James Fallows: Politics Archives

Manufactured failure #6: the wrapup

I think this is it for a while, in three extensive sub-parts! Background here.

1) Today the Columbia Journalism Review published part 2 of its interview with Howard French; first part was here and was discussed here. It is long and convincing, but here is the heart of its criticism of the dominant "Obama was a wimp" coverage. French says:

"I am known for having had a pretty consistent focus on human rights in my work as a journalist [JF note: this is very true], so the comments that will follow should not in any way suggest that I believe in a de-emphasis in human rights with regard to China.... But the problem with the way the press has covered this is there's a kind of implicit premise [that...] is misleading, I think. Maybe disingenuous is even a better word, because it seems to suggest that if Obama had pulled a Khrushchev and banged his shoe on the table on these issues and really jumped up and down and made a lot of noise, then this would have achieved a markedly different result for the better. I don't think there's any evidence of that. It may have made certain people in this society feel better about themselves, but if the goal is changing behaviors in China or obtaining political or diplomatic results with China, I think the evidence is the contrary."

2) From the U.S. government official who has appeared twice before, these final comments on the trip and its consequences:

On atmospheric payoffs of the trip:

"Two of the press conferences, in Japan and South Korea, both began with the same elements. In Japan, Prime Minister Hatoyama got up and gushed that "my friend Barack calls me 'Yukio.'" Then the Korean press conference began with [president] Lee Myung-bak saying, 'We have become close friends.' That says something. Those are not just routine polite words. It meant that Obama is profoundly popular in those countries. Hatoyama's poll numbers are high but dropping, Lee Myung-bak has been embattled, though recovering. But both saw it as enormously important in terms of their own agenda to be identified with Barack Obama. In my mind, the personal popularity and respect for him is a strategic asset. And not one that gets you results in a day. If you have foreign leaders who see their own fate tied up with Obama, that becomes a chip you can draw on. If you need a last minute shift on climate change, they do not want to separate from Barack Obama. Everyone wants to be his best friend."

What about the view that Obama caved to the Chinese on human rights?

"Here are the things we tried to do. Number one, he made a robust statement in Shanghai. Number two, have that reach as many tens of millions of Chinese as possible. You can argue about the degree of success, but the message got out. They had a chance to see him in a setting no Chinese had seen before. And beyond that was to be explicit and direct in the private meetings about the importance of our values and the effect on our relations. And then we put in references in the press conference statement to Tibet and the Dalai Lama, and the importance of rule of law, freedom of expression, protection of the rights of minorities, which was an obvious reference to the Uighurs and Tibetans. We went straight to Tibet in the statement, saying that we consider it part of China and urge direct negotiations with the Dalai Lama."

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Manufactured failure #5: views from China

I won't go on in this vein forever (previously #1, #2, #3, #4), but the topic is important enough to bear a little more elaboration, IMHO. Part of the importance: there is no country with whom America's interactions are more consequential, or perpetually more complicated, than China. Another part of the importance: how the American public understands these interactions makes a big difference, in recognizing the points of disagreement and the areas of possible cooperation. Tomorrow, one more installment from the US government official who participated in important meetings and whom I have quoted twice before. For now:

This morning on the Chris Matthews show I mentioned earlier, a White House reporter for the Washington Post said that the Shanghai town meeting was another item on the disappointment/failure docket for America. Her argument was essentially: the Chinese outsmarted the Obama team and kept their countrymen from seeing it. I don't remember whether she said it was not broadcast at all or only on one "local" network; as mentioned yesterday, that one network reaches 100 million households.

So to a member of the traveling press pool, viewing the session mainly as a campaign stop whose advance work went either well or poorly, this looked like a bust. Here is how it looked to a foreigner who has just written me -- a person who has lived in China for two decades, still does business there, and speaks Mandarin:

"In your series, you touched on the Shanghai town hall, quoting from President Obama's opening and his response to the Twitter/Great Firewall question, and gave voice to a White House insider as to the power of his words and their likely reach inside China. There's been some buzz among western journalists about how the town hall "reached no one".

"I've been monitoring the China internet in the wake of the town hall and, based on my observations of these things over the years I'm very much leaning toward the White House insider's view -- that the reach was vast and deep, in the many millions or tens of millions, though not necessarily entirely positive. But the comment from President Obama that I think will have the most impact inside the firewall was not the one about US principles that you quoted in your followups. It was this one:
'Now, I should tell you, I should be honest, as President of the United States, there are times where I wish information didn't flow so freely because then I wouldn't have to listen to people criticizing me all the time. I think people naturally are -- when they're in positions of power sometimes thinks, oh, how could that person say that about me, or that's irresponsible, or -- but the truth is that because in the United States information is free, and I have a lot of critics in the United States who can say all kinds of things about me, I actually think that that makes our democracy stronger and it makes me a better leader because it forces me to hear opinions that I don't want to hear. It forces me to examine what I'm doing on a day-to-day basis to see, am I really doing the very best that I could be doing for the people of the United States.'
"Wow! As a resident of China for two decades and a Mandarin-speaking China-watcher for three decades, I can say without any doubt that those words will resonate far more deeply -- and potentially more "subversively" or "destabilizingly" -- than any overt thumb-in-the-eye hectoring that any foreigner or foreign leader might muster, in public or private. Those words are ***precisely*** the kind that Zhongnanhai [Chinese term equivalent to "the Kremlin"] fears the most, and rightly so."

After the jump, two other reader responses, one with an additional Chinese perspective and one with a historical comparison.
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Continue reading "Manufactured failure #5: views from China" »

Manufactured failure #4: more on Obama's trip

Things are warming up on this front. Previously here, with backward links. Today's points:

1) Many people have forwarded me a posting from my friend and former colleague Chuck Todd, saying that people who criticize the press's horse-race, instant-analysis coverage of Obama's trip are guilty of the same horse-race, instant-analysis thinking themselves. Ie, Hypocrite lecteur - mon semblable -- mon frere!

With all good will toward Chuck, let me point out the distinction: What (we) reporters say or write about an event can in fact be judged as soon as we say or write it, because it's all out there to be seen. What happens in a meeting between the leaders of China and the US often can't be judged for months or years after it occurs -- which is the complaint about instant analysis of what Obama "got" or didn't from this trip. For instance: no sane person imagined that an agreement about the value of the RMB would be announced just after this session. That is not the way the Chinese government has ever behaved in response to foreign "pressure." We will know whether US intervention on this issue had any effect over the next few months. It reveals zero familiarity with the issue to expect anything else -- or imply that the absence of an announcement is a "failure."

2) Many people have sent clips of today's talk show by my friend and former colleague Chris Matthews, which went in super-heavy for the "Obama humiliated in Asia" line. With all good will to Chris, I fear that this show today, notably the comments by the Washington Post's reporter from the Asia trip, will be the new symbol of exactly the kind of instant-analysis that, in my view, fundamentally misrepresents what happened on the trip. (Distillation of my complaint in an On the Media segment here; also, it was one theme of my All Things Considered discussion with Guy Raz yesterday.)

2A) As a bonus, here is what the Post's page showed yesterday for discussion of Obama's trip: was it a success or "an embarrassment"?

3) Below and after the jump, more comments from a US government official who was on the trip and knows first-hand about many of the meetings with foreign dignitaries. Earlier from this person here.

About the "humiliating" bow to the Emperor of Japan:

"Obama's attitude was, this is an elderly gentleman in a country where this kind of greeting is customary. It does not seem extraordinary to show this kind of gesture to him. The Fox news poll said that 67% of Americans thought it was a good thing for him to have done. When the president heard that some people had complained, I'd characterize his reaction as: The notion that the United States is somehow humbling or humiliating itself by showing respect for a local custom, when it is transparently the most powerful country in the world, leaves me speechless."

Continue reading "Manufactured failure #4: more on Obama's trip" »

Manufactured failure #3: insider's view of the Obama trip

Late yesterday -- after I had recorded my On The Media complaints about mainstream coverage of Barack Obama's trip to Asia, but before I had seen Howard French's and Tish Durkin's similar complaints -- I got a call from a government official who had been on the trip. This person -- for convenience, I'll say "she" rather than "he or she" from here on -- wasn't aware that I'd already weighed in about the coverage, and was calling to say that I, as person who'd recently been living in China, might be interested in how different the events seemed to her from what she'd seen in the U.S. press.

She agreed to have her views conveyed "on background," which I'll do here and in a few more installments over the next two or three days. Obviously these are the views of an interested party, who was involved in planning the trip and believes it should be seen as a success. But compare them with what you read and heard about the trip last week -- including about the "failure" of the Town Meeting in Shanghai.

About coverage of the trip in general:

"I don't care if someone criticizes us, I just would like it to be accurate and in context. I fear I am learning that is not the skill of some in the White House Press corps. They are experts on horse races, and so that is the way everything is cast."

About what the Administration hoped for from the trip:

"In thinking about the trip, the things we were trying to accomplish were all basically long term things. We were not looking for 'deliverables' or one-day stories. You've now got eight or nine countries among the G20 that are Asia-Pacific countries. The historic shift of power and influence from West to East is reflected in that number.

"Obama is very focused on global issues, things like climate change, financial imbalances, non proliferation, energy issues. We saw all the countries on this trip as players on those global issues. Of course China is important in particular, but also Korea and Japan and the ASEAN countries. So we saw this as a way of developing relationships that would be helpful to us as we tackled these issues coming down the road.

"We've got Copenhagen [climate talk] coming up in mid-December. We have Iran heading increasingly likely toward Plan B rather than Plan A, pressure rather than inducements. North Korea. And the Copenhagen session is very far from a done deal. The countries we dealt with are all key players here. And on the economic side, you've got the whole issue of rebalancing the global agenda. None of those is something where you come out of a meeting and say Eureka. They're all part of a long process and a long game.

"The other thing we had in mind, which has to do with the whole "rising China" phenomenon: we wanted to solidify the relationship with China. To show them that we're not going to have a fluctuating policy. That we know what we're doing, and understand that we are dealing from a position of strength. And at the same time, to all our traditional allies [Japan, Korea, etc], we wanted to reinforce their sense of comfort that our relationship with China won't be at their expense."

About the Town Hall meeting in Shanghai: Why was it "censored" rather than streamed to anyone who wanted to see it in China?

Continue reading "Manufactured failure #3: insider's view of the Obama trip" »

Manufactured failure #2: the press, Obama, Asia

It's not just me. Two colleagues with different perspectives -- from each other's, and sometimes from my own -- marvel at how badly the mainstream American press distorted the picture of what happened during Barack Obama's just-ended tour of Asia.

First, Howard French -- long of the NYT, now of the Columbia Journalism School, friend of mine in both Tokyo and Shanghai. He has a new online Q-and-A with the Columbia Journalism Review, here, in which he says that the traveling press covered Obama's meetings with Asian officials as if this were a bunch of stops in a presidential campaign tour, and as a result missed or misrepresented what was going on. Read the whole thing, but here are two samples:

From the set-up to the interview, by Alexandra Fenwick:

"In almost every analysis of the trip, Chinese officials were portrayed as optimistic and newly emboldened to stand up to American interests and Obama was cast in the role of the meek debtor, standing with hat in hand. The line is that little was achieved and Obama was stifled, literally by state television and figuratively by the Chinese upper hand in the power dynamic."

Howard French goes on to say that these assumptions were flat wrong. He offers many explanations, including this:

"I find that the Washington reporters tend to be typically the most subject to this instant scorekeeping. This is part of the game of Washington reporting. They're at the bleeding edge of this phenomenon that I think is distressing in terms of the approach of the press to serious questions. Everything is shot through this prism of short-term political calculation as opposed to thinking seriously about stuff. You can't be an expert on every question, and so you're part of the Washington press corps and if you're really good and really diligent, you're going to be expert maybe in a few things and one of those things might not be China."

If you have seen Howard French's coverage over the years, including the five years he was based in Shanghai, you will know that no sane reader has ever put him in the category of "soft" on the Chinese leadership or China's faults. Yet his wonderment and exasperation at what he reads is palpable.

Tish Durkin, who has written for the Atlantic from Iraq and elsewhere, arrived in China recently. The subhead on her new column for The Week gets across the point:

"Even through a veil of censorship and propaganda, the Chinese people managed a clearer view of Obama's visit than the US media did."

While I'm at it, here's one more: a story quoting the new US Ambassador to China, former Republican governor of Utah Jon Huntsman (a Mandarin speaker), to exactly the same effect.

"Washington's ambassador to Beijing hit out on Friday at negative US media coverage of President Barack Obama's visit to China, saying it failed to take into account important progress on many issues...

"The trip was the top news story in China, drawing strong interest from the mainland public who, surveys suggest, are largely positive in their view of the American president.

"However, much of the US media coverage was strongly negative, accusing Obama of failing to gain concessions on key issues such as Iran's nuclear programme and climate change, as well as being weak on human rights."

"I attended all those meetings that President Obama had with Hu Jintao and Wen Jiabao," Huntsman said, referring to the Chinese president and premier. "I've got to say some of the reporting I saw afterward was off the mark. I saw sweeping comments about things that apparently weren't talked about, when they were discussed in great detail in the meetings," he said.

I wasn't in touch with Howard French or Tish Durkin (to say nothing of Amb. Jon Huntsman) before we all expressed the same amazed and negative reaction at the way our colleagues had missed the main point of what just happened in America's relations with a very important part of the world. We're all familiar with one "crisis of the press," the business collapse. This is a different kind of crisis, though it makes the business crisis worse: the distortion of reality by compressing every complex issue into the narrative of the DC-based "horse race." As you can tell, this really bothers me.

Those tin-eared Americans

I noted here recently, as I have since time immemorial, that Chinese government spokesmen can often seem deaf to the concerns and mindset of their potential audience overseas. A reader from France says that maybe my own ears need to be inspected for metallic content:

"Put simply, I reacted myself mostly to the following phrase of Obama [in his Shanghai town hall presentation]:
"We do not seek to impose any system of government on any other nation,"

"Read again slowly: 'We do not seek to impose any system of government on any other nation.'

"My take: the disconnect is as old as the CIA, Mossadegh or Cuba... I would have not reacted strongly when told the same by Kennedy, Reagan or Clinton. But now it is different. And my epidermic intolerance is now quite wide ranging, not only relating this affirmation as concerns Iraq, but extending to the sermons about sclerotic European Market, Global warming [etc].

"I understand that Obama's task is among others to sell the American Brand, and marketing people have a tenuous obligation to stick to the product. Or if we want to be kind, they want to mold the public perception of a brand new product they are bringing to the market. Nonetheless: I suspect you didn't even react yourself to this sentence. Could you comment on the state of the American eardrums, as you did for the Chinese ones?

"My background: French with (European) multi-countries experience...and close relatives living in the US. As I consequence, I lost my patriotic Innocence, and often smile at the overblown universal moralistic discourse of my Presidents or Intellectuals. You?"

On the state of American eardrums, I've often explicitly compared the inward-looking nature of Chinese officials and much of the Chinese population to their counterparts in the U.S. These are both big, continental nations that are finally more interested in themselves than in how those teeming, confusing, often-touchy outsiders might feel, think, or act. This can lead to blunders and offense-giving, innocent and otherwise. Part of Obama's appeal in the outside world has been the sense that by background and mindset he should be more attuned to outside sentiments. And of course this very sense is what some Americans don't like about Obama -- that he seems "foreign," or "cosmopolitan," very much as John Kerry seemed "French."

When I read the "do not seek to impose" line again, slowly, of course I understand the "hey, wait a minute" retorts that might spring up from half a dozen sites around the world. I suppose the reason it didn't strike me the first time is that I was also assuming the background that many Americans would: that Obama marked a change from the "seek to impose" policies of recent years, that he could say that line without taking responsibility for complications of the past and some in the present. But I see, and take, the reader's point.

On Obama's Asian diplomacy -- #3

Last week some of Barack Obama's critics were upset that he ducked a question in Japan about whether he approved of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. I cannot begin to say how short-sighted that criticism is.

When I lived in Japan for several years in the 1980s, I learned about the various realms of the things you could say in public (建前, tatemae) and things you actually believed (本音, honne). Although not strictly a matter of tatemae/honne, the atomic bomb decision is a particularly thorny and awkward one for Americans to discuss with Japanese. The normal way to consider the topic in Japan involves the country's status as the only object of an atomic attack in history, the suffering its people underwent, and the status it therefore possesses to talk about the importance of avoiding any such event again -- all of which is understandable. There is a lot of history the prevailing Japanese account leaves out, but that is a point better raised in internal Japanese debate than by American officials. Americans may believe that Harry Truman saved both Japanese and Allied lives by this decision. But there really is no mileage in a U.S. official saying that to people in Japan. Probably the worst thing I did in my time there was to propose that argument to a man who had been a doctor in Hiroshima in 1945. The conversation came to an abrupt and hostile end. And I was just a reporter, not the American president who has the power to order nuclear weapons used again.

Here's the best analogy I can think of: suppose you were a sheriff who had gunned down a group of terrorists who were threatening to blow up a town. In the crossfire, some innocent children were killed. If you run into their parents long afterwards, do you say: "Tough luck, it was in a good cause! And I'd do just the same thing again!" Or do you recognize their great sorrow and loss and do everything possible to avoid rubbing it in?

In avoiding a direct answer to the question from a Japanese reporter about whether the bombing was justified, Obama did what any American president or diplomat should do when this topic is raised in Japan. There is no answer that would have worked out better for him than his not answering at all.

On Obama's Asian diplomacy -- #2

Previously here. A reader writes:

"Relating to comments on the Shanghai town hall, enough of the parsing of what he said on issues and how he said them, I think the most significant sentence was "That's why I'm pleased to announce that the United States will dramatically expand the number of our students who study in China to 100,000." Even without details (per year (I hope) or over what period, college and/or high school students, how funded, etc), I am surprised you have not remarked on it (and that the NY Times did not even report it). It is of major significance."

Good point. I did noticed this while listening to the speech, but have not yet tracked back to see exactly how, when, and through what institutions this will occur. It's worth following up -- as I will, soon. But in the meantime, it's welcome news.

On Obama's Asian diplomacy -- #1

First of several updates on the fly:

On reflection, I still stick with my initial reaction to the Shanghai Town Meeting appearance, rather than being won over by the on-scene complaints of my Shanghai friend Adam Minter as described here. If you combine Obama's opening statement (White House version here), with his answers to the questions about the Great Firewall, it seems to me that he said just about as much on censorship and liberties as a visiting dignitary could say, in the circumstances.

I mean, seriously -- consider what he said in the opening statement. He talked about America's founding documents and the long struggle to match American reality to their promises. Then he said:

"Those documents put forward a simple vision of human affairs, and they enshrine several core principles -- that all men and women are created equal, and possess certain fundamental rights; that government should reflect the will of the people and respond to their wishes; that commerce should be open, information freely accessible; and that laws, and not simply men, should guarantee the administration of justice....

"And that is why America will always speak out for these core principles around the world. We do not seek to impose any system of government on any other nation, but we also don't believe that the principles that we stand for are unique to our nation. These freedoms of expression and worship -- of access to information and political participation -- we believe are universal rights. They should be available to all people, including ethnic and religious minorities -- whether they are in the United States, China, or any nation. Indeed, it is that respect for universal rights that guides America's openness to other countries; our respect for different cultures; our commitment to international law; and our faith in the future.

The Chinese students in the audience were smart. They understood what he was saying. In the circumstances, how much more obvious did he need to be? Those circumstances included: Obama's being in China for his first official visit; his knowing (as he must have, from his briefings) that the big Chinese bugaboo is "outside interference" from foreigners telling them what to do; and his knowing that he had business on many fronts ahead of him in Beijing. Even in those circumstances he clearly said: America believes that openness and liberties are not quaint American practices but are in fact universal and should be available to everyone, including in China. In domestic American politics, Obama has been known for doing his work with the scalpel rather than the sledgehammer. How much less deft would we like him to be on a foreign visit?

Similarly with his answer about censorship and the Great Firewall:

"I am a big believer in technology and I'm a big believer in openness when it comes to the flow of information. I think that the more freely information flows, the stronger the society becomes, because then citizens of countries around the world can hold their own governments accountable. They can begin to think for themselves. That generates new ideas. It encourages creativity.

"And so I've always been a strong supporter of open Internet use. I'm a big supporter of non-censorship. This is part of the tradition of the United States that I discussed before, and I recognize that different countries have different traditions. I can tell you that in the United States, the fact that we have free Internet -- or unrestricted Internet access is a source of strength, and I think should be encouraged."

"I'm a big supporter of non-censorship" is ungainly. But what's wrong with the statement as a whole?

Foreign leaders do not typically go to other countries and frontally criticize the way those places they're run -- at least not if they're smart, or serious. For instance, when Hugo Chavez made his famous "I smell the devil!" crack after following G.W. Bush to the podium at the U.N., this was not a sign of his wanting to do business with America. Yes, you got Chavez's point, in all its gross clownishness. Who could miss Obama's point in Shanghai? Would we welcome a French or German prime minister coming to a US town meeting in the Bush years, shortly before a negotiating session at the White House, and saying, "Of course we condemn waterboarding, Guantanamo, and Abu Ghraib"? I condemn those things too, but is that the shrewdest thing for a foreign president to say while here?

More later, but I thought the words stand up well and got across the intended message.

Further on local reaction to Obama's Shanghai town hall (updated)

After my real-time late-night note a few hours ago saying that I thought things had gone OK for Obama in Shanghai, I wake up to see this report from my friend Adam Minter, on the scene in Shanghai, about ways in which Obama's answers seemed disappointing from the local perspective:

"Obama's performance this afternoon reminded me of nothing so much as an overly coached American businessman on his first trip to China, so concerned about what he should or should not say that he forgets what he wanted to say in the first place."

I dunno. I understand the pattern Minter is talking about, and I'll watch the session again with that in mind. His account is worth reading for his assessment and for many amusing logistics details about the event. Adam Minter also did our dispatch on "Obama mania in China" over the weekend. UPDATE: Chris Good has more of the full transcript of Obama's talk, which shows that especially in the opening remarks he made about as explicit an argument in favor of liberties and freedom of expression as one can expect in the circumstances.

Related China/US rhetoric point: in two recent items, here and here, I tried to explain what a Chinese foreign ministry spokesman could have been thinking when comparing Chairman Mao to Abraham Lincoln, the Tibetan serfs whom Mao "freed" from the lamas as being similar to the black slaves whom Lincoln freed, etc. A reader's reponse:

"I agree with you on Chinese officials' lack of skills in communication and persuasion (part of this is due to political inward-looking, as you said, but the other part is cultural---Confucius said "a gentleman should be modest in speech but quick in action", and so eloquence in public speech, oration, etc, is never highly valued in Chinese tradition.)

"With regards to Qin Gang's [the foreign ministry spokesman] comment on Obama, Tibet, and slavery, however, I think he (as well as many other Chinese people) is genuinely thinking that the Chinese and American cases are comparable, or genuinely believe there are some valid points in Chinese views on Tibet that westerners tend to ignore, and they want to bring these points to the fore. I know you are a big Obama fan and obviously not a fan of Mao or Hu Jintao, but I think no one is really making personal comparisons. Now, Qin Gang's view (and the Chinese view) might be wrong---by the way you didn't explain why it's wrong on your blog---but it does not mean he cannot express his view. Why shouldn't Qin or any other Chinese official express their genuine opinion (be it right or wrong), but pander to Western thinking or adapt their expressions to suit Western ears?

"To me Qin's comment does not reflect a Chinese communication problem, but rather the vast difference between Chinese thinking and Western thinking on Tibet (after all, most westerners want to believe Seven Years in Tibet while most Chinese do not). Not that China does not have communication problems---the problems abound---but this is not a good example."

This is a useful opportunity for clarification. I agree with the writer that most Chinese officials (and, in my experience, most Chinese people) sincerely believe the Mao=Lincoln point. That's exactly what I said in the original post. The "communications problem" would be the failure to recognize that people outside the country generally don't think that way and will view the argument as bizarre at best. So Qin's holding the view does not illustrate the tin-ear problem I'm talking about; the question is why he said it that way to outsiders. Someone whose job is to address a foreign audience needs to know something about foreign assumptions, reactions, and so on. American politicians routinely say to home audiences, "This is God's country" and similar thoughts amounting to "We are better than the foreigners." But a State Department person who said those things to visiting reporters would be foolish or tin-eared. It's what Qin said, not what he thought, that's illustrates the problem.

Obama's town hall in Shanghai just now

I got up to watch the live stream on the White House site, out of nostalgia for my Shanghai days.

No very shocking questions from the students, though some had swathed edges to them: What about harmonious relations and arms sales with Taiwan? Obama doesn't answer about arms sales but does, carefully, about the harmonious relations. What about the Great Firewall and free access to info? Obama explains why free exchange of info makes leaders do a better job, even if he doesn't like the criticism some times. What about the risk that an intentionally- and historically-diverse nation like the US will misunderstand the situation of countries with different histories and makeups? Obama gives a defense and celebration of diversity, in his country and in his family. And says that he doesn't use Twitter.

Tomorrow's chore is a omnibus wrap-up on several recent Obama pronouncements, from the Ft. Hood eulogy to the Japan and China speeches. Main impression here is that he did well -- charming the students in the room itself, though almost any president can do that through the sheer magnetism of the office, but also talking in ways that will play well to Chinese sensibilities without saying a word that would go over wrong back home. Listening to him, I am not 100% sure that Obama has spent a lot of time conversing with non-native speakers of English. There is a different way you learn to talk: not condescending or stripped down, but more direct and less allusive. (For example, you wouldn't say "allusive." And I wouldn't say "swathed" in the paragraph above, to indicate questions that had a kind of protective wrapping to blunt their edge. I'd say something like, "The questions from the students were polite, but some had a slight edge.") People without experience doing this either talk in needlessly complex ways or talk in an insultingly clumsy oogah-boogah style. Sometimes Obama sounded as if he knew this approach; sometimes, as if he thought he was talking to a domestic audience.

It was also heartening for me to see these students, who resembled those I'd dealt with over the years -- and the truest moment of all came with the final question, where a student asked him frankly what was the right educational background that could lead to a Nobel prize. Now back to bed and more tomorrow.

The right kind of "security theater"

It is not surprising that we'd find good sense about security in the words of Bruce Schneier, but this recent essay does the best job I've seen of explaining the balance between "real" and "symbolic" steps against terrorism; why some purely symbolic steps can be worthwhile; but why much of today's "security theater" is so misguided.

Read the whole thing, but crucial concepts are these. First, what we mean when we talk about "security theater":

"Security theater refers to security measures that make people feel more secure without doing anything to actually improve their security. An example: the photo ID checks that have sprung up in office buildings. No-one has ever explained why verifying that someone has a photo ID provides any actual security, but it looks like security to have a uniformed guard-for-hire looking at ID cards." [My emphasis]

On why the steady accretion of "fighting the last war" security measures, especially involving air travel, are beyond the point. E.g., because there was once a shoe-bomb plot, we all now take off our shoes; because there was once a plot involving liquids, women have perfume and gels seized from their purses, etc. There's always a demand to do "something," and...

"Often, this 'something' is directly related to the details of a recent event: we confiscate liquids, screen shoes, and ban box cutters on aeroplanes. But it's not the target and tactics of the last attack that are important, but the next attack. These measures are only effective if we happen to guess what the next terrorists are planning.... Terrorists don't care what they blow up and it shouldn't be our goal merely to force the terrorists to make a minor change in their tactics or targets..."

On what the right kind of security theater would mean: I think this is the most important and, to most politicians and readers, novel part of Scheneir's argument. He says that the best way to reduce the damage terrorism can do is to act as if we're not scared of it.

"The best way to help people feel secure is by acting secure around them. Instead of reacting to terrorism with fear, we -- and our leaders -- need to react with indomitability.

"By not overreacting, by not responding to movie-plot threats, and by not becoming defensive, we demonstrate the resilience of our society, in our laws, our culture, our freedoms. There is a difference between indomitability and arrogant 'bring 'em on' rhetoric. There's a difference between accepting the inherent risk that comes with a free and open society, and hyping the threats...

"Despite fearful rhetoric to the contrary, terrorism is not a transcendent threat. A terrorist attack cannot possibly destroy a country's way of life; it's only our reaction to that attack that can do that kind of damage."

I am predisposed to welcome this argument, having made my version of a similar case three years ago (with guidance then from Schneier and others). But this is an unusually strong formulation from an unusually well positioned authority. Please do read what he says.

Placeholder on presidential rhetoric

I agree with my Atlantic colleagues Marc Ambinder and Andrew Sullivan that Barack Obama's speech yesterday at Ft. Hood was another exceptional match of message and moment. It also highlights the forced nature of an analysis I meant to mention earlier: this past weekend's NYT "Week in Review" assertion that Obama's rhetoric has grown stale. Saying more about this topic is next on the internal to-do list, after turning in an article later today. But I didn't want the whole of Veteran's Day to pass without a mention of this performance.

Mad magazine takes on the birthers

I don't know whether the birthers are petering out on their own. If they're still around, here's an additional challenge for them that springs from the glory days of Mad magazine.

A friend has recalled a classic Mad riff from its "Strangely Believe It! ~~Strangely True~~" series, produced by comedian Ernie Kovacs in the late Fifties as a knock-off of Ripley's Believe It or Not. It concerned -- well, see for yourself, in this detail of a scan of the original page, courtesy of Scott Gosar at TheMadStore. [Thanks to reader JS for title catch.]

The punch line -- hardee har! -- is that news of the baby girl's birth had to be telegrammed to her mother, who had missed the plane on which the surprise birth occurred.

What's the connection to the birthers? If Barack Obama had actually been born in Kenya, then his mother would have to have been in Kenya too! I don't think anyone has dreamed of suggesting that his mother was other than the one he has always claimed, Stanley Ann Dunham. Presumably somewhere in the passport records of the United States or Kenya is information about whether his mother (a) left the United States, or (b) entered Kenya in 1961 when her son was born. If she didn't leave the United States, including the fully-fledged state of Hawaii, in the summer of 1961, then by definition her child has to have been a natural-born U.S. citizen.

I recognize that if this were a matter of -- how do we say? -- "reality" or "facts," it would have been settled long ago, as it has been for everyone except the birther stalwarts. But this is an interesting additional angle worth considering; plus, it's great to see these detailed old Mad drawings. FYI, you can see a zoomable full-page version of the "Strangely Believe It!" illustration, by Wallace Wood, if you click on the smaller image below.

Unemployment and airplane crashes

A man in Florida sends what may be the ideal example of reader mail, combining as it does aerodynamic theory, politics, economics, and presidential rhetoric. If only there were a China- or beer-related angle... Seriously, his critique of how the Obama team has explained the continuing collapse of the U.S. employment base is insightful. Although it is obviously too late to adjust the rhetoric with which the Administration launched its economic recovery plans, arguments like this reader's could help shape the ongoing discussion.

"I'm really confused by how the Obama administration has handled the narrative and voter expectations for this recession. I clearly understand that they had to carefully balance early 2009 dire warnings against economic pessimism, while making a case for the stimulus package, etc. But once the stimulus was passed, I believe that they should have boldly stated how bad things really were, how their economic policies were the correct choices (even acknowledging Krugman's critiques of "too little"), and emphasizing that even the best possible management of the 2008 economic trainwreck would see significantly increasing unemployment as a lagging indicator.

"One analogy I've thought of often, aligned with your interests, is an economic analogy of an aerodynamic stall. When commerical credit froze and consumers reduced spending, the prevailing economic "lift" was gone. Stall! Conservative knee-jerk reactions for tax cuts were the equivalent of "pulling up" on the stick- intuitive but deadly. Obama's expert advice was to gain speed by spending (diving), even at the cost of altitude (deficit/debt). High unemployment was destined from the moment the stall occurred. Only when sufficient airspeed/angle of attack (spending) had been reached could the economy begin to pull up, and the unemployment would be analogous to the altitude lost even after the decision to finaly "pull up" had been made. Passenger relief (consumer confidence) would follow long after the immediate recovery (i.e., GDP), and no one would be "satisfied" until the plane came in for a (economic) "soft landing."

"There are probably numerous logical errors with this analogy [JF note: seems pretty good to me], but the simple point is this: If "Joe six-pack" clearly understands that Obama saved his economic life, while Conservatives would have driven the plane into the ground, he's more likely to appreciate and reward the unpalatable choices that Obama made. His appreciation would be enhanced if he understood all along that the pilot had no choice but to lose altitude, and the pilot explained that altitude (jobs) would take a long time to regain. This administration sorely needs a narrative that citizens can grasp and accept, otherwise the cynical partisan naysayers will continue to fill the void....

"I came across this, published online by Irwin M. Stelzer on 12/19/2008 in the Weekly Standard (hardly a liberal apologist):
'Bush knows that Obama is inheriting a very difficult economic situation indeed. So does the president-elect. Economists with whom I have spoken--and these are the people listened to at the highest levels in both parties and at Ben Bernanke's Federal Reserve Board--believe that the unemployment rate, now at 6.7 percent, will hit double digits sometime in 2009, and stay there well into 2010. They expect house prices to drop another 15 percent and share prices at least another 10 percent before finding a bottom.Worse still, they are predicting an extraordinarily sluggish recovery. Since unemployment is what economists call a lagging indicator--job creation doesn't start until a recovery is well under way--the unemployment rate might remain high well into 2011.'
"None of this is news to you. But if the Weekly Standard could articulate this in late 2008, why hasn't the Obama administration made sure that average Americans understand the "pre-destination" involved with unemployment?"

As an answer to the final question, my guess is that a combined message of uplift and caution is among the most difficult for leaders to convey. Obama and his economic team had to keep sounding optimistic, since so much of a recovery is affected by "animal spirits." But they also needed to acknowledge that for a long time ahead more people would be losing than gaining jobs. The dual message is not impossible, but it's tricky, and as the reader suggests the proper balance has not yet come across.

A very good question

A friend who has worked in and written about politics for nearly 40 years writes with this question about assessments of Obama's "disappointing" first year:

"How can the MSM (what's left of it) not "get" that disappointment in Obama over "lack of change" is precisely the object of the GOP in blocking change? Does no one remember Newt Gingrich and the GOP strategy from 1992 to 1994, which actually worked? How can the GOP steal second and third in one play AGAIN and not get nailed this time? I want to scream. In any sensible society, instead of disappointment in Obama there would be intense anger at the GOP, and they'd be forced to knock it off."

The talk about "any sensible society" of course leads us into the realm of what is fancily known as counterfactual theorizing....

On the Fox News / White House dispute

I didn't see anything on Fox from mid-2006 through mid-2009; for better or worse, it's not carried in China. (The English TV news channels you can get there are BBC, CNN International, CNBC, sometimes Bloomberg.) I have seen it since coming back this summer. And in a way, I realize that I had been seeing it all along: except for more modern production values, it's the closest thing America offers to what it's like to be exposed to the Chinese government's 24/7 internal propaganda machine. When I saw the clip below from Media Matters, as highlighted by Andrew Sullivan, I thought: make it a little more boring, put it in Mandarin, and substitute "splittists" etc for the people Fox is talking about (maybe the Dalai Lama in place of Van Jones), and I could be right back in Beijing.

Are Maddow and Olbermann on MSNBC comparably relentless and "biased"? Of course they are. But no one pretends their shows are "real" news operations or are "fair and balanced." And certainly they have become what they are as a market and political response to Fox's success. Indeed, the general polarization and spectacle-mindedness of the news ecology in part is homage to what Fox has figured out as a business and political model. Any fair person also has to acknowledge the better production values Fox brought to TV news over the past decade: it's lively, it's fast, it's interesting, the women on screen (to a shocking degree, if you've been away) set a new standard in physical looks, the whole thing gets your attention.

But a crucial part of this clip, and of the White House complaint, is that it's not just the out-and-out commentators on Fox -- the Hannities and O'Reillies who begat Maddow and Olbermann -- who supply a one-note politicized world view. It's the texture of the overall operation. I can think of honorable exceptions among correspondents and anchors, like Major Garrett (whom I do know) and Shepherd Smith (whom I don't). But this clip suggests the seamlessness of the Fox News outlook, which has impressed me on watching it. Again something it shares with China Central TV.

Main point: I disagree with my journalistic colleagues who are huffy because the Obama White House is treating Fox differently from the way it is treating other news organizations. Fox is different. As a practical matter, saying so could backfire on the White House. But as a matter of observing and stating reality, they're right.

"To Obama" in Japanese

Last week the NYT ran a story about how Barack Obama's version of spoken English has become a huge hit in Japan, emerging as the new standard for language-learning. This rings true to the fad/blockbuster nature of many commercial and cultural phenomena in Japan. And, we can all think of worse versions of English for them to emulate. (Carville? Stallone?)

But I thought that this item from the Ampontan blog, written by a foreigner in Japan, was more fascinating. It is about the way the invented verb Obamu -- オバむ, "to Obama" -- has gained currency among some Japanese youths. Explanation:

"obamu: (v.) To ignore inexpedient and inconvenient facts or realities, think "Yes we can, Yes we can," and proceed with optimism using those facts as an inspiration (literally, as fuel). It is used to elicit success in a personal endeavor. One explanation holds that it is the opposite of kobamu. (拒む, which means to refuse, reject, or oppose).
"[Japanese bloggers] give the following example:

:ほら、何落ち込んでいるんだよ。オバめよ、オバめ。
"Or, "Hey, why are you so down in the dumps? Cheer up, cheer up!"...

"One more Japanese-language citation is from a Twitter tweet, which defines it simply as believing you can accomplish something.

"Those familiar with the language will understand immediately that such a coinage would sound very natural, and that it is typical of Japanese creativity and their sense of humor."

The absorptive-and-transforming power of the Japanese language is indeed one of its charms. It will be a good sign for Obama if his name continues to be used in this mainly-positive context.

On the chain of command

After I mentioned last night that I disagreed with Robert Kaplan's call for an immediate commitment of more US troops in Afghanistan, I received a note that reminded me of a point I had meant to make. It concerns the chain of command and the different responsibilities of a theater commander (like Gen. McChrystal, in Afghanistan) and the commander in chief (like Pres. Obama, in Washington). I raise the point not to drag out a disagreement with a friend and colleague but to clarify an elementary but sometimes muddied issue.

My correspondent, a veteran of the defense and technology businesses, notes these lines from Kaplan's piece:

"The position Obama's now in is similar to that of former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld some years back--appearing not to be listening to his generals. If the president doesn't agree with his field commander, that's fine. Just don't make a public spectacle of it."

And says that this misconstrues the way the disagreement came to light:

"...since it was the leaks (from wherever -- I suspect [name redacted!] to Bob Woodward that publicly highlighted McChrystal's disagreements with the President. Only in the face of continued leaks about how "long" McChrystal's report had sat on the President's desk sans action did the President's team (NSA Jim Jones, CJCS Mullen) finally proceed to remind -- and quite obliquely -- those in uniform that disagreements with the Commander in Chief should be expressed privately, not aired publicly.

I think that's right as a matter of fact. And as a matter of policy, the point I meant to make is that a president should of course listen to his generals on questions of military operations, trade-offs, resources, etc. But it's worth remembering from Civics 101 that they must listen to him on questions of larger national interest and strategy.

The complaint about Rumsfeld was that he ignored -- in cases like Eric Shinseki's, stifled -- military professionals who warned how hard it would be and how many troops it would take to complete the mission the Bush administration had decided on. Their argument was: if you're going to do this, do it right. That is exactly the kind of advice military professionals are expected to give their civilian commanders. It's what Bush, Rumsfeld, et al should have listened to. (Apart, of course, from listening to a wider range of views about launching the invasion at all.)

That is a different kind of listening from what is emerging with Gen. McChrystal. Whether or not this was his intention, his quoted advice comes across less as, "If you're going to do X, then do it right" than as, "You should do X..." Figuring out what it would take to protect Afghan citizens and win a counterinsurgency effort is the general's job. Figuring out whether that is worth doing is the president's. Again, an obvious point but worth restating.

One comeback would be: Obama's already made up his mind! He said that Afghanistan was the "necessary war," and if he is committed to the end then he is committed to the means. To call his original choice into question would waste time and look weak. As Bob Kaplan put it, "the time to roll out a new or adjusted strategy would have been when McChrystal's selection was announced, so that he could become the face of the new policy."

This is where we disagree. I think the time to adjust the strategy is as new evidence comes in and until you've done something irreversible -- and that in these war-and-peace matters it is better to be inconsistent than wrong. That is why I think a thorough reconsideration is just what the Administration should be doing right now. I start out believing that the less-bad option is to curtail rather than expand America's commitment in Afghanistan -- all options being bad because of the fateful mistake of switching attention to Iraq eight years ago. But I'll listen to a case for expansion differently if I think it comes from an open assessment of all possibilities, rather than because it's too late to change course or risk losing face.

Last on this theme: the same reader offered this link to another valuable "be careful what you're getting into" analysis of Afghanistan, from Survival magazine. I agree with Andrew Sullivan's current examinations of this difficult choice, here and here. And, having watched the Frontline "Obama's War" broadcast last night, I share the widespread endorsement of it. Can be viewed online here.

The speech Obama won't ace (plus, WaPo gaffe followup)

So far, as noted here, Barack Obama has faced mounting expectations through a sequence of high-stakes speeches, from the "race" speech that saved his campaign 18 months ago to the Joint Session address on health care that appears to have changed momentum for his proposal. So far he has met or beaten expectations just about every time, most recently here.

I confidently predict that this string will end with his address in Oslo on receiving the Nobel Peace Prize. My argument is probabilistic: of the hundreds of addresses that have been given by Nobel laureates (last year's here), exactly one is frequently quoted or referred to. That is William Faulkner's address on receiving the literature prize 60 years ago. The transcript is here, including the best known line: "I believe that man will not merely endure: he will prevail." It's only three minutes long, and you can hear him delivering it below:

Will Obama give the second-ever memorable speech? That would be impressive but seems unlikely. For context: Martin Luther King's quite long speech here; T.S. Eliot's here; Winston Churchill's here, which includes the Onion-esque line, "The world looks with admiration and indeed with comfort to Scandinavia."
___
Also, to follow up on the WaPo Nobel editorial gaffe from yesterday: I mentioned soon after moving back from China that the New York Times looked like the same newspaper I remembered, while the Washington Post sadly did not. This is the kind of thing I had in mind. The NYT has its lapses and embarrassing errors (as do we all). But for this lengthy, lead editorial to have appeared in the Post yesterday, it had to have passed through at least three people's hands -- and probably many more. Those three would be: the editorial board member who wrote it; the editor of that section; and the copy editor who was on duty for the page as a whole. In reality, other people almost certainly saw it before publication.

The editorial as published -- with its recommendation that the Peace Prize should instead have been given posthumously to the martyred young woman Neda from the Iranian uprising -- required that none of those three people was aware that Nobel prizes are not given posthumously. That's surprising for people in those positions, on general-education principles, but in no sense negligent. We're all ignorant, just of different things. Before the current flap, I had never heard that Peace Prize nominations had to be filed by February, which would have ruled out figures from the Iranian uprising this summer.

But it also required that none of the three people was curious enough or worried enough to check, before publishing not a blog post or a real-time update but a major paper's main editorial. That is a surprise. I don't think we can imagine a similar gaffe in a NYT lead editorial -- other problems, sure, but not a general-knowledge fact-check howler. More to the point, I can't imagine a comparable error in the WaPo's own sports section, which has been outstanding for years and still is now. (The counterpart might be a column about the World Series noting that the NL pitchers looked better when at bat than AL pitchers did, and wondering why that might be.) FWIW the Neda editorial is still online, with no correction note or update.

Obama's Nobel remarks: four very skillful paragraphs

Six months ago I mentioned that it would be hard to improve on Barack Obama's impromptu press conference answer as to whether he believed in such a thing as "American exceptionalism." I think the same is true of his remarks this morning about the Nobel Peace Prize. Each of the first four paragraphs was surprisingly artful, given the obviously short notice on which he spoke:

Let's take them one by one:

"THE PRESIDENT: Good morning. Well, this is not how I expected to wake up this morning. After I received the news, Malia walked in and said, "Daddy, you won the Nobel Peace Prize, and it is Bo's birthday!" And then Sasha added, "Plus, we have a three-day weekend coming up." So it's good to have kids to keep things in perspective."

No one is going to sound truly modest in these circumstances -- you've just won the Nobel Peace Prize -- but the obligatory opening bout of self-deprecatory humor can sound more or less forced. This is about as natural-sounding and effective as it can be, meanwhile offering a glimpse of both vitality/youth and as much normality as can intrude into an American president's existence.

"I am both surprised and deeply humbled by the decision of the Nobel Committee. Let me be clear: I do not view it as a recognition of my own accomplishments, but rather as an affirmation of American leadership on behalf of aspirations held by people in all nations."

Surprised, yes; humbled, something that is necessary to say. But very effective to turn at once to the idea that this is not his reward and recognition but that of the country as a whole. It won't keep his detractors from talking about his narcissism and vainglory, but nothing would; it is what his supporters would want to hear, and probably what the prize committee had in mind. He has probably figured out to say at every turn that this is an award not for him but for America and its ideals. And he can leave unsaid the reality that, from the prize committee's perspective, it's an award for returning to those ideals after an unpleasant hiatus.

"To be honest, I do not feel that I deserve to be in the company of so many of the transformative figures who've been honored by this prize -- men and women who've inspired me and inspired the entire world through their courageous pursuit of peace."

Again a compulsory note of modesty, which sets him up for the crucial following paragraph:

"But I also know that this prize reflects the kind of world that those men and women, and all Americans, want to build -- a world that gives life to the promise of our founding documents. And I know that throughout history, the Nobel Peace Prize has not just been used to honor specific achievement; it's also been used as a means to give momentum to a set of causes. And that is why I will accept this award as a call to action -- a call for all nations to confront the common challenges of the 21st century."

This was the most important and shrewdest thing he said, because it is where he acknowledges an uncomfortable fact that everyone knows to be true. Of course the award can't be in recognition of projects he has already achieved and completed, because there aren't that many of them. In these third and fourth paragraphs, Obama acknowledges that point -- but adds the news-analyst's argument that often the Nobel committee awards these prizes as encouragements, signals, or what it hopes will be momentum-changers. If other people are going to say that, Obama does well to signal his understanding of the point himself. And from there he's off to the rest of the (fairly brief) statement, enumerating the sorts of common challenges he has in mind.

My point here concerns rhetoric and persuasion. Agree or disagree on his deserving the award, but reasonable people have to note the skill with which he used this opportunity.

On a related topic: Jerome Doolittle, my one-time colleague in the Jimmy Carter speechwriting office, posted a set of tips early this morning for Republican reaction to the award. So far his predictions are holding up well.

About the Nobel prize, two years ago

The last time an American won the Nobel Peace Prize, two years ago, I posted an item that I think has more relevance now. That winner was of course Al Gore. The remarks began as follows:

"I am old enough... well, there are many ways to end that sentence, but for now: I am old enough to remember, from my school years, the disdainful reaction in my home town to the news that Martin Luther King had won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964.
"The reaction was, of course, racial at its root. This was a majority-white, minority-Hispanic small town with very few black residents, which went for Barry Goldwater over Lyndon Johnson in the presidential election that same fall. [And narrowly went for McCain over Obama last year, while California as a whole went strongly for Obama.]
"But the stated form of the objection concerned not King's race but his obnoxiousness as a man. He was a windbag. He was pompous and self-dramatizing, He was holier than thou. Plus, he had started getting involved where he didn't belong, in raising questions about the Vietnam War. Through the rest of Martin Luther King's life, the father of my best home-town friend always went out of his way to refer sneeringly to "Martin Luther Nobel."
"As is the case now with some similar complaints about Al Gore, the criticisms weren't about nothing...." [continues here]

The complaint about Obama will of course be that he has not yet "earned" the prize, and of course that criticism isn't about nothing. But there's something more at work too. More to come in this space too, about Obama's remarks, by this evening. Mainly noting this previous item in a parallel situation. It also included this disclaimer:

"There are a few choices that look fishy in retrospect. (Henry Kissinger and Le Duc Tho in 1973??? Arafat as co-winner with Peres and Rabin in 1994?) But the great majority stand up very well. Desmond Tutu, and then Mandela and deKlerk. Albert Schweitzer. George C. Marshall. Lech Walesa, Willy Brandt, and Mikhail Gorbachev. The Dalai Lama and Aung San Suu Kyi. The Norwegian Nobel Institute has earned the benefit of the doubt for choosing people whose achievements will stand up over time."

Olympic notes: good for Rio

1) I love Chicago, but Rio is the best choice overall. Probably better for most people in Chicago (I speak from having lived through the ramp-up to the Beijing Olympics these past few years), although some of them may not feel that way right now. Certainly better for the whole spirit of the Games.

The US has had a lot of Olympics; no country in South America has had any. I think that these events feel more special, and get a better all-out push from the host country, when they represent some kind of inclusive "first ever" achievement. Japan marked its post-WW II recovery as before and after its 1964 Olympic games. South Korea in 1988 and China in 2008 used their host role, in different ways, as big national milestones. Athens in 2004, too, had some kind of closing-the-circle fulfillment in bringing the games back to their original home. Whereas for Los Angeles in 1984, Atlanta in 1996, and I assume London three years from now, the Olympics are mainly big logistics challenges to be coped with and endured.

2) Obama was in a no-win situation about his personal lobbying. The other candidate chiefs of state had also made personal pitches. If he hadn't made the trip and Chicago lost, you can imagine today's right-wing theme being: he didn't care enough about his country even to try. (Probably because it's not really his country. Now, if Kenya had been a finalist...) Since he did make the trip, the theme is: what a loser.

Yeah, yeah, his advisers "should have" had a clearer sense of the nuttiness that is the modern Olympic governing process; and yeah, yeah, knowing that, he should have limited his exposure by letting his wife be his representative. But -- and I would have said this if John McCain were president and had made the trip -- it was never really about him.

3) It's superfluous to link to anything in the omnipresent BoingBoing, but in this item, yesterday, Cory Doctorow made an important point that everyone outside the U.S. knows but that few resident Americans take seriously: It has become a tremendous nuisance, and often a humiliation, for foreigners to get through U.S. customs-and-immigration clearance. Lots of people still want to immigrate to the US, but people who have a choice are often glad not to travel here. (How to imagine this, if you hold a US passport? Think of your most unpleasant TSA screening experience, and multiply it by a hundred -- with an extra dose of, Why should we think you're not a terrorist? Yes, I hold a US passport, but I've heard tales like Doctorow's too many times not to get the point.) It's hard to know how much this affected the Olympic bid but is worth realizing as part of our connections with the rest of the world.

4) From a Chicagoan:

"As an unabashed Obama-phile, I'm distraught at how badly he miscalculated in going to Copenhagen. Not only because the failure could be damaging in itself, but also because, as you promised after Obama's health care speech, the time has finally come that he wasn't able to "pull himself out of pinch with a big speech."...

"This latest speech may not perfectly fit, as Obama didn't think he was in a pinch in the first place. Still, his failure does break his string of very good luck (which included, for example, his three-point shot in Kuwait)."

The theme of luck brings us back to the main point: Anyone who appreciates big cities should always love Chicago, but best of luck to Rio.

A nice tool for envisioning rhetoric

At this IBM research site, an interesting way to assess the themes in presidential inaugural addresses. The researcher, Jonathan Feinberg, uses fancy math to analyze which words in an address are most similar to those other presidents have used -- and which are most distinctive. The larger the words in the diagram, the more often a President used them in a given speech -- and the bluer they are, the more unusual their use is, compared with other speeches. The pink words are ones "conspicuously absent" from a speech -- ones showing up in other inaugural speeches but not this one.

For instance, this is the graph of GW Bush's Wilsonian-sounding Second Inaugural Address, with its commitment to "the expansion of freedom in all the world." Blue words are those distinctive to this speech; pink ones, those strikingly missing.

Disappointingly, the tool is not yet sufficiently honed to track the Reagan-era-onward emergence of "God bless America!" as the unvarying conclusion of presidential speeches. (In fairness, Obama left it out of the prepared text of his address this year.) And it's not set up to let you feed new rhetoric into it for analysis -- for instance, the tantalizing possibility of sluicing in newspaper columns, to depict the phrases a writer stresses and avoids. That's why researchers must still toil on. Thanks to Henry Farrell.

Update on McCaughey and tobacco

Yesterday I reported this exchange with a representative of the Manhattan institute, where Betsy McCaughey was based when she wrote her "No Exit" attack on the Clinton health reform plan:

"I wrote back to Lindsay Craig asking which of these options the Manhattan Institute was saying:
"A: The Rolling Stone contention that tobacco companies collaborated with Ms. McCaughey and M.I. is totally false; there was no such contact or collaboration.

"B: We are confident that Ms. McCaughey's opinions were not influenced by tobacco companies, even though she may have worked with them.
"Her immediate response:
"A. Betsy never worked with Phillip Morris."

As a followup, I asked Ms. Craig whether there was any significance in the distinction between "tobacco companies" in the question and "Phillip Morris" in the answer. She said: No. Her flat denial applies to "Tobacco companies (plural -- though the document in question is from Phillip Morris)."

Clear enough. So we now have documents, reported in Rolling Stone, in which a tobacco lobbyist claims in detail to have worked with McCaughey as she put together her articles -- and a categorical denial from the Manhattan Institute that she worked with tobacco firms. Yet again it would be helpful to have Ms. McCaughey address the specifics of the lobbyist's claim.

One crucial B. McCaughey update

I have deliberately laid off the Betsy McCaughey theme for the past month-plus. I had my say; she continues to have hers; people can make up their minds.

But revelations late last week by Tim Dickinson, of Rolling Stone, are at face value so important that they deserve to be underscored. It's worth reading Dickinson's whole dispatch and studying the on-line scans of the documents he has found. But to me the real news is the evidence that tobacco lobbyists secretly worked with McCaughey to prepare her infamous 1994 New Republic article "No Exit."

As I argued back in 1995 in "A Triumph of Misinformation," everything about McCaughey's role in the debate depended on her pose as a scrupulous, impartial, independent scholar who, after leafing through the endless pages of the Clinton health proposals, had been shocked by what she found. If it had been known at the time that she was secretly collaborating with one of the main interest-group enemies of the plan, perhaps the article would never had been published; at a minimum, her standing to speak would have been different.

(For the record: Yes, I am aware that my friend and current Atlantic colleague Andrew Sullivan, who was then TNR's editor, is the one who decided to publish this article. In the 15 years since the article's appearance, the magazine and its writers have, to their credit, repeatedly pointed out its errors and apologized for spreading its misinformation. Mickey Kaus was doing so immediately after the article's embarrassing selection for a National Magazine Award for "Excellence in Public Interest." Jonathan Cohn, author of the indispensable book Sick, did so early this year. The TNR site has a "link" to the original McCaughey piece, but it's not connected to the article itself.)

Now Tim Dickinson produces documents from a tobacco lobbyist about his efforts to derail the Clinton health bill, including this one involving McCaughey and her then employer, the Manhattan Institute:

In case that's blurry, here is what Dickinson says:

"What has not been reported until now is that McCaughey's writing was influenced by Philip Morris, the world's largest tobacco company, as part of a secret campaign to scuttle Clinton's health care reform. (The measure would have been funded by a huge increase in tobacco taxes.) In an internal company memo from March 1994, the tobacco giant detailed its strategy to derail Hillarycare through an alliance with conservative think tanks, front groups and media outlets. Integral to the company's strategy, the memo observed, was an effort to "work on the development of favorable pieces" with "friendly contacts in the media." The memo, prepared by a Philip Morris executive, mentions only one author by name:
' "Worked off-the-record with Manhattan and writer Betsy McCaughey as part of the input to the three-part exposé in The New Republic on what the Clinton plan means to you. The first part detailed specifics of the plan." '
"McCaughey did not respond to Rolling Stone's request for an interview."

Maybe there is another side to this story, but if unrebutted it is damning.

Obesity and politics

A reader notes the thematic resemblance between two maps. First, the famous NYT map showing the counties that voted more Republican in the 2008 presidential election than in 2004. The areas in red show where Barack Obama, while winning nationally, got less of the vote than John Kerry did while losing.

Then, the previously-mentioned map showing the states with greatest number of people who are both poor and obese.

What this means, if anything, is hard to say, because of the state-versus-county difference in scale and other anomalies. Still, it's interesting. The reader says:

"You brought up the voting map, but even before I saw your mention of it, it struck me that the obesity/median income map strongly resembled maps that showed percentages of people voting for McCain and Obama. There is a V, with its bottom point in Arkansas and extending an arm NE to West Virginia and NW to Montana, that covers both McCain voters and the poor-and-fat. So the GOP is not just the natural home now of evangelical whites but also the disproportionatlely poor and heavy? Wow. That's a lot of cultural signifiers for rednecks conservatives all rolled up into one.."

Here, also from the NYT, is a map of the states McCain actually carried, showing the reach up toward Montana.

Two views of SECDEF Gates

In response to this item yesterday, noting Robert Gates's mention of John Boyd as one of the "transformative figures of American air power," two reactions. The first is from a relatively recent product of the Air Force Academy (whom I don't know). The second is from a long-standing friend who is a quite experienced veteran of the defense business. First up:

"I graduated from the Air Force Academy in 2002, and while I was there Boyd was taught in our Military Strategic Studies courses as though he was the latest in a line of military theorists that stretched from Sun Tzu, Clausewitz, Jomini, Douhet, Mitchell, Liddell Hart, Boyd, and Warden. In fact, Boyd's OODA loop was taught with such reverence that I distinctly remember making light of it with my classmates.

"I am a few years to junior for such an assignment, but were I on the the staff of Secretary Gates assisting with the preparation of speeches, I would not have batted an eye at the inclusion of Boyd among that line up, and I doubt any officers from my cohort would either. If anything, LeMay strikes me as out of place and far more controversial in today's Air Force."

Now, from Charles A. Stevenson, a friend and former professor of mine who has written a book, SECDEF, about the "nearly impossible job" of running the Pentagon:

"I share your surprise and satisfaction over the performance of Bob Gates... I fully expected him to follow the Laird model: wind down the war in Iraq, cut deals with the senior military on other issues, end-run the White House types on issues that mattered to him. From his long government service and membership on the Iraq Study Group, that seemed likely. His appointment by Obama suggested that the new team liked his style and welcomed the political cover he provided as a Republican.

"Now I think his closest model was the first SecDef Gates, Tom Gates, who had served several years in the Pentagon under Eisenhower before being elevated to SecDef.

Continue reading "Two views of SECDEF Gates" »

More slippery slopes

This is not the only subject on my mind at the moment (eg, the Redskins' unimpressive victory over the Rams just now, Barack Obama's more impressive TV fandango this morning, the ever-interesting Chinese tire tariff question, etc) but it's the one with the biggest backlog of worthwhile incoming material. From reader BJ in Florida:

"Three thoughts on your "slippery slope" dialogue:

"1) As your reader Webster Marquez hinted, the frequency of a slippery slope argument actually bearing out seems to be quite rare. In fact, if a scientist or statistician was looking at this question, it seems to me that they would be comparing the number of times that a "slippery slope" argument did NOT bear out, versus the number of times that one actually DID bear out. When looked at this way, history is seemingly littered with thousands of failed "slippery slope" arguments, versus a precious few arguments that may have been considered true.

"2) One good, general recurring slippery slope argument may be the drawing of colonial boundaries that ignored the indigenous geography of ethnicity, language, culture, religion, etc. Once formalized, the results appear to inevitably be tragic whether it's Palestine, Iraq, Afghanistan, Kenya, Nigeria, etc.

"3) I'm almost ashamed of myself for suggesting the following, but not ashamed enough...If there was ever a valid "slippery slope" in politics (albeit not policy-related), it surely must be (literally and figuratively) the initiation of an extramarital sexual relationship. Once that "little step" is taken, the results are almost universally predictable:

Continue reading "More slippery slopes" »

Thomas de Quincey on slippery slopes

Profundity from the author of Confessions of an English Opium-Eater:

"If once a man indulges himself in murder, very soon he comes to think little of robbing; and from robbing he comes next to drinking and Sabbath-breaking, and from that to incivility and procrastination. Once begin upon this downward path, you never know where you are to stop. Many a man has dated his ruin from some murder or other that perhaps he thought little of at the time. Principiis obsta-that's my rule."

Principiis obsta -- resist the first inklings, "nip it in the bud" -- is of course the slippery-slope concept with a college degree. Thanks to J. Stein, even though this one does not win the "most convincing real world example of a slippery slope" award. More to come.

Slippery slope updates

A few more from a very nice array that has arrived. Original post here.

Serious:

"With the exception of the birth-death sequence of life, our notion of free will tends to negate the unavoidability of the slippery slope - to our great benefit, I would have thought."

Serious in a different way:

"Trying is the first step towards failure."
Homer Simpson, The Simpsons

A powerful real-world example:

"The birth-to-death suggestion is not a valid example of a "slippery slope," in that it is not so much "slippery" as perfectly smooth. Mortality is an inevitable straight-line progression missing the essential element of choice. There is no option to "back up" the slope, to pause, or to go faster. In principle, the reader's example is no different than that of striking a match in a windless room, something that will inevitably turn the match to ashes. Nothing slippery about that, although matches flame out quicker than lives.

"The best example of a "slippery slope" in the realm of public policy may be the American journey toward racial equality. It's taken more than 100 years. There have been pauses along the way, with some temporary backtracking. We've gone from the Emancipation Proclamation, to the Anti-Slavery Amendments, to the Jim Crow era of "Separate but Equal," to Brown v. Board of Education, to the Civil Rights Act of 1964, to the Voting Rights Act of 1965, to improvements in these statutes, to the Supreme Court's abolition of antimiscegenation laws (Loving v. Virginia). Focusing only on the "de jure" aspects of this, African Americans have traveled the complete journey, beginning as the lawful property of white men and ending with full legal equality. "

I think there is a lot to this last point. (Indeed, to all of them.) In American history the slippery-slope Cassandras whose worst fears have been most vividly realized were the segregationist hard-liners of the pre Civil Rights-legislation era. They warned that once you blurred the racial barriers you'd have race-mixing of all sorts, including intermarriage. And once you headed down that road, you'd have these mixed people all over the place... in the extreme nightmare version, even at the White House.

More in the queue. And later today, a long-promised update on whether slippery-slope thinking applies to the Chinese tire tariffs.

Political rhetoric question/contest: "slippery slopes"

Due no doubt to the few years I spent producing political rhetoric and the many decades I have spent ingesting it, I'm ~~obsessed with~~ endlessly interested in the connection between the words we use about public life and the decisions we make and attitudes we hold. For instance, that's the point behind the "God bless America!" or "boiled frog" watch. These are cases where language actually takes the place of thought. Yes, I realize that I'm not the first person to have noticed this connection. Indeed in my GBA/frog campaigns I am remiss in not having quoted Rule #1 from the modern classic work on the misuse of language in political discourse:

"1. Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print."

Which leads to this open question, suggested by reader Webster Marquez:

"The health care debate (and, indeed, the debate around Obama's and Democrats' agenda) is filled with rhetoric about "slippery slopes." To wit: health care reform => government takeover => tsarist communism! Somehow!

"Can you find any examples of a slippery slope argument actually bearing out? A leads to B, which leads to C, all the way to Z?

"How is it that an argument that is considered a "classic informal fallacy" (per Wikipedia, but I remember this family of concepts from college philosophy) is given so much currency across the media and political spectrum?"

Although the finest and most famous example of pure slippery-slope rhetoric is Ronald Reagan's renowned 1961 broadcast about the risks of socialized medicine, it's worth noting that this reasoning can be applied from any part of the political spectrum. Eg: Patriot Act => elimination of civil liberties => fascism in America. Just this morning I heard a representative of ACORN used the "criticism of us => return of McCarthyism" form of the argument. Similarly, most objections to the Obama Administration's decision to cancel European missile-defense plans concern not the Czech/Polish sites themselves but the "sign of weakness => encourage agressors => appeasement brings on Another Hitler" concept. (Image from here.)

I know that for some people, Mr. Marquez's question is too easy to answer. If you think we already live in Fascist Amerika, or that it's been a one-way trip down the road to moral collapse since [Elvis Presley, the Miranda ruling, choose your starting point], real life is a living confirmation of slippery-slopeism. But as a de-politicized, purely analytical question, I wonder what the best real-world example of this phenomenon is. To be clear, we're talking about a situation where one step leads unavoidably to another -- in which people end up with Consequence Z, which they never would have chosen, purely because they took initial steps A and B. Almost as if they started down a slope, and began to slip, and then... Nominations welcomed; results will be announced.

Discussion with John Podesta at Gov 2.0 conference

Last week Tim O'Reilly held his debut "Gov 2.0" conference in Washington. All the parts I saw were interesting and provocative. For a list of clips, podcasts, and so on, go here. For the record, here is a clip of a session I did with John Podesta, former Clinton White House chief of staff and now head of the Center for American Progress. We decided to do it as a split-shift Q-and-A: first, improbably, he asked me questions, and then I asked him some. We ran out of time before I could get many details on something I really wanted to know about: what it was like to spend time with Kim Jong Il, when Podesta accompanied Bill Clinton to North Korea this summer.

Seriously, the conference was a valuable series of presentations, worth perusing especially if you're feeling blue about the general tone of American political "discussion" these days and the fecklessness of many public efforts.

A nice place to start is with this presentation by Carl Malamud, whose efforts to open public data to (gasp) the public I've often noted over the years. I return to the theme: we take our encouragement where we can find it.

"God bless Precinct 8"

Courtesy of a reader in Texas who has my undying gratitude:

"State Rep. Kino Flores, D-Palmview, said today he will not seek re-election.

"The announcement comes two months after he was indicted by a Travis County grand jury. He is accused of omitting hundreds of thousands of dollars' worth of income from financial statements that elected officials are required to file with the state......

" 'As my former boss, the late Bob Bullock, used to say, he left Texas better than it was,' Flores said in the press release. 'Well, as anyone can see, there is no doubt that I will leave House District 36 better than it was. God bless Texas, and God bless District 36.'"

On the other hand, I regret to announce that a previous dispatch scoffing at the idea that John Adams, rather than Ronald Reagan, had started the country down this unfortunate rhetorical path seems to have been, ummm, flat wrong. Several readers wrote in to make this point. Let me give the microphone to Joshua Friedman, who adduces actual historical evidence:

"Abigail Adams wrote a letter to John on July 21, 1776, describing her experience of hearing the Declaration of Independence read aloud from the balcony of the Massachusetts State House. 'As soon as [it] ended," she writes, 'the cry from the balcony was, "God save our American States," and then three cheers which rended the air. The bells rang, the privateers fired, the forts and batteries, the cannon were discharged, the platoons followed, and every face appeared joyful.'

Continue reading ""God bless Precinct 8"" »

Our second president on "God Bless America"

As noted here more than a few times (eg this), U.S. presidents before Ronald Reagan did not end their major addresses with "God Bless America!" to indicate "The speech is now over, and I'm not going to bother thinking of a real concluding sentence." Presidents from Reagan onward have used the phrase in an "Amen!" sense. The anonymous author of the Jotman blog writes in with new historico-linguistic evidence, of the biopic variety:

"In a recent post you complained -- yet again -- "about the ~~trite~~ ~~hackneyedvacuousportento-pious lazy~~ comforting and beloved three-word ending for all presidential addresses since the time of Ronald Reagan: 'God bless America!'"

"You are clearly mistaken. If I may set the record straight...

"The "God bless America" tradition did not begin with Reagan. In fact, the tradition goes all the way back to the the first reading of the Declaration of Independence in Philadelphia.

"The proof is on video. Watch this YouTube clip from about the 6:00 mark until 6:40 and you will see what I mean."

Then Jotman moves out of sarcastic mode:

"P.S. Of course, Americans of the founding generation weren't such ninnies. They would not have sought "comfort" in such a banality as this phrase. The inclusion of this modern abomination not only ruined the whole scene for for me, it also broke the "historical spell." I no longer believed I was watching a serious attempt to portray events as they might have actually have happened in 1776. The director lost my trust. Actually, hearing the phrase misused in a historical drama irritated me exponentially more than having to listen to any modern American politician. It's one thing when politicians help to ruin the American character of the present generation through repetition of a lousy rhetorical innovation, but it's far worse when the custodians of American culture project our flaws backward in time; when they make it appear as if the lamest, most pathetic inventions of our own times have deep historical roots.

"It's a slippery slope. At this rate, some future documentary about the Revolutionary War is bound to include a water-boarding scene. Or show Alexander Hamilton founding Homeland Security in 1790."

After the jump, a Marine combat veteran with thoughts on patriotism.

Continue reading "Our second president on "God Bless America"" »

Once again, a first-rate speech

I don't know how many people stayed tuned in to watch the whole hour-plus of this speech, counting intro and so on. But, once again among his major addresses, it will bear long-term study for its range, tone, and clarity:

- Conciliatory: You Republicans want to talk about tort reform? Let's hear your ideas.
- Tough: When you tell lies, we will call you out.
- Clarifying: For the first time ever, I felt as if I glimpsed a "larger idea" behind the Obama plan.
- Big picture: The role-of-government soliloquy at the end, including the connection to the moral and social-contract histories of Social Security and Medicare.
- Emotional, sans schmaltz: As he got ready for the end, I feared that he would tell the story of all the Lenny Skutnik figures in the First Lady's box. Instead, he told Ted Kennedy's story, with allusions only to Kennedy's Republican friends.
- Simple performance dynamics: Well delivered, including at crucial points talking over the applause to keep the rhythm going.
- Manners: Will it pay off for the Republicans to have booed him and, in the case of Rep. "Gentleman Joe" Wilson of South Carolina, to have yelled "you lie!" at the President? We'll see. Update: An ActBlue site supporting an opponent to Wilson raised more than $25,000 within three hours of his outburst. Via Simon Owens.

There will come a time when Barack Obama cannot pull himself out of pinch with a big speech. And obviously we don't know how this debate will turn out yet. But he hasn't fallen short on the big-speech front yet. More tomorrow.

I was wrong (again)

I've seen the light. No longer will I complain about the ~~trite~~ ~~hackneyed~~ ~~vacuous~~ ~~portento-pious lazy~~ comforting and beloved three-word ending for all presidential addresses since the time of Ronald Reagan: "God bless America!" I won't complain, that is, as long as the words are always presented in the style of the clip below. See especially from time 2:00 onward.

From here. Thanks to Gary Puckett.

Festival of updates #5: Wolfowitz and Iraq

For the rest of his life, Paul Wolfowitz will face questions about the invasion and occupation of Iraq. You can hear that realization sinking in on him during the course of his ten-minute interview with Guy Raz of NPR, broadcast this evening on on All Things Considered. Wolfowitz had come on the show to discusss his essay on foreign policy "realism" in Foreign Policy magazine -- about which more in a moment. Through the ten minutes, you can hear Wolfowitz sounding startled, then testy, then something like resigned when Raz keeps coming back to the questions he obviously had to ask, about how Wolfowitz's current theories match the record in office for which he will always be best known.

The idea that we'll "always" be known for a moment in the unchangeable past, no matter how the rest of our lives turn out, is a proposition so fatalistic that that we all naturally resist it. (Except maybe Michael Phelps, Sandy Koufax, perhaps Tom Brady and Neil Armstrong, etc.) The earnest post-Vietnam career of Robert McNamara is a testament to how much he struggled with that reality. Remarkably and rarely, Al Gore will "always" be the man at the losing end of Bush v. Gore, but he made a new identity after that.

In the ten minutes of his interview, whenever Wolfowitz says "Look!" what he's really signaling is: I don't want to talk about this Iraq stuff any more, so why do you keep coming back to it? The reason for coming back, of course, is that Wolfowitz does and always will occupy a unique role in the intellectual history of the decision. Dick Cheney will apparently never reveal a doubt or second thought; George W. Bush has (with some dignity) backed off the public stage for now; Colin Powell has made sure to signal that he was never that enthusiastic; and who knows what Donald Rumsfeld will come up with. But Wolfowitz was the one who from the start had the sweeping vision of the historic rationale for removing Saddam Hussein.

The public case for invading Iraq was purely negative. ("Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction." Dick Cheney, speech to national VFW Convention, August 26, 2002.) But the "enlightened" case that Wolfowitz in particular had made for years in articles, interviews, and speeches involved the broader, Wilsonian prospect of bringing democracy to the Arab world, as it had largely come to much of Asia and Latin America. I did a profile of him in early 2002 that emphasized this theme. I also had a sense of its origins, having lived in Southeast Asia in the 1980s, when Wolfowitz helped swing U.S. policy against Ferdinand Marcos in the Philippines, and then was a very popular U.S. ambassador to Indonesia. By all accounts, Wolfowitz was a prominent voice telling a rattled President Bush, during the first, nervous strategy session at Camp David days after the 9/11 attacks, that for positive and negative reasons alike he had to get to the root of the terrorist problem by moving against Iraq. (For more on Wolfowitz's role in war planning, see here and here.)

In its way it was an honorable vision, as were most of Robert McNamara's beliefs through the early days in Vietnam. But it did not -- OK, has not so far -- turned out anything like what Wolfowitz advertised publicly and within the government. To his credit, Guy Raz of NPR played back to Wolfowitz the tape of his notorious Congressional testimony just before the invasion, in which he said "We can't be sure that the Iraqi people will welcome us as liberators ... [but] I am reasonably certain that they will greet us as liberators, and that will help us to keep requirements down." And "It's hard to conceive that it would take more forces to provide stability in post-Saddam Iraq than it would take to conduct the war itself and to secure the surrender of Saddam's security forces and his army. Hard to imagine."

It's worth listening to -- along with the full 37-minute unedited interview, here. Among other reasons, I suspect it will be a while before we hear Paul Wolfowitz in such a setting again. The first 15 minutes or so of the "long" version involve what he did want to talk about -- his new Foreign Policy article warning against excessive "realism" in America's approach to the world. Judge for yourself, but it strikes me as a concerted argument against a non-existent or straw-man foe. When an American president has given a major speech in an Arab capital saying that the U.S. needs to engage in the modernization of the Islamic world, it's hard to argue that the U.S. is showing a steely indifference to social and political conditions outside its borders.

It took more than twenty years after Robert McNamara's departure from the Pentagon for him to begin talking seriously about Vietnam. I look forward to what Paul Wolfowitz eventually says about his war.
___

In an on-air colloquy with Guy Raz after this interview, I made my own mistake. I said that a recent ruling by a panel of judges from the 9th Circuit held that John Ashcroft, former Attorney General, "was" personally liable for illegal detention of a U.S. citizen. Actually, the ruling said that he "could be" personally liable. My apologies.

A very simple question about the 'public option'

No one I have ever met who is eligible for Medicare would dream of turning down its coverage.

And therefore the "public option" would be so terrible because.... ???
____
Medicare is of course a "public option" in spades. I remember the debates before its enactment in the 1960s, about how the coming of "socialized medicine" would be the end of the American way.

Of course now we have a system that is taken for granted as a central part of the American way. Yes, yes, I am aware of the arguments (as laid out here, here, and elsewhere) about the distortions and cost pressures within Medicare. Still: as a matter of politics I have always thought that the route toward health-coverage reform in America would be steady expansion of the eligibility standards for Medicare. First down to age 60, then 55, then...

I know that "logic" tells us only so much about health policy debates. But, seriously, how can people with a sound mind and a straight face take Medicare as part of the landscape but consider the "public option" an abomination? Just curious -- but genuinely curious.

Senator Edward M. Kennedy

I have nothing of substance to contribute to the assessment of his career right now but just wanted to add my respect, sympathy, and sadness. The most impressive and winning aspect of his personality was the way he kept on going, with good humor, despite defeats and tragedies of all sorts and vanished ambitions. With his physical bulk he made me think of some big, proud, beautiful animal -- a bull in the ring with lances hanging out of its neck, a lion or elephant that has been tattered or wounded but not brought down. As everyone has noted, his most impressive and dignified period was after he realized he would never be president but would still bring campaign-scale passion and charisma (overused term, but right in this case) to causes he cared about.

I realize to my surprise how vividly I can remember the dramatic moments of his progression through the news. The summer night forty years ago, when I was sitting with college friends in a Northeast Washington backyard when word started circulating that Kennedy, still in his 30s, had been in some kind of traffic accident on Martha's Vineyard. The chilly fall day ten years later, when I was watching TV with friends in DC and saw in real-time astonishment that Kennedy hemmed and hawed but could not answer Roger Mudd's simple question, "Why do you want to be president?" before his run against Jimmy Carter. The unforgettable speech on the floor of the Democratic convention the following summer, when he thundered "The dream will never die!" In the hall you could feel how completely star power had drained from the beleaguered sitting~~former~~* president Carter. (The only thing I've seen at a convention remotely as electric: Barack Obama's keynote/debut speech in 2004.) And, in keeping with the lanced-bull image, his unbelievably brave speech in favor of Obama at last year's convention. This was brave not in its content, as his opposition to the Iraq war and original endorsement of Obama had been; it was brave in the most elemental sense, that he insisted on walking to the stage unassisted and collecting himself for what was his last real public performance. The point is the way he commanded attention over his long public life.

A flawed man, who started unimpressively in life -- the college problems, the silver-spoon boy senator, everything involved with Chappaquiddick -- but redeemed himself, in the eyes of all but the committed haters, with his bravery and perseverance and commitment to the long haul. And his big, open heart. A powerful, brave, often-wounded animal at last brought down.
___
* Rushed Freudian-error typo. Former president now; sitting president then.

If you're looking for the 1979 'Passionless Presidency' article...

... as mentioned by Richard Cohen in the Washington Post today, it's here.

More another time on that article, its circumstances, its aftermath, and its era -- and its applicability, or not, to current circumstances.

Will it never end? McCaughey v. Ezekiel Emanuel

Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel should need no introduction to Atlantic readers. Among his many pursuits is writing a number of interesting articles for our "Food Channel," under Corby Kummer's auspices. He should need no introduction to anybody, since over the past decade-plus he has so often been involved in deliberations about the right future health-care path for America and the world. I stress "the world" since he has traveled widely and emphasized public-health challenges for poor nations too. I know him slightly -- just well enough that, a few weeks ago, I asked his journalistic advice for contacts in China on a public-health story I'm working on. He is an oncologist and bioethicist -- and, of course, older brother of Rahm Emanuel from the White House.

Elizabeth "Betsy" McCaughey also needs no introduction to Atlantic readers. She has brought more misinformation, more often, more destructively into America's consideration of health-policy issues than any other individual. She has no concept of "truth" or "accuracy" in the normal senses of those terms, as demonstrated last week when she went on The Daily Show. Virtually every statement she has made about health-reform proposals, from the Clinton era until now, has been proven to be false. It doesn't slow her down.

And now we have the New York Times, in a big take-out story, saying that Dr. Emanuel, in his role as Obama health-care advisor, is in an "uncomfortable place" because he is being criticized by*:

1) Betsy McCaughey !
2) Rep. Michele Bachman (look her up) !!
3) Sarah Palin !!!
4) Lyndon LaRouche !!!!

McCaughey, Bachman, Palin, LaRouche -- shaping American debate and media coverage about health policy? Was Zsa Zsa Gabor not available?

To be "fair," the story puts the criticisms in "context," thus:

"Largely quoting his past writings out of context this summer, Betsy McCaughey, a former lieutenant governor of New York, labeled Dr. Emanuel a "deadly doctor" who believes health care should be "reserved for the nondisabled" -- a false assertion that Representative Michele Bachmann, Republican of Minnesota, repeated on the House floor."

"Out of context" and "false" are useful caveats. But why is the story about Ezekiel Emanuel being on the hot seat in the first place -- and not about the campaign of flat lies by McCaughey, Bachman, Palin, and LaRouche? Why are real newspapers quoting what they say any more? (Interestingly, LaRouche's claims rarely get NYT coverage. In in this case, he is apparently "legitimized" by ... McCaughey.) If I start a campaign of lies against somebody and get Soupy Sales plus Lynette "Squeaky" Fromme to agree with me, can I expect them to be regularly publicized in the mainstream press?

I do understand - and wrote before -- about how difficult it is for the mainstream press to decide that one party to a controversy is making things up, doesn't care about facts, and will keep saying whatever it wants. I also recognize that when a campaign of falsehoods has a political effect, the effect itself can be worth writing about. But does it have to be presented in a way that suggests that the McCaughey-Bachman-Palin-LaRouche team is just another participant in political discussion? This can give "fairness" a bad name.
___
* Here are paragraphs two and three of the story -- the "nut graf" passage establishing that there is a controversy:

"Largely quoting his past writings out of context this summer, Betsy McCaughey, a former lieutenant governor of New York, labeled Dr. Emanuel a "deadly doctor" who believes health care should be "reserved for the nondisabled" -- a false assertion that Representative Michele Bachmann, Republican of Minnesota, repeated on the House floor.
"Former Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska has asserted that Dr. Emanuel's "Orwellian" approach to health care would "refuse to allocate medical resources to the elderly, the infirm and the disabled who have less economic potential," accusations similarly made by the political provocateur Lyndon H. LaRouche Jr."

Today's McCaughey, euthanasia, and general falsehood update

Several more objections, clarifications, and additional bits of evidence following the much-bruited -- and to me somewhat anticlimactic -- Betsy McCaughey-Jon Stewart smackdown two days ago. (Previous reactions here.)

On the origins of Betsy McCaughey's argumentative style:
A reader suggests they have one obvious source:

The reader explains:

Cleese's character is armed with all that one could ask for: keen wit, boundless vocabulary, perfect presence of mind, and all the facts on his side. And yet, even he can be played to a draw by a liar who maintains a sufficiently unshakable facade of conviction.

On the details of why "death panels" are so preposterous
A reader in Maine writes:

Another absurdity in the argument of Betsy McCaughey is her claim that there is something wrong with doctors having to follow a patient's wishes as expressed in a living will. There are two major problems here: 1) People can always change their living will, just as they can change their will at any point. The later living will supercedes the later one. So if a person makes a living will when healthy and sees things differently when ill, the sick person can express different wishes in the new living will. 2) Why shouldn't doctors have to respect people's wishes on end-of-life care? I have heard countless stories of living wills being ignored. The provision on living wills is effectively an implementation provision, providing for accountability and for the wishes of the patient to be respected.

Further on the Living Will point:
Reader Zach writes:

I'm surprised you didn't mention this. McCaughy's twisted logic is basically that after you draft a living will it will be enforced ruthlessly by doctors seeking to up their quality rating even if you personally object. Backing her up is an anecdote about her apparently hearing a woman telling her to hurry up and help as a doctor suffocated her with a pillow or something. Her point is that, by rewarding adherence, we're making doctors stick with the patient's initial stated intent. However, if you're conscious you can amend, annul, or otherwise do whatever you want with your will, living or otherwise, at any time you want. If you're conscious enough to tell someone not to pull the plug, you haven't triggered your living will yet.

Continue reading "Today's McCaughey, euthanasia, and general falsehood update" »

Revisiting McCaughey-v-Stewart

As I mentioned this morning, I thought Betsy McCaughey was even more blithely disconnected from the world of reality than I had expected -- but that she was weirdly "effective" against Jon Stewart, since there was no way to shame her by pointing out that what she said was untrue. She would just smile, mug at the audience in an "isn't he cute!" way, and say, No, I'm right.

Not all readers agreed. Below and after the jump, a sample of dissenting views, with brief retort at the end.

Objection 1: The Audience Is In on the Joke

...I disagree that talking over Jon Stewart the way people do in appearances on Fox News is an effective tactic for the guest. It might be better than some of the other options, but it backfires for a weird reason, one that might be harder to see if you don't watch the show regularly.  

From its inception in 1997, the distinguishing shtick that makes the show unique is a type of edited interview segment in which the show's "reporters" interview obscure and completely crazy people. The subjects have received some local press attention for doing something bizarre and they're desperate for media attention. The reporters pretend to be mainstream press rather than comedians, and they use a deadpan style that allows the interviewees to provide most of the humor. What struck me about the McCaughey interview, and the recent interview of Orly Taitz by Stephen Colbert, was that Stewart and Colbert are clearly adapting the "crazy person" interview techniques to their live in-studio host interviews with guests that don't agree with them.  

The normal host interviews vary a lot but they are always a two-way conversation with some socially well-adjusted give and take. In these two recent interviews, as the guest acts more unstoppable and enthusiastic unhinged when discussing "their" topic, the interview slides into the familiar "crazy person" style. That's a cue for the show's regular audience to frame the discussion and the interviewee in a very different way. 

Objection 2: It Worked for Betsy, but It Won't Work for Others

I expect you are very right about this being an interview that will be studied by right wing operatives for some time to come. However, I feel like you overlooked a couple important pieces which may make this scenario unrepeatable (particularly if those at the Daily Show are paying attention).

Continue reading "Revisiting McCaughey-v-Stewart" »

McCaughey on the Daily Show

Well, my TV-owning neighbors were all away last night, so I couldn't watch the McCaughey-Stewart showdown by peering through their windows and had to see it just now on the web. Clips below, starting with the first segment of the interview as broadcast. Three conclusions:

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart

Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c

Betsy McCaughey Pt. 1

www.thedailyshow.com

Daily Show
Full Episodes

Political Humor

Healthcare Protests

Conclusion one: I have been far too soft on Betsy McCaughey. Even when conferring on her the title of "most destructive effect on public discourse by a single person" for the 1990s. She is way less responsible and tethered to the world of "normal" facts and discourse than I had imagined.

Conclusion two: The exchange is significant, because it demonstrates that there is indeed a way to "handle" Jon Stewart. You simply have to ignore what he says, interrupt and talk over him, and keep asserting that you're right. You even can try to usurp his role as host by mugging at the audience and rolling your eyes in a shared "there he goes again!" joke with the viewers.

In retrospect, this is the crucial weakness that in their different ways both Bill Kristol and Jim Cramer revealed in their appearances on the show. They listened to Stewart and -- even Kristol!!?! -- revealed through their bearing that they recognized there was such a thing as being caught in an inconsistency or presented with an inconvenient fact. McCaughey did none of that. She is just making it up, as anyone who has followed her work over the decades will know. She was not even minimally prepared for her appearance on the show, flipping aimlessly through the giant briefing book (of legislative clauses) she brought on stage. But she didn't let it bother her. The exchange demonstrated that if the guest reveals no self-awareness or does not accept the premise of factual challenge, Stewart can't get in his normal licks. Future guests will study this show.

Conclusion three: A good point Stewart made, albeit not registered by McCaughey, concerns the unbelievable inconsistency of attention to "incentives" built into health care systems, today's and tomorrow's.

That is: when McCaughey admits that there is no literal "death panel" provision in the new health care provision, she goes on to say something similar to what other conservatives, most recently Charles Krauthammer in the Washington Post today, contend: that the very act of reimbursing doctors for a discussion about "living wills" and end-of-life care will have a subtle bias in favor of an euthanasia-like outcome.

On the merits of this claim, I vehemently disagree. Having had, along with my siblings, first-hand, extended, and very painful experience with this process during my own father's decline and death last year, I would put reimbursement schemes for living-will discussions at the very bottom of the list of factors that make such decisions so wrenching for everyone involved.

But let's assume I'm wrong (though you'll never convince me of that) -- and that there is some third-order ripple-effect bias that comes from paying doctors for these every-five-year discussions. Why is the potential skewing effect of that payment the only thing we notice -- and not the thousand other life-and-death, rationing-and-queuing incentives that are built into every detail of the medical system now? And that David Goldhill -- no supporter of the Obama plan -- goes into so thoroughly in his cover story in this month's magazine? Yesterday I spent more than an hour on the customer "service" line for my own health insurance company, trying to get the answer to a simple "is this covered?" question. At the end of the hour, when I'd reached the queue to talk to a human agent, I got this recording: "Due to circumstances beyond our control, your call cannot be completed at this time. Please call again later." This has a kind of rationing/skewed incentive effect of its own -- even for someone fortunate, like me, to have good health insurance coverage. So, yes: I will listen to arguments about the hypothetical, subtle, psychological biasing effect of encouraging discussions about end-of-life decisions -- but only if they're in the context of the far more blatant, perverse, and destructive incentives built into today's system.

But see for yourself.

Second part of McCaughey's interview as broadcast.

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart

Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c

Betsy McCaughey Pt. 2

www.thedailyshow.com

Daily Show
Full Episodes

Political Humor

Healthcare Protests

Extended interview, with outtakes, part 1, is here; extended interview part 2 is here.

Can't get enough Felix!

I think this really could be the end of the Felix the Cat saga, most recently chronicled here and here. Next few items will concern software, China, and of course frogs. But before we turn the page, let us consider Felix's implications for: US-China relations; differences between England and America; and the proud heritage of New Jersey.

I. Felix as distinguished son of the Garden State
Walter Maier, curator of the "Famous New Jerseyans" web site, gives Felix a prominent place among the state's honorees. As he points out, "Felix was born in New Jersey." Go here for details.

II. Felix in the context of Chinese reformers
Taking an admirably post-racial stance, one reader writes in to say: "Surprised you haven't quoted Deng's 'It doesn't matter whether a cat is black or white, so long as it catches mice.'!"
("不管黑猫白猫，捉到老鼠就是好猫." If I were king, the standard version in English would be "Black cat, white cat -- as long as it catches mice it's a good cat.") Bottom line: if Deng Xiaoping were writing the notorious "Obama reminds me of Felix" essay, he would have begun, "It doesn't matter whether a president is black or white, so long as he fixes the economy."

[Deng, left, not with Felix but with another fine American]

III. Felix as lens for Anglo/American contrasts
A reader writes:

Just a stray observation, which may be outdated by now, based on initial Peace Corps experience meeting with Brit expats in Ghana during the late sixties, but remaining fairly intact after 40 more years of sporadic relevant dialogs with random but typically well educated British folks at home and abroad.

I'm consistently (nearly 100%) struck by the difference between white British and liberal US perceptions of what we both call "racism" or "racialism."

Continue reading "Can't get enough Felix!" »

One more on the selling of "death panels"

A reader writes:

"I'm not sure if it has been pointed out yet, but the whole "Death Panel" bullshit is especially ironic given that the ability of insurance companies to grant/deny access to healthcare is effectively a death panel. Can't afford a plan? Tough luck. Not eligible for whatever reason? Tough luck."

This illustrates the biggest change in the rhetoric of health care reform over the past year. Last summer, during the campaign, Obama succeeded in focusing attention on the real problems of the patchwork insurance-and-care system as it actually exists: rising costs, bureaucratic inflexibility, perverse incentives, inevitable delays and de facto rationing, implicit decisions about life and death. Now, various opponents of a reform plan have succeeded in shifting attention to the imagined problems of a post-reform system: rising costs, bureaucratic inflexibility, perverse incentives, inevitable delays and de facto rationing, implicit decisions about life and death. It is an achievement to ponder.

Why the "death panel" claim is working

In this recent item about the apparent triumph of the McCaughey/Palin/Grassley/ Limbaugh tribe in keeping the false "death panel" idea going, I said I had been wrong to think that the modern blogosphere could act as a truth squad. Here are several reader hypotheses about why things are panning out this way, starting with the one that's most vivid and convincing and ending with a truly constructive suggestion.

Theory #1: Triumph of the 'Sticky' Image

Your last blog post sure was depressing: not that you could be wrong, but that the new media ecosystem still doesn't have the tools to keep lunacies like McCaughey's "death panels" from becoming part of the political debate.

That said, if you're familiar with Chip & Dan Heath's book "Made To Stick" (www.madetostick.com), you can see that the death panel idea is probably too "sticky" to be debunked, defused, and delegitimized. In their view, the six key principles behind sticky ideas (like the NYC sewer alligators, or the kidney thieves that drug you and leave you in an ice-filled bathtub [or boiled frogs, JF note]) are:

- simplicity
- unexpectedness
- concreteness
- credibility
- emotions
- stories

The death panel story contains virtually all of these elements. It's a simple, concrete concept that anyone can picture. It's certainly unexpected, it stirs emotions, and it's easy to tell -- or make up -- stories. (My grandma has Parkinson's, and I won't have a government bureaucrat telling me she's got to die!")

It's true that to a rational, dispassionate listener the idea of a death panel does strain the bounds of credibility. However, the complexity of health care reform, the sheer size of the legislation, and the history of bizarre government policies that have been twisted by special interests, does leave room in the imagination for, well, the incredible.

So, to your point: does the new media ecosystem have a greater ability to stop charlatans? Clearly yes. But I wonder if any ecosystem could have stopped such a "sticky" idea.

Other theories after the jump, plus somebody who embraces the whole idea.
___

Continue reading "Why the "death panel" claim is working" »

The NYT says "false." Good.

When writing the previous item yesterday afternoon, about the pernicious works and thoughts of Elizabeth McCaughey, I had no idea that the NYT was planning to go into the same terrain with a very good story today:

But I mention the story mainly because of the way it is presented as a lead item on the TImes's web site, as shown at left. Using the word "False" is a big - and important -- step for an organization like the Times to make. I can't recall a time when the NYT used that word in a headline to describe the "birther" worldview.

In general, even on the most extreme, out-of-the-realm-of-fact political claims, every powerful instinct in the news media shies from calling something "false" in favor of adjectives like "controversial" or "disputed," or sometimes "partisan." As many people have noted, and as I discussed even back at the dawn of time in Breaking the News, the "objective" instincts of the news media can tie it in knots when one side to a political argument is perfectly willing to say obviously false things. It's hard for mainstream publications to say outright that something is false or a lie. So it is impressive to see that the NYT has taken that step.

Online at least. The front page of the print paper plays the story big, but under this headline: "Getting to the Source of the 'Death Panel' Rumor." Much to discuss later on about how the two versions of the paper came to their different decisions; about whether in the long-run there will be "web-appropriate" and "print-appropriate" versions of objectivity; and whether this labeling even by the NYT will have any effect on political discussion. It may be that we're so far into the era of separate fact-universes that having the NYT call something false makes others believe all the more that it is true. Nonetheless, it's a headline worth noticing.

I was wrong

Twice recently I've done brief interviews on NPR's On The Media show. Both times have concerned the pernicious influence of one Elizabeth "Betsy" McCaughey, below.

betsey mccaughey wikimedia.png

In the early 1990s McCaughey single-handedly did a phenomenal amount to distort discussion of health-care policy and derail the Clinton health bill. She did so through an entirely fictitious argument about what the bill would do. You can go back in the records here, here, and here, but the issue boils down to this: She claimed that the bill would make it illegal to go outside the government plan for coverage or pay doctors on your own. If a doctor took money for such outside-the-system services, she said, the doctor could go to jail. That was a flat-out lie. (One of the very first clauses of the legislation said, "Nothing in this Act shall be construed as prohibiting the following: (1) An individual from purchasing any health care services.") But her imaginary "no exit" claim was repeated so often by so many "respectable" media sources that it effectively became "true" and played a large part in stopping the bill. It would be as if the "birthers" had persuaded John Roberts to say, "Wait a minute, let's take another look at that birth certificate" and decline to swear in Obama on inauguration day.

McCaughey has been at it again this year -- twice, in fact. First was with an early, equally false claim that to compile "comparative effectiveness" data about medical care -- which drugs had which effects, which surgical procedures led to which results, the sort of data collected routinely about education, air safety, and everything else -- would lead to a Big Brotherish intrusion on individual medical decisions. That one seemed to get knocked out of contention fairly early. Then she was back with the "death panels" argument. And here is where I made my mistake.

In the On the Media interviews, I said that the "media ecosystem" was a lot different now from what it had been fifteen years ago. Back then, there was no blog world. The news cycle moved in days-long or weeks-long intervals, as newspapers came out each morning and newsmagazines each week. It was very hard to have instant feedback or correction in real time, so false stories could solidify before the truth squad had a chance. The early McCaughey was brilliantly matched to this system. Her unvarying pose is that of the objective researcher who has, selflessly, pored through the pages of a bill and emerged to warn us about what she has found. People took it at face value the first time.

But these days, I said, that wouldn't work as well. She personally now had a track record. (Republican politician with a turbulent history; proven distorter of the facts.) And thousands of other people could now look through a bill too and post their findings mere minutes or hours after her claim. Thanks to blogs, Wikis, and the rest, there was a more nimble check-and-balance built into the discussion of ideas these days. And indeed it seemed to work that way early this year, with her failed "comparative effectiveness" foray. She made a claim; "crowdsourcing" proved her wrong; she piped down. And so, I confidently said to Bob Garfield of OTM, we'd seen a good side of today's Web-based decentralized journalism. There were plenty of bad sides, but the new potential to stop charlatans was a plus.

But then came her claim about the "death panels." About the plain old facts here, there is as little room for rational dispute as with her previous phony contentions. The bill would not call people before panels to determine whether they had a right to live. Details from the conservative Republican Southerner who sponsored the plan, here.

Beyond the facts, anyone who has had first-hand experience with modern end-of-life issues knows this is not something to demagogue. The combination of what is eternal, namely man's mortality, and what is new, namely the frontiers of high-tech medicine, converts what has always been a painful, fraught, and central aspect of human existence into something with even more painful dilemmas and choices than in previous days. Seriously: I do not think that any decent person who has seen this process, up close, can imagine preaching to anyone else about the choices and consequences. It's just too complicated and painful. And certainly any fair reading of the legislation indicated that it was designed to give individuals and their families more rather than less control over what are inevitably impossible choices about our loved ones and ourselves -- to reduce the chances that anyone else could preach or dictate to them.

But the flow of argument makes it appear that "death panel" has won the battle of political ideas, as "no exit" did 15 years ago (and as the "birthers" have not done). For example, Charles Grassley seems to have bought it. I don't know which interpretation is more depressing: that Grassley actually believes in death panels (ie, he's irrational), or that he knows better but figures it's smart to say he believes (ie, he's craven). The political fundamentals, as I understand them, still favor the passage of some health-care bill. To that extent, Ms. McCaughey may indeed have been blunted. But I said two weeks ago that I thought today's communications systems had caught up with people who invented facts. I was wrong.

In my, umm, mature years, I don't generally see a point in going after people personally. I have enough adversaries already. But there are necessary exceptions. And the ability to have a civil discussion about central policy issues, in terms that are connected to the world of facts and realities, matters for reasons that go beyond any one person's involvement.

Let's mark this moment in the health debate as it happens

Nearly fifteen years ago, after the collapse of the Clinton health-reform effort, I spent a lot of time working on an Atlantic article (and subsequent book chapter) about how, exactly, the discussion of the bill had become so unmoored from reality and finally determined by slogans, stereotypes, and flat-out lies.

It's better to do that after the fact than not to do it at all. And, if I do say so, I think the article remains useful background reading for what's going on now -- including the return-guest-star role of the voluble but consistently misinformed Elizabeth "Betsy" McCaughey.

But if there's a chance, it would obviously be better still to keep the current debate from ending up in the same intellectual/political swamp in which the previous one drowned. That is why I was so impressed by this Steven Pearlstein column two days ago in the Washington Post. (Yes, despite changes noted recently in the WaPo, there are good people doing good work there.) Pearlstein, a longtime business and financial columnist and reporter (and last year's Pulitzer winner for commentary), is no one's idea of a predictable leftie. Thus when he says things like the following, they have weight:

The recent attacks by Republican leaders and their ideological fellow-travelers on the effort to reform the health-care system have been so misleading, so disingenuous, that they could only spring from a cynical effort to gain partisan political advantage. By poisoning the political well, they've given up any pretense of being the loyal opposition. They've become political terrorists, willing to say or do anything to prevent the country from reaching a consensus on one of its most serious domestic problems....

He goes through the most familiar talk show / Republican Caucus / Sarah Palin / protest group complaints -- "death committees," socialized medicine, end of innovation, "keep the government out of my Medicare," etc -- and shows how, as with all of McCaughey's complaints over the years, they're just not true. The current legislation has defects, but they're not the ones most often yelled about. Then he makes the point that, to me, matters even more than the legislation itself.

Health reform is a test of whether this country can function once again as a civil society -- whether we can trust ourselves to embrace the big, important changes that require everyone to give up something in order to make everyone better off. Republican leaders are eager to see us fail that test. We need to show them that no matter how many lies they tell or how many scare tactics they concoct, Americans will come together and get this done.

Pretty soon I will lay off the "As a Rip van Winkle returnee to your country, what I notice is...." approach. But I have to say that it is striking to come back -- from the world of controlled media and not-always-accurate "official truth" in China -- and see the world's most mature democracy, informed by the world's dominant media system, at a time of perceived economic crisis and under brand new political leadership, getting tied up by manufactured misinformation. No matter what party you belong to, you can't think this is a sign of health for the Republic.

A demur to my former Atlantic colleague Ross Douthat

All of us at the magazine wish our colleague/alumnus Ross Douthat well in his NY Times oped-writer role. The better he does, the more his success reflects on all of us, in addition to enhancing public discourse! Part of wishing him well is offering guidance, and in that spirit I have some thoughts about his column this morning contrasting Texas ("red state" / balanced budget / positive example) with California ("blue state" / fiscal disaster / cautionary example).

The column asserts that California's problems stem directly from its liberalism: "California, always liberalism's favorite laboratory... long a paradise for regulators and public-sector unions, has become a fiscal disaster area." Yeah, sure, about the regulations and so on. But if you write about California's fiscal problems and don't even mention the role of "Proposition 13"* or similar revenue limits and distortions, you're not trying very hard to make an honest argument.

Pre-Prop 13 (as Benjamin Schwarz points out in his review of the great new Kevin Starr book), California dreamed big and spent big. Post-Prop 13, everything about California's fiscal situation has changed. It's not simply the cap on property taxes; it's also the legislative super-majorities and electoral contortions required to raise money for anything, which are part of a general dysfunction of government structure in the state. Proposition 13, of course, was an anti-tax "Red State" measure of the purest form. You can argue about exactly how crucial a role it plays in the current disastrous situation. But to omit any mention of the topic and pretend that California's problems reflect the outcome of pure liberalism is not trying hard or even respecting the reader.

For contrast, we have Texas: "But flash forward to the current recession, and suddenly Texas looks like a model citizen.... Its unemployment rate and foreclosure rate are both well below the national average. It's one of only six states that didn't run budget deficits in 2009."

Side point: "flash forward" is a prominent member of the list of journalese cliches that need killing. Bonus side point: Texas, like many states, is forbidden by its constitution to run budget deficits. What makes it unusual now is that it's doing so without raising taxes, eg as in this report. But here's the main point: to argue that state unemployment rates during a deep global recession differ mainly because of state tax rates -- and not because of different industrial structures, different banking practices, specific corporate decisions, lots of other factors -- is, again, not trying very hard. An obvious bit of proof is that the Economist, which ran a very similar California-v-Texas exercise a month ago, ended up much more equivocal about the new Texas supremacy. Eg, "To begin with, that lean Texan model has its own problems. It has not invested enough in education, and many experts rightly worry about a 'lost generation' of mostly Hispanic Texans with insufficient skills for the demands of the knowledge economy."

There are points to draw from state experience, especially the agony of California right now. But they're important enough to be worth drawing with some care.
____
* For the record, Proposition 13, passed by an overwhelming margin at the polls in 1978, put a cap on property-tax rates in California and imposed new restrictions on legislative or electoral efforts to raise taxes of any sort in the future. More here and here and here.

Raptor down (budgetarily)

I emerge from the land of no internet or email to hear about today's crucial Senate vote to delete funding for additional F-22 "Raptor" fighter planes. For why this was an even-more-crucial-than-it-seems sign of whether the new Administration was serious about SecDef Robert Gates' impressive speeches about bringing rationality to defense spending, see here, here, here, and here, for starters. For much more about the F-22 from the Project on Government Oversight, here, and from the Center for Defense Information here. For a summary of why the vote matters, consider this statement from retired Army General Paul Eaton, of Iraq fame, from the National Security Network:

"In stripping $1.75 billion in funds to build seven more F-22 Raptors from the Defense Authorization bill, the Senate has brought our military spending one step closer to matching America's military priorities for the 21st century. The Cold War relic was a symbol of the outdated, unnecessary, and expensive weapon systems that have burdened our defense budgets for far too long....Misplaced defense budget priorities such as additional funding for the F-22 both constrained America's military from adequately addressing the threats we face today and took money away from more essential strategic imperatives."

This issue isn't over -- the House still has to act, and there is the conference etc. And we are nowhere close to having a defense budget that is "rational" in some larger sense. But on both merits and symbolism, this is a significant moment. And as matter of political anthropology, it seems as if President Obama's atypically hard-line promise to veto the entire spending bill if it included more money for the Raptor had its effect.

More on Obama and "educational" rhetoric

Several days ago I argued that what made Barack Obama's "big" speeches sound unusual was that they attempted something that among politicians is indeed rare: Not expressing our preexisting views with new clarity and edge but instead asking us to change our minds. I also said it was no accident that Obama had saved these ambitious speeches until he was in the White House, since a campaign was a time for troop-rallying rhetoric rather than asking people to think too hard.

Herewith one message in agreement and one in dissent. First, from Eric Redman, author of The Dance of Legislation (and longtime close friend of mine) who had been a devotee of Richard Neustadt's famous presidential-power analyses in college and eventually delivered a eulogy for Neustadt and contributed to a memorial volume about him. The turn in Obama's rhetoric after the election, Redman says,

made me think of Neustadt's enigmatic advice in 1968 when I was about to take time off from school to go write speeches for Senator Magnuson. Dick had written campaign speeches for President Truman. His writing was finely worked, highly polished. I asked for advice in the craft. He frowned and thought carefully. Then he said, "Remember, a campaign is not a good time to educate the public." I puzzled over that for 35 years, and repeated it, partly for a laugh (which it produced), in my eulogy at his memorial service.

It was not until I was doing the research for "Neustadt in Brazil" [in the memorial volume] that I listened to him on tape explain (in response to a questioner criticizing Lula [da Silva, prez of Brazil] for not living up to his campaign promises) that the time to educate the people (impliedly with speeches) is when you are in office. Neustadt was not only recommending that Lula do it, he was explaining why it would work. Then it all made sense to me, and I was even able to explain to some who had heard the eulogy and, like me, been puzzled ever since hearing the original advice.

Now, and after the jump, dissent from Carlyn Meyer, who thinks I am under-valuing the content of Obama's stump speeches through the campaign:

While I appreciate your annotation of the five big speeches since his election (plus the race speech), I have to disagree that the basic stump speech differed in quality. If anything, he used it to test out his broad concepts and way of speaking to people. Here's why:

Continue reading "More on Obama and "educational" rhetoric" »

Belatedly, on the Cairo speech & Obama rhetoric in general

Ten days ago I was writing a dispatch about Barack Obama's speech in Cairo, when the internet service where I was (in Shaanxi) cut out. The elections in Iran and general question of political change in the Middle East are a topical reminder to get back to this point:

As I started to say earlier, here is a way to think about why Barack Obama's "big" speeches of the past 15 months seem different from normal political rhetoric. It's because they are.

Here are the ones I'm counting as big speeches, starting with the most recent and working backward:

June 4, Cairo: US relations with Islam

May 21, National Archives in DC: anti-terrorism strategy, including torture, habeus corpus, etc

May 17, Notre Dame U: clash of religious values in politics, including over abortion

April 14, Georgetown U: short- and long-term economic strategy

April 5, Prague: reducing nuclear weapons around the world

March 18, 2008, Philadelphia: race and American values

I'm not even counting convention speeches, the inaugural address, his State of the Union, or a bunch of other performances. They were all fine but more like other, normal "good" political speeches.

These six -- including an astonishing five of them in an eight-week burst -- were different from normal rhetoric in the following basic way:

Most of the time, "effective" speeches boil down to finding a better, clearer, cleverer, more vivid, or more memorable way to express what people already think.

Continue reading "Belatedly, on the Cairo speech & Obama rhetoric in general" »

Journal of the plague year (Shanghai edition)

An extraordinary statement from someone now being quarantined in Shanghai is below and after the jump. First, a bit of context:

The World Health Organization has of course now declared H1N1 a "pandemic," while emphasizing that its effects so far are mild. You can look long and hard at the WHO's main site about the disease (nerds will note that the site's URL retains its original basename "swineflu" rather than the less porcophobic current term) without seeing any recommendations for widespread quarantine programs or closing of national borders etc.

To put the disease's toll in perspective: of the 30,000 cases reported so far all around the world, about 150 people appear to have died from this variant of flu. And in many "though not all" of these cases, according to the WHO, the victims had "underlying chronic conditions." For comparison: since the time I woke up this morning, about 150 people have died of tuberculosis in China alone.* Estimates vary, but "normal" seasonal flu typically kills around 1,000 people per day worldwide.

[*TB math: According to the UN, China's average annual death rate from tuberculosis is about 15 per 100,000 population. For a Chinese population of 1.3 billion, that would mean about 195,000 TB deaths per year, or about 535 per day.]

Of course any new disease strain raises new concerns about potential mutations. And of course a big, poor country like China has different public health considerations than, say, Switzerland might. But bear in mind the dimensions of this current disease threat relative to other real concerns while reading this account from earlier this week, by a person currently quarantined in Shanghai. The writer is originally Chinese but now with U.S. citizenship. It is quite long, but you will not regret reading to the very end. It begins:

When I landed in Shanghai on Saturday afternoon, a team of medical officials wearing white bio-hazard suites boarded the plane with heat wands and measured everyone's temperature. All passengers were required to remain in their seats while they went around to each individual to check them for physical symptoms of H1N1. These measures had become standard protocol in China due to fears of a H1N1 outbreak. We all passed the inspection and were let off of the plane. I thought I was free to enjoy my two weeks in China.

Continue reading "Journal of the plague year (Shanghai edition)" »

Last two about June 4

Numerous previous items (here, here, here, here, and others) have addressed the Chinese government's success in erasing June 4, 1989, from the collective memory of their country's next generation. Two more accounts, both from foreigners who have recently raised the issue with young Chinese people, and each of which shows some of the drama associated with the issue here.

First, from someone now teaching in a major manufacturing city in China. (Yes, I know, this really narrows it down.):

Today [several days ago], a few other foreigners and I were looking at an MSNBC retrospective (miraculously, not blocked) of the important day that happened recently, and just of reveling in the amazing photos and videos with lots of "wows" and stunned silences.

A 23-year old Chinese girl we know very well was sitting next to us and peered over, and said, "What's that? What's going on?" We tried to dissuade her; since in many ways it's not in her or our best interest for her to see, but she forced herself into our huddle and was looking, and noticed all the Chinese people wearing headbands, the blood, the violence, the shouting at the police, and so on. So she started asking, shocked by the fact that this had to be somewhere in her homeland, "What is this!? What's going on!? Who are these people?! Where is this?!" She was just awestruck and horrified.

So we told her the whole story from the W perspective, making diplomatic but honest allowances since most of us don't truly believe that "things" are generally that bad at all; certainly not here and now. But she just listened to us, staring at the videos and pictures, and none of us could see her face, which was bowed intently at the computer screen and veiled by her long hair. All of a sudden, she started weeping. Just weeping. She had had no idea that it had ever happened.

It can be really hard to live here, but it's something like this that makes me love this country and these people, especially here in my city of residence. Where others might see darkness, sadness and ignorance, it's often possible to see hope, beauty in the struggle, and real, unedited life.

The second account:

I am currently living in Shanghai, a recent US college graduate and English teacher (born in '84). I have a Chinese girlfriend (born in '89), and since we began dating some months back I have mentioned TAM to her a few times.

Continue reading "Last two about June 4" »

June 4 report #1: Beijing (long)

I left the city this morning for a long-planned reporting trip 600 miles to the southwest, in Shaanxi province. As I implied yesterday, I was glad to have the option to leave Beijing. But updates I have received from various sources fall into these categories:

1) Several people have written to say that the going was surprisingly easy. For instance, this account from a Chinese-American man in his 20s whom I know in Beijing:

We were tourists and took many many photos, even asking the plainclothed police who were keeping their eye on us to take one or two. We didn't get hassled; in fact, aside from the ridiculous numbers of cops, obvious and otherwise, there seemed to be no difference from when I was there two weeks ago, showing friends around. Time: 8am. Persons: myself, another Chinese-American, and two white guys. Just wanted to add that data point to your blog, especially in light of the note of caution you posted.

2) For fully authorized foreign TV news crews, the problem of the day was not so much frontal confrontations with security officials as -- well, you have to see the pictures to believe it. The Shanghaiist site has a roundup of photos and videos of the ever-so-suave "umbrella trick" as practiced on news crews from CNN, BBC, and AFP. This is the kind of thing that makes you hold your head and say: Rising major power in the world?

3) Speaking of the CNN/BBC blackout difference I mentioned previously, it's possible that our apartment house is getting its BBC feed through some outside-normal-systems satellite connection. I hear from other people in China that the normal, authorized (ie, subject-to-censoring) foreign satellite feed cut off CNN, BBC, as well as French TV 5 at all the predictable points.

4) My wife, lacking the excuse of travel to Shaanxi, and equipped with the multiple tools a woman can use to alter her appearance from one day to the next, went back to Tiananmen Square today looking like a different person from the one whose presence the authorities had noted the previous night. Her report on the day's activities is here and after the jump.

I went to the square at noontime, expecting to see pretty much what we saw last night: the square off limits, people walking along the roadside or staring at the flag and Mao's giant portrait.

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On the Islam speech

More about this in a few hours: literally have five minutes left at an internet place in Shaanxi province (long-scheduled trip away from Beijing this afternoon) (More about Beijing on this June 4 later too).

The main point is: this was yet another in the series of speeches that individually and as a group really are out of phase with anything we have known in contemporary political rhetoric. I mean a sequence that began most noticeably with the "race and America" speech in Philadelphia 15 months ago and has continued with five or six clear high points since then (most recently at Notre Dame, as discussed here) and no obvious flop. I did not see or hear coverage of this speech but based only on the text, which I've just read, I have a hypothesis about the trait that makes this discourse unusual and welcome.

The five minutes are up, so To Be Continued a few hours from now.

Today in Beijing

I am guessing that you will see no real-time TV reports from the Tiananmen Square area today, and little or no photography. This is based on personal experience there last night, China time, which also leads to personal advice for anyone in Beijing thinking of going there today.

During my time in Beijing over the past year and a half, I've often seen the square itself totally closed off to visitors, as it is at the moment. There are always plenty of security forces around -- soldiers in green uniforms, various kinds of police in blue uniforms, and "plainclothes" forces who are pretty easy to pick out, like strapping young men in buzz cuts all wearing similar-looking "leisure" clothes. But I have not seen before anything like the situation at the moment.

There are more representatives in all categories -- soldiers, police, obvious plainclothesmen -- than I recall seeing even during the Tibet violence in early 2008 or through the Olympic games. Also many people whom you would normally classify as fruit vendors, tourists from the Chinese provinces, youngish white collar workers male and female, and skateboarder-looking characters wearing cargo shorts and with fauxhawk haircuts, were last night walking up and down the sidewalks with their eyes constantly on visitors and drifting up next to people who were holding conversations.

The way to avoid their attention is keep moving briskly along the sidewalk rather than stopping as if you think there is something particular to look at in the square today. The way to draw it is to stop and look around, to pay attention to the security forces themselves, or to have a camera in your hand. If the camera comes out, it may be pointed at one of the scenic highlights in the center of the square. A nighttime glamour shot of the Great Hall of the People, taken from across the Square with a glowing Monument to the People's Heroes in the middle ground (and no actual people in the square) is within bounds. This is how it looked last night:

A view down toward Mao's Mausoleum, again across an emptied square, is also OK.

But to point a camera in any direction not shown in these shots is to ask for immediate trouble. In particular if security forces in any of the categories above are in the field of view. I say this with first-hand certainty, based on experiences I will describe later when I am living someplace else.

Two other, related notes: As reported yesterday, CNN is still blacked out whenever words like "In China today...." or "Twenty years ago in Bei...." come across the airwaves. Whereas BBC TV is airing uncensored footage of tanks in the square twenty years ago and repeatedly using the phrase "Tiananmen massacre." And just as I type, the admirable Quentin Somerville of the BBC is talking, live from Beijing, about the "ruthlessness at the heart of the Communist government." (And just this second, in a Borges-worthy moment, Somerville said that international coverage was being blacked out across China -- so I got to see him saying that I was not able to see him. Still, the general point is true.)

Second note: Hillary Clinton's official "Message on the Twentieth Anniversary of Tiananmen Square," here, was necessary, appropriate, properly phrased, and -- even though it will have no effect inside China -- exactly the right thing to have done. More on this theme shortly.

Back to practicalities: if you in Beijing and are near the square, be careful. Seriously.

Two more about June 4

In response to previous "lost memory" dispatches -- here, here, and here -- two more notes I thought worth sharing, the first from a Chinese person I know and the second from an American teaching in China.

The Chinese person was of grade-school age in 1989. He wrote in response to this plea from another Chinese person recently put under house arrest:

First and foremost, to hear a student-aged person saying "don't give up freedom" and read Yuhua's op-ed on NYT are like reading romanticizing of that history. What i read in these, call me detached or cynical, are their own sentiments and emotions unrelated to what actually happened 20 years ago, rather than true and fair understanding of it, which is what i want to read and remember. I don't deny those people have their own faith and dreams, sometimes glorious. But celebrating their faith and dreams through memorization of that history is absurd. Feels like ripping the history of its true meaning and rewriting it for one's own sake. And this is a lot worse than forgetting or misreading history.

Second, I don't understand why the (managed or controlled) oblivion of that part of history should be such a big event. There are tons of other events in modern China history that we don't know or remember. So why single out this particular part of history? Was it because of the fact that death occurred to thousands of unarmed students? Well, if that's case, we should lament a thousand times for those died during the great famine, political movements and culture revolution, not to mention the millions killed during the civil war. I can clearly remember that we were taught during high school that in each of the great campaigns in the civil war, tens of thousands of enemies were killed. Great military successes. But we were never taught in the same book that those were also human beings, killed in that large number and then forgotten (I guess they were probably not part of "the people" Yuhua was talking about). I don't mean to be sarcastic or cold-blooded about this. What i want to say is that our history is never short of such carnage episodes and since we have forgotten or ignored so much of it, why pick this out in particular and romanticize it. Only to make it sound very very very absurd!

After the jump, the dispatch from the foreign teacher:

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On Obama's security speech

Carried overseas on BBC, and in prepared text here from the Washington Post. WhiteHouse.gov site, by the way, is once again weirdly behind-the-curve in getting material up.

Argumentative crux of the speech to the left (emphasis added):

I have opposed the creation of such a Commission because I believe that our existing democratic institutions are strong enough to deliver accountability. The Congress can review abuses of our values, and there are ongoing inquiries by the Congress into matters like enhanced interrogation techniques. The Department of Justice and our courts can work through and punish any violations of our laws.

This is the reply to people, including me, who think there needs to be some kind of investigatory commission. Taken at his word, he's saying: Congress can do the investigating, the courts (and my Department of Justice) can prosecute. In theory, this works out well. A new president moves ahead; the System provides accountability. We'll see.

Argumentative / explanatory crux of the speech to the right:

I do know with certainty that we can defeat al Qaeda. Because the terrorists can only succeed if they swell their ranks and alienate America from our allies, and they will never be able to do that if we stay true to who we are.

This has been, from the start, the central indictment of the Bush-Cheney approach to al Qaeda. Anything-goes tactics may or may not win battles, but they certainly lose wars. Dick Cheney's speech, cut off by BBC about ten minutes in, is ineffective not just because of its anger/contempt but also because what is billed as a response is in fact one cycle late, simply re-stating the claims Obama went out of his way to rebut (rather that keeping up with the cycle by answering anything Obama said).

Subtle harpoon crux of the speech, in the last paragraph:

We will not be safe if we see national security as a wedge that divides America - it can and must be a cause that unites us as one people, as one nation. We have done so before in times that were more perilous than ours.

The entirety of the Bush-Cheney approach rested on the assumption that there had never been a threat as great as the one demonstrated by 9/11. Condi Rice said this explicitly, in her disastrous (and, in a just world, career-damaging) "al Qaeda was more dangerous than the Nazis" comment at Stanford. The parts of Cheney's speech I saw today, and everything we know about Bush's decisions and statements in office, assumed without argument that they faced choices between due-process and national security more painful than those that George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, or FDR wrestled with. A reminder that others have faced difficult choices and dire threats is useful for judging our response and placing it in the long context of American values that Obama repeatedly emphasized.

On eloquence vs. prettiness

Based on its transcript -- here at the Washington Post site, oddly not yet in any obvious place at WhiteHouse.gov [Update: it's now on the White House page, here]-- Barack Obama's Notre Dame commencement speech was another extraordinary performance. "Extraordinary" meaning that it was like his speech last year in Philadelphia about race relations, his speech last month in Prague about nuclear weapons, and, only slightly less impressive, his speech last month at Georgetown University laying out his long term economic plan. Or, on a small scale, his answer in Strasbourg about "American exceptionalism."

What made these presentations extraordinary was not any single phrase or sentence, nor any paragraph-long flight of fine language. Indeed, I can hardly remember any phrase or sentence from any speech Obama has ever given. (Phrases or sentences are to be distinguished from campaign slogans, like "Yes we can" or "not 'red states' or 'blue states' but the United States of America.") Instead the power of those speeches comes from the quality of their thought -- from the ideas and truths the speaker is trying to grapple with:

In the case of the race speech, the different burdens and resentments Americans of all background held, and why we had to face and work through them. In the nuclear speech, the dangers that remained long after the Cold War had ended, and America's special opportunity and responsibility to find a solution. In the Notre Dame speech, the difficulty of resolving, in an open democracy, differences of moral certainty that are fiercely held on all sides. And so on. A passage from this latest speech after the jump.

This kind of eloquence is different from what I think of as rhetorical prettiness -- words and phrases that catch your notice as you hear them, and that often can be quoted, remembered, and referred to long afterwards. "Ask not..." from John F. Kennedy. "Blood, toil, tears, and sweat" from Winston Churchill. "Only thing we have to fear is fear itself" from FDR. "I have a dream," from Martin Luther King. Or, to show that memorable language does not necessarily mean elevated thought, "segregation today, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever!" from the early George C. Wallace.

At rare moments in history, language that goes beyond prettiness to beauty is matched with original, serious, difficult thought to produce the political oratory equivalent of Shakespeare. By acclamation Lincoln's Second Inaugural Address is the paramount American achievement of this sort: "With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right..."

The reason to distinguish eloquence of thought from prettiness of expression is that the former tells you something important about the speaker, while the latter may or may not do so. Hired assistants can add a fancy phrase, much as gag writers can supply a joke. Not even his greatest admirers considered George W. Bush naturally expressive, but in his most impressive moment, soon after the 9/11 attacks, he delivered a speech full of artful writerly phrases, eg: "Whether we bring our enemies to justice or bring justice to our enemies, justice will be done." Good for him, and good for his staff.

Rhetorical polish, that is, can be a staff-enhanced virtue. The eloquence that comes from original thought is much harder to hire, or to fake. This is the sort of eloquence we've seen from Obama often enough to begin to expect.
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US no-show at Shanghai Expo: the hows and whys (updated)

Last month Adam Minter of ShanghaiScrap, did our initial Atlantic report on the looming self-inflicted embarrassment of America's no-show status at the 2010 Shanghai Expo / World's Fair.

The strands of the story are tangled, to put it mildly, and have been hard to follow in scattered press reports. So Minter's latest detailed backgrounder is very useful in explaining how things reached this point, why it matters, and what if anything could be done. Among the points he clarifies, in a list of problems that have affected the proposed US pavilion:

A. Cost. Shanghai Expo 2010's [one of the US contenders] $61 million pavilion budget - down from an earlier $84 million budget - is inordinately expensive, and surely the most expensive national pavilion after the elaborate Chinese design. "For that kind of money [$61 million]," an experienced American businessman in Shanghai told me. "You could build a thirty-story residential tower on that site and still have money left over. But these people want that money for a two story pavilion." In comparison, Germany's elaborate pavilion design is projected to cost US$40.8 million; Norway's elegant structure, a comparatively minor US$22 million. And even those might be overpriced. At the Beijing 2008 Olympics, major commercial pavilions were built for around $1000 per square meter - that is, less than US$5 million. So far, Shanghai Expo 2010, Inc., has failed to provide a detailed public accounting of how it plans to spend its proposed US$61 million, leading to wild and unsubstantiated speculation among experienced China hands in Shanghai.

[UPDATE: I hear from informed sources that there is some controversy about the importance of whole cost issue, with some other pavilions costing more than this US figure -- and the real question being whether the US can spend this much money in a sensible way with so little time to go. More details as they come in.]

One image of the proposed US structure Minter is referring to, from this site:

Full set of images of other countries' structures here. One example I like from that site: the Israeli pavilion, with components of the Whispering Garden, the Hall of Light, and the Hall of Innovations. Israel is a tiny country and this is a relatively small structure, but FWIW Israeli's entire budget for the expo, including construction, is $6 million.

And here is Italy's (no budget listed). The story is worth following.

Twitter-scale reaction on new ambassador to China

I am at a computer for about 90 seconds until late tonight, but: the reported selection of Utah's Republican governor Jon Huntsman Jr as the Obama Administration's new ambassador to China is an interesting and surprising choice -- and at face value, a shrewd one. Huntsman is reportedly fluent in Mandarin, based on his time as a Mormon missionary in Taiwan; has an adopted Chinese daughter (plus another from India, in addition to biological children); is experienced in Asia, as a boy-ambassador to Singapore (at age 32) during the first Bush administration; and -- so I gather -- is on the modern-science as opposed to the flat-earth side of the debate about the environmental + climate issues that constitute the most important impending business between the US and China. More later, but on first impression a clever choice from American-interest point of view (completely apart from what it means for internal party politics in the US). Will also give the Chinese leadership something to think about: why the new Democratic president has appointed a rising Republican politician. Sign of bipartisan US views toward China? Etc?

Subject to revision if there is something important I don't know about Huntsman and his record!

The CIA vs. Sen. Bob Graham: how to keep score at home

It's easy! If the CIA says one thing and former Sen. Graham says another, then the CIA is lying. Or, "in error," if you prefer.

(Background here and here, in which Graham says that some of the briefings in which he was allegedly filled in about waterboarding and related techniques never occurred. This matters, because the CIA's claims are part of the same argument that Nancy Pelosi and other Democrats in Congress had known about and acquiesced to waterboarding all the way along.)

Part of the payoff of reaching age 72 and having spent 38 years in public office, as Graham has, is that people have had a chance to judge your reputation. Graham has a general reputation for honesty. In my eyes he has a specific reputation for very good judgment: he was one of a handful of Senators actually to read the full classified intelligence report about the "threats" posed by Saddam Hussein. On the basis of reading it, despite a career as a conservative/centrist Democrat, he voted against the war and fervently urged his colleagues to do the same. "Blood is going to be on your hands," he warned those who voted yes.

More relevant in this case, Graham also has a specific reputation for keeping detailed daily records of people he met and things they said. He's sometimes been mocked for this compulsive practice, but he's never been doubted about the completeness or accuracy of what he compiles. (In the fine print of those records would be an indication that I had interviewed him about Iraq war policy while he was in the Senate and recently spent time with him when he was on this side of the world.)

So if he says he never got the briefing, he didn't. And if the CIA or anyone acting on its behalf challenges him, they are stupid and incompetent as well as being untrustworthy. This doesn't prove that the accounts of briefing Pelosi are also inaccurate. But it shifts the burden of proof.

Last crop of political-art nominees

Starting with a late favorite in the polling, Rembrandt's The Night Watch (two other Rembrandts among previous nominees, here). The main resonance is of course between the central figure in one scene and his counterpart in the other.

A few more after the jump.

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More political artwork

We're nearing the end here. Four more proposed Old Master precursors for the memorable Obama group portrait. Previous candidates here. Probably one more crop to come, then the exciting lessons of our brief look at art.

First, Governors of the Wine Merchants Guild, by Ferdinand Bol. I won't pretend that this was the Old Master I was thinking of, since I'd not aware of having seen it before. But still:

Next, a detail from Raphael's School of Athens, featuring the raised-finger gesture we see from Obama.

After the jump, two more with the raised-finger motif.

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More on public health, PR, and China's role in the world

From a reader with a Chinese surname, in response to my suggestion that Chinese officials stick to scientific data, rather than claims about national dignity, when discussing public health issues like the current flu situation:

"Western journalists are accustomed to the shrewd answers from their own politicians facing offensive/aggressive questions. It's well known that they, the western politicians, are afraid of negative reports for their own political skins. Therefore you may also assume that Chinese officials should behave the same way, if they ever want to be accepted by the western world.

"Unfortunately, I have to say that three years stationing in China has not made you thinking like a Chinese. For most Chinese officials, their reaction toward negative western media reports is mostly about domestic consumption. They have to be resolute and principled when it comes to rebutting the 'western defamations' driven by 'ulterior motives'. It's not only about national pride, but has more to do with not being perceived by Chinese people as weak and not being able to stand up to hostile westerners. This may help you better understand why nationalism is so useful for communist government."

This rings true, and reinforces a point I made several months ago about why the voices of official China -- the government and its spokesmen -- were often so inept in presenting their case to the outside world, even though many individual Chinese people could be quite sophisticated and skillful. As this reader suggests, the root cause is that the system here is mainly inward-looking.

The complications of addressing both internal and external audiences is hardly unique to China. American politics provides examples of this every day. Same with Japan, where bone-headed politicians often play to domestic right-wingers by visiting the Yasukuni Shrine, not knowing or caring that this drives people crazy here in China.

But at the moment, the internal/external problem is particularly acute for China, because its scale and foreign interactions are so great and its officials' awareness of how things sound to foreign ears seems so limited. For instance, I don't even think they would recognize the irony of hearing that their current detention of Mexican passport holders, whether they have been to Mexico recently or not, might "hurt the feelings of the Mexican people."

UPDATE: After the jump, a further note just received from the same reader
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Three from Frans Hals

I'm going to start moving through these more briskly now. A pattern is emerging in the elements that make the Obama group portrait seem Old Masterish. Previously here. For now, three from Frans Hals. First, Regents of the Old Men's Almshouse -- as with The Anatomy Lesson, thematically strangely appropriate for the Chrysler-bankruptcy team.

If all but six people were removed from the Obama portrait, leaving only (from left) Geithner, Summers, Obama, Browner, Rattner, and Bernstein, they would match the positions and angles of the six Regents surprisingly well.* Though Carol Browner probably wouldn't be wild about the one matched with her.

Next, Officers and Sergeants of the St. Hadrian Civic Guard

And, the famous Meagre Company, apparently so named because the figures are all thin. On this basis, the Obama group portrait should be called Somber Company.

More coming.
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* Geithner, Summers, and Obama you know. The woman is Carol Browner; Steve Rattner is behind her with round glasses; Jared Bernstein is just in front of him with gray hair.

Mexican government protests detentions in China

Via Reuters, this official protest about the detentions in mainland China (as mentioned here last night) and the sealing off of hundreds of people in a hotel in Hong Kong.

The apparent waning of worldwide panic about the virus's lethality and ease of transmission probably means that we'll see fewer stories about over-reaction as the days go on. As always, it is instructive to see the way governments and institutions react in time of stress.

News as art, continued

Back to the "what does this scene remind me of?" category, previously here, while still looking into further flu news in China. Many nominations for this painting, usually with apologies for the larger Messianic implications:

After the jump, for greater clarity of detail, an early non-Leonardo copy of the painting as it once may have looked. Plus another version not by Leonardo. More to come, with eventual wrap-up thanks to all contributors.

Continue reading "News as art, continued" »

Flu news from China: Mexican citizens being detained

This is developing news here in Beijing about treatment of those who hold Mexican passports. It is based on first-hand reports from people I trust:

- A family of tourists -- two parents; a son age 8; and daughters ages 6 and 4 -- were staying in a five-star Beijing hotel. Like all foreigners in China, they had presented their passports for inspection on arrival. Their passports were from Mexico. At 4 am last night they heard a pounding on the door. Public-security officials asked them to come to the hospital for a few quick tests. In fact they were taken to a hospital and not allowed to leave. They received no drugs or treatment of any sort and were placed in a room where the beds and sheets still bore the marks of the previous ill and bleeding patients. They managed to contact Mexican officials by phone -- which was the first the Mexican government had heard of their situation. There is no indication that they are sick. They were assured that they would be treated as well as "any Chinese citizen." (!) This evening, another family of three has been taken from a hotel because they are Mexican.

- As international flights arrive in Beijing, from any destination, passengers are being asked to show their passports before the plane comes to the terminal. Those with Mexican passports are not allowed to enter the city. They have been taken to a hotel for quarantine and are still there. Some 40 to 50 people are now being detained in this way. To be clear, this is not being applied to people who've recently been to Mexico, or who are showing signs of disease, or who have been exposed in some other way. It has been purely a matter of whether they are Mexican citizens.

- A Mexican official in Guangzhou booked a round trip flight to Cambodia. On arriving back from Cambodia (ie, a million miles away from Mexico), he too has been detained, on the basis of his passport.

You can understand why China is nervous, given its dense urban populations and its experience with SARS. You can understand quarantines based on recent presence in a diseased area or possible exposure to diseased people. You can comprehend why direct flights between Mexico and China have for now been called off.

But there is no decent reason for quarantine and detention based solely on nationality. To the best of my information, this blanket quarantine of Mexican citizens is not being applied anyplace else on earth. Let's hope this is a panicky mistake by Chinese and Beijing-area officials and will soon be reversed. It is also worth recognizing the overall aplomb and openness that the Mexican government has been showing in handling the flu outbreak.

Another nominee from Rembrandt...

...in the "art prefigures" life category, previously here and here. The Anatomy Lesson of Professor Nicolaes Tulp, 1632. Some obvious differences in composition. But some nice similarities. In the role of the instructive Prof. Tulp we have the instructive Pres. Obama. In the role of the cadaver, we have the Chrysler Corporation, though out of view. (Yes, yes, I have owned several Chrysler cars and know it will be stronger than ever after the restructuring, etc.) More to come.

Browser update

Reports keep trickling in of people having crashes with the latest official release of Firefox, as first mentioned here. I have no way of knowing whether this is signal or noise -- an actual trend, or merely random blips among FF's millions of users.

I do know that the latest Firefox beta, 3.5b4, has been running smoothly around the clock, at least for me. Available here. And as previously indicated, I will indeed try Opera when I get some "spare" time.

FWIW, this sociology of browsers from Marty Manley:

Am testing a site these days, so I keep 3 browsers open: IE, FF 3.0.1 and Chrome. In two days, I have had four hard FF crashes -- unheard of. FF also lost track of all saved passwords, although it recovered (maybe thanks to Xmarks).

BTW, Chrome seems ever stronger. If this were college, IE would be the entitled rich kid who acts smart, but isn't, Firefox the impressive high achiever who is actually a bit lazy and dilettantish, and Chrome the kid who works nights to pay bills, is rock solid, and is steadily getting stronger and stronger.

Or, if you prefer, George Bush, Bill Clinton, and Barack Obama. As to Opera -- the garden variety A student of sound quality but without a compelling or differentiating architecture -- I think she makes a fine Secretary of State.

The Syndics of Pennsylvania Avenue

The nominees are coming in for the Fine Arts precursor to yesterday's news photo of the Obama auto-industry task force, as explained here, with several plausible contenders. First up: Rembrandt, with Syndics of the Amsterdam Drapers' Guild, 1662. More nominees on their way. And in the meantime, on the general phenomenon of Fine Arts precursors to current images, see Lawrence Weschler's Everything That Rises: A Book of Convergences, with excerpt here.

I like some of the matchups of Tim Geithner and Gary Locke with their Amsterdam counterparts. Also, a fact worth mentioning to viewers of the second picture: surprising as it might seem given this picture, Lawrence Summers is actually quite a good athlete. The more I look at this picture, the richer it is.

News as art

From my misspent years in DC, I believe I can identify every person in this photo (just now, from Doug Mills of the NYT):

But why didn't I take more Fine Arts classes in college? Then I would know exactly which Old Master tableau this lineup so powerfully reminds me of. The human dramas suggested by these faces. This is an impromptu work of art.

Two sentences on the 100 Days press conference

I agree with my colleague Andrew Sullivan that the session was somewhat "dull."

But I think it was dull in the same way Obama's inaugural address and his hour-long economic speech at Georgetown were initially thought to be: in that it was serious, meaty, sober in keeping with the topics under discussion, and therefore consistent with the Administration's long-term operational, governing, and communications strategy.

The world's view of Obama

Do you wonder how the rest of the world is responding to a new American president? I do too! But because I'm living out here among the non-Americans, my job was to try to offer a report on their reaction. It's here, as part of the Atlantic's "First 100 Days" coverage.

Highly recommended: 'Lords of Finance'

If you were engrossed by today's NYT saga about Timothy Geithner as head of the NY Fed -- and even if you skipped past the story or didn't hear of it at all -- please make haste to read the saga of a previous incumbent of the job. Lords of Finance: The Bankers who Broke the World, by Liaquat Ahamed, tells the story of Benjamin Strong, head of the NY Fed through the 1920s, and of his central-banker counterparts in England, France, and Germany who, together and unwittingly, helped bring on the Great Depression.

Lords of Finance as it appeared to me on the trusty Kindle1 here in Beijing; physical copy not easy to get locally.

Economic theory has its place (and for me its place was grad-school classes). Well-done economic history is often far more illuminating. This is extremely well done history, and is worth mentioning now because of the obvious resonance between this tale of cleaning up after a bubble and today's predicament. Sample passage, about the 1920s but somehow sounds familiar:

Watching other people become rich is not much fun, especially if they do it overnight and without any effort. It was therefore inevitable that all this frenetic activity -- the thriving stock market, the new issues, the ballyhoo about a new era, the buying and selling of Florida real estate -- provoked a chorus of voices demanding that the Fed do something to stop the "orgy of speculation," a phrase that would become so commonplace over the next few years as to lose all meaning.

As it happens, Liaquat Ahamed and his wife Meena are friends of mine and my wife's, but I would recommend this book even if we'd never met.

Torture from Afar

Since the time the torture memoranda were released last week, I've been in parts of rural China where most people would have a hard time naming the current US president, let alone expressing a view about how he should handle those who endorsed a policy of torture or who carried it out. Now that I'm returning to big-city China, I see that the memoranda are inside-page news in the region's papers. This is so even in Hong Kong, where the editors can judge it on normal "news" grounds and not with whatever complications go into mainland Chinese reporting of the issue.

Nonetheless I contend that a full process of American self-examination and accountability will make a tremendous long-term difference in international views of the United States. Even among those who at the moment don't know that there is any controversy going on within the United States.

For as annoyed as foreigners may get with America and Americans, there have been two saving graces in the world's opinions of our country. One has been its permeability. Anywhere you go, someone has an uncle or cousin in America. The other, less openly stated, has been a belief that at some point there are rules in America. Long periods may pass when the rules are ignored. Big boys may bend the rules in their favor. Some offenses are never made right. And so on. But in the end, the American system is supposed to recognize injustice and respond -- including with public accountability for even the mightiest figures. It has this in common with the British and some other systems -- which is what Gandhi relied on in knowing he could "shame" the Brits. For all the increases in liberty within China over the last generation, this is a striking difference with the world's currently-rising power. No one expects China's current leadership to conduct a "truth commission" about the Cultural Revolution or Tiananmen. But people finally expect America to apply its own rules, even against its own people. Fulfilling that expectation is not sufficient for restoring America's image international standing. But it is necessary.

So even though most of the world's population has no idea of what is in the torture memos or of what will happen because of them, in the long run the Administration's decisions will have a significant worldwide effect. Being true to the world's idea of America does not (in my opinion) crucially turn on prosecuting individual CIA or military interrogators. Instead it depends on full clarifying disclosure of the reasoning that led to these practices -- thus, maximum disclosure of the memos -- and full examination of the decisions that public officials made.

At this point I don't think it's sensible to talk about legal sanctions for Administration officials from George W. Bush on down. But the historical record of what he approved, and what Dick Cheney recommended, what David Addington egged on, and what John Yoo and (sitting Federal Judge) Jay Bybee and others rationalized, should be established in unambiguous detail. For this, some American version of a "Truth Commission" is probably the best solution. Many other countries would not bother. America -- to be true to itself -- must. This will matter in the world's eyes. More important, it will matter to us.

More on Robert Gates's rationale

I mentioned last week Robert Gates's remarkably lucid argument for why the Air Force should stop most future purchases of the wonderful-if-we-could-afford-it-but-we-can't F-22 fighter plane.

Yesterday, he went to the Air War College, at Maxwell AFB in Alabