised primary debate early last year, was his unchanging nature. He got better as he went along, but as an improving version of the same thing. I said I couldn't be sure whether Obama's consistency arose from deliberate strategic choice, flawlessly executed over a very long time, or whether it simply reflects the way he is. Odds favor the latter.

Reader D.M. writes about the way this trait has worked in the general election campaign:

I'm hoping it is a deliberate calculation on Obama's part, or else it is genuine and not a calculation at all, because it is brilliant.  By being a rock- steady, unflappable, boring (according to some commentators) - Obama accomplishes two things. It's a lot harder to find any personality hooks for passionate dislike.  See, e.g. Hillary's dynamism, Bush's feigned Texas dialect, McCain's temper.

Second, by being bland, consistent and totally straight, any tactical changes by opponents makes them look erratic, scheming and without integrity.  Had Obama joined in the personal mudslinging, he would have slipped his tether, and would have looked just like McCain.  He's a mirror against which we view the opponent.  He's a survey marker against which all territorial changes of opponents can be measured. It really is a new kind of politics.

And in a related post here, Michael Batz argues that through the course of the debates, Obama has won the argument for "argument" -- that is, for a calm and reasoned approach to issues, not by going with emotion, anger, and the gut. He wrote to me:

In short, McCain is going for emotion and Obama for reason. Ordinarily, I'd go with emotion, but crazy times flip everything on its ear. I also am amazed, honestly, that Obama has used these debates to UTTERLY reverse his public persona from the great lofty orator with few specifics to the down-in-the-numbers reassuring policy wonk at the same time he practically destroyed McCain's leadership mantle by baiting him into anger and carefully pushing the message of McCain as erratic and unpredictable. It's pretty remarkable.

As always, I give the time-battered caution that we can't know how and whether these traits will work in office until we get a chance to see. But in making it likely that we will get that chance, the campaign approach has indeed been remarkable.

And, as a subject for a later day, I remember how often, how vehemently, and with what certainty Obama's detractors during the Democratic primaries said that he could not, possibly, in any way, in any real world, withstand the onslaught of GOP negative campaigning once it geared up against him. That he's been seriously underestimated twice -- by the Hillary Clinton camp, and now by McCain -- doesn't prove his potential in office but is interesting.

OK, I lied, one more thing about debates

My recent article about the 2007-2008 primary campaign debates -- you remember, "Raise your hand if you can spell 'Paraguay' " -- applied well to the general-election debates in some ways, and was overtaken by events in some others. (Note: this item supersedes my previously-advertised "last words" about the whole topic of debates.)  

Here is what strikes me in retrospect as the most important continuity between the earlier round of debates and what we've just seen: It is continuity itself, specifically the unchanging nature of Barack Obama's presentation of himself, his personality, and his message.

I mentioned in the article that Hillary Clinton was technically a much more polished debater than Obama through the primaries. She answered quickly and crisply; she always got to her talking points; she was almost always on her game and almost never fazed. The problem was that the deeper identity and personality she presented changed dramatically from one debate to the next. Conciliatory toward her rivals in some encounters, harshly critical in others, the shifts matching U-turns in the campaign. With equal levels of effectiveness, she could appear to be a different person each time:

Hillary Clinton's level of skill remained consistent; the ends toward which she used it varied. We have seen this pattern before, with Al Gore's performances in his three debates against George W. Bush in 2000....  By scoring logical points but confusing his identity, Gore hurt himself with the "jury." So did Hillary Clinton.

Obama, by contrast, had varying levels of skill through the debates -- but almost no variation in the personality, message, or what we now call "temperament" he displayed:

Barack Obama's evolution through the debates was just the opposite of Clinton's. To an amazing degree, his message never changed; it matured.

Knowing where Obama ended up by the late debates and primaries, it is easy to see what he was trying to say early on. In his often fuzzy answers in the early debates, sometimes so long in the buildup that he didn't get to the main point before his time was cut off, Obama tried to do two things. He grappled with the question at hand--paying for his health-care proposals, dealing with Pakistan--while also moving to the "real question" about the need for a "new kind" of politics.

The pairing of those answers was second nature by the last debates but not in the early rounds. In these he wasted time on hedges and footnotes, and did not manage to make his slight pause before answering seem like a sign of reflection, as it came to later on.

Again, knowing how things are ending up, it's easy to see a pattern looking back. John McCain, likely Hillary Clinton, has suffered from internal shifts and contradictions in his message and affect. Gracious, high-minded, and bi-partisan seeming in some cases. (The first half of his convention speech; interviews like the one mentioned here in which he pleads for a civil, high-road campaign; his generous remarks about Obama just now at the Al Smith dinner in New York; and of course the identity he cultivated with the press over the previous decade or two.) And on the other hand: the choice of Palin, the Bill Ayers-style campaigning, and most of all his ill-concealed contempt and choler through all three debates.

Obama, like all politicians, has trimmed or shifted on some issues and straddled some mismatched policies. But that it is so hard to find contradictions in his style, personality, and larger "work together" message either says something impressive about his discipline or shows something deeper about his essential nature. To persuadable voters, I think it has come across as "integrity" in the neutrally descriptive sense: that is, wholeness and consistency, as opposed to internal tension and contradiction. What it would mean in office we'll see if he wins. I think we've already seen that it is a huge electoral asset.

Continue reading "OK, I lied, one more thing about debates" »

As if it were all a dream

Next Monday, it will be one month since the special Olympic-era traffic and pollution rules came to an end in Beijing. Through most of the last ten days, the skies and air have been spectacularly clear and beautiful in town. Here, blue skies are reflected in office windows in the Dongdan area a few days ago:



Today - oh boy. Traffic like the bad old days, and same for the smoky skies. Let us hope this is an aberration, rather than the new (and old) normal.

Nerds-with-a-heart only: the passion of the USB

Poor little USB!  Previous chapter here, which includes links back through the whole trail of tears. When last sighted, the USB had been through a Chinese washer and dryer twice, had been resurrected through the miracle balm of WD-40, and was now chugging along in a working computer, minus any protective shell.

(Reminder picture here:)


 
Let's not get into the details, but ... while operating in that exposed state, the little USB got some, ummmm, beer all over it. It made a snazzling sound, there was a little spark, and suddenly there was no more "Removable Drive F:" on the computer. The beer was only Yanjing, the Beijing area's answer to Shanghai's REEB, so it was as benign and watery a splash as it could be. Still....

Powered down the computer, and started the USB on a long, long soak in WD-40. Now the extensive drying out process begins (below, fresh out of the WD-40, on a napkin from a local eatery). When the vapors of WD-40 have dissipated in a day or two, we'll see just how much this tough little device can take.
 
 

Jackal with a human face (updated)

Last words from me about debates until 2012 (at the soonest)

Here's why the third debate, and all three debates, helped Obama so much more than McCain.

In general-election debates, it's a losing strategy to "rally the base." That's what your own campaign events, and your fund-raisers, and your targeted ads, and your running mate are for. Especially by the time of the second and third debates, the job is to "rally the center." That's where most of remaining persuadable and undecided voters are.

Everything about Barack Obama's approach to this debate, and all debates, was consistent with this reality. Almost nothing about John McCain's approach was:

- Obama took every opportunity to steer questions back from campaign tactics to governing issues. ("It's been a tough campaign, and we have hurt feelings, but what really matters is avoiding four more years of...."  All quotes here are from memory and therefore approximate, but true to the general spirit.)

- He took every opportunity to talk about "working together" to deal with those issues, ("The reality is, it's going to take Republicans and Democrats working together.")

- He took nearly every opportunity to suggest encompassing rather than polarizing approaches to the substance of those issues. ("Do we want to reduce the cost of health care or expand the coverage? We've got to do both...")

- He took every opportunity to identify areas where he and John McCain actually agreed on approaches. ("I agree with John..." might have seemed an over-used trope in the first debate. This time, very selectively, it helped in the control-the-center strategy.)

- He took most opportunities to remain calm, to stay above the fray, to seem amused rather than frazzled, not to take personal offense. As mentioned earlier, he was not quite as perfectly self-contained as in earlier performances. But compared with McCain, he was the one -- in a good sense -- who had taken Prozac, while McCain seemed to be in a 'roid rage. And because of this general self-possession -- realizing, for instance, that there was only upside in being gracious about Sarah Palin -- when he decided to bear down, as in the breathtaking "At your running mate's rallies, when someone mentions my name they say 'Terrorist' and 'Kill him,'" it was the more powerful.

If you go down the same list, you can see that McCain did just about the opposite on every one of the counts. His most effective rhetorical line was that if Obama wanted to run against President Bush, he could have done so four years ago. (For that matter, so could McCain.) But that was undercut, according to the logic above, by emphasizing tactics over issues, by emphasizing partisan division over conciliation, by body-language contempt for his opponent, and by a demeanor that reinforced the short-tempered and dyspeptic impression from the previous debates.

Whatever the instant polls said, however you lined up the debating flow, the person who was already ahead had a plan that could gain him more support, and the one who was behind played to the base.

Concluding points:

- This format is the winner, compared with all the others we have seen. Forces a kind of personal engagement -- though the fact that this was the third and final round probably made a difference too. Clarifying discussion of actual substance, from health care to abortion, and rawly-honest seeming exchange about the excesses of the campaign.

- Bob Schieffer was a winner, raising provocative issues without being mindlessly horse-race oriented or too obsessed with time. His questions about dirty campaign tactics and about Sarah Palin were exemplary in this regard.

- McCain did not help himself with a number of lapses and minor gaffes, from the nature of Trig Palin's disability to the policy of the DC schools. Nor his Tourette's-like perseveration with  the dreaded "overhead projector" in Chicago and hyperbole about Ayers and ACORN, which is allegedly "destroying the fabric of our democracy."

- I love America. In what other country would the finalists for the presidency have the extended "Joe the Plumber" exchanges? On the other hand, I don't want ever to hear about Joe the Plumber again.

- Obama really needs to raise his game when it comes to answering questions about US interactions with China. He fell back on the same old lame "they're manipulating the currency" argument, as simplistic and misleading a slogan as those on other issues he criticizes from McCain.

- This time, McCain looked at Obama (unlike the first debate), and didn't call him "that one" (unlike the second). But he did the equivalent of both in his final statement, addressing Schieffer and others by name and then turning to Obama and saying "and it's been good to be with.... you." Not "you, Senator Obama" or "you, Barack." It was involuntary and gone in a flash, but watch it again and you'll see what I mean.

The net effect of the debates is: they have put Obama in position to win. We'll see what further "game changers" there might be in the remaining 20 days.
 
Fiscal Affairs UPDATE:
1) It was good to see Obama finally connect McCain's promise of a spending freeze with his desire to spend more for project X or Y. He did it by saying: Great to hear about your focus on autism. But with the spending freeze....

2) Notwithstanding general praise for Schieffer, he like all the other debate moderators seemed to be unduly interested in how either of the candidates is going to "balance the budget."

NEITHER OF THEM IS GOING TO BALANCE THE BUDGET -- nor should they be mainly concerned with trying, right at the moment. We're in the middle of a potential economic collapse. One of the lessons Herbert Hoover inadvertently taught is that you shouldn't try to tighten up on public spending during a huge downturn. For details, see the works of JM Keynes, passim. 

Only real time comment during debate #3

Both men look very weary, and who can blame them; and perhaps because of an inner "enough, already!" mood Obama is being less controlled about little smirks and shaking his head  'no-no when McCain says something he doesn't like.  McCain has not controlled his disdain for Obama in previous debates, and he's not even trying now.

But the ten minute or twelve minutes that began with Obama looking at McCain and talking about crowds at Palin rallies saying "Kill him" were riveting TV and seemed to reveal purified versions of the persona each candidate has been presenting through the previous sessions. This debate may matter less in the long-term outcome than the others, since that's typically true of final debates. But because the contenders are engaging each other more directly -- being at the same table, being physically so close to each other, having more trouble containing their emotions, being aware that the whole thing is almost over -- in human terms this is actually the most interesting.

More later.

Non-politics, non-depressing: nice software updates

In the "look on the bright side" spirit, a word about two pieces of software, both previously mentioned but now in new releases, that I appreciate, admire, and rely on all the time.

- SugarSync, by Sharpcast. Several months ago I noted that I found the product's name slightly creepy but was intrigued by its features. I've used it daily since then and have only better and better things to say.

Its purpose is to keep files in sync among a number of computers. It does that in a way so effortless that you stop even thinking about the program's presence. SugarSync easily connects PCs and Macs and, in some circumstances, handheld devices. Meanwhile, it doubles as an online backup for all the files in your computer, which is of course useful if you have a crash but also if you are in one part of the world and realize that file you want is on the computer back at your office or house. It has recently introduced several new features, including one that lets you safely edit files that "live" on your home computer from any internet-connected computer anywhere. Really a smooth product, by whatever name.

- Fusion, by VMware. I have previously praised this software ad nauseam. Its point is to let you run any Windows-based program, driver, system software, you name it, on an Intel-based Macintosh -- and, unlike the Mac's own Boot Camp utility, to do so right alongside native Mac programs, cutting and pasting from one to the other. I've mentioned it before because it has been practically bulletproof. As a side note for later discussion, in general it allows Macs to run Windows programs better and faster than most ordinary PCs, mainly because it supports a "pure" version of Windows rather than one burdened by the horrible, unwanted, pre-installed features known as "craplets" that have made so many PCs so unpleasant to use.*

A new version 2.0 of Fusion has been released, as a free upgrade for users of earlier versions. This new release has eliminated the one problem I'd ever had with Fusion (a screen-corruption issue, discussed here) and has many other enhancements.

The similarity that connects SugarSync and Fusion is that each represents another step toward freeing users from purely practical concerns -- did I remember to copy that file? do I want to work on it with a PC or a Mac? -- so they can concentrate on the actual ideas and work they want to deal with.

One further bit of cheer: If you use either Gmail or Google Chrome and have not committed to muscle-memory the extensive keyboard shortcuts for each of them, you're working harder than you need to. Gmail keyboard tips here; Chrome's, here.
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* If you start with a Mac and buy Fusion, you also need to buy a copy of Windows, ideally XP, which you then install in the Fusion part of the Mac. Since you buy this copy of Windows as a standalone CD/DVD, not as something pre-installed by Dell or HP or whomever, you get it in pure form, not encased in all sorts of other junk that comes on most PCs now.

I'm increasingly convinced by the argument that Windows Vista seems so terrible in part because it mainly comes on newer machines that groan under an intolerable burden of these craplets. I am sorry to say that my once-beloved ThinkPad brand seems, under Lenovo, to be tarnishing itself in this way. Turn back before it's too late, Lenovo! More on this later.

More on the Sequoia Capital presentation

Yesterday I mentioned a presentation by the tech VC firm Sequoia Capital, about what the financial contraction would mean for start-up businesses and the tech economy in general.

After the jump, extra notes on the presentation from someone at the meeting.

This account appeared first on a subscription-only site, TheFunded.com, so I won't quote very much of it. But even a brief sample suggests that when future economics teachers want to give their classes a concise lesson in how economic downturns spread, or what a "vicious cycle" means (a term prominently misspelled in the Sequoia presentation itself, one of several signs of a rush job), they can use this session as a convenient example. Thus:

The VC firms warn that tough times are at hand; their advice is that all their startup companies cut, cut, cut, laying off as many people as possible and eliminating every purchase or investment they don't absolutely need to survive. The startups do that-- and then the companies they used to buy from have to begin cutting drastically themselves, as do the people all these firms have just laid off. Everyone is buying less, and... The point is right out of Ec 101, but this is a particularly clear and real-time example.
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Continue reading "More on the Sequoia Capital presentation" »

This is impressive, and yet sort of sad (USB immortality dept)

Over the last three and a half months, I have recounted the travail of my brave little USB stick:

First an unanticipated trip through the washer and dryer. Then, miraculously, it survives and still works! Then, a warning from a tech savant that corrosion is already setting in. Then, a bath in WD-40 as salvation. Then, another trip through the washer and dryer. And another WD-40 dunk. And all the while...  still chugging along.

Here is how it looked after the first ordeal:


Yesterday, I grabbed it to switch it to another machine, and the plastic housing simply fell off. Post-traumatic stress effects of the washer and dryer? Of WD-40? Of general abuse? Who knows. Yet even in this naked, skeletal condition ....  still it works. Though here is how it looks these days: The bare green circuit board, shown plugged into a ThinkPad, is what's left of the USB stick. It's hard to see in this picture, but its red LED light is flashing, showing that it's actively doing something. (Click for closeup.) The castoff plastic housing, like a shed skin, is beneath it, in two halves.



I will rename my USB stick "Hawking," signifying a being that, as its corporeal shell has suffered and been diminished, has been distilled to its pure thinking essence.

If you want an indication that the McCain camp has conceded...

.... listen to this interview, from today's NPR Morning Edition (audio available after 9am EDT). In it, Renee Montagne questions Steve Schmidt, famed tough-guy, gloves-off strategist for the McCain campaign.

Anyone who has ever been near a troubled campaign -- or a sports team late in a losing game, or a business venture facing harsh reality -- will instantly recognize the signs of internalized defeat in Schmidt's comments:

Rationalization and excuses ("We were ahead until the financial crisis began"). More excuses ("We have the handicap of wearing the 'R' label this year" -- I mean, think about that for a moment, and imagine Karl Rove saying it). More and more excuses ("When someone says something inappropriate at our rallies, the media is all over it. When someone does it at an Obama rally...")  A "we'll do our best" tone as opposed to confidence about being able to win. A rote quality to the pep talk about victory ("Senator Obama is known as a weak closer, and Senator McCain is a strong finisher!"). These quotes are approximate, a few minutes after hearing the spot, but true to the spirit. Given Schmidt's reputation as the heir to Lee Atwater and Karl Rove, that he was not able to keep on his game face is startling.

Anything can still happen. But to me this is the first sign of the McCain team itself recognizing how things stand now.

Very sobering report from Silicon Valley

A number of friends in the SF Bay Area have directed me toward this recent slide show by Sequoia Capital, one of the biggest-deal tech VC firms. It's been widely viewed in the tech world and is said to reflect, and no doubt partly shape, the prevailing sentiment. (Update: Also, I see now, it was recently mentioned on the NYT tech blog.)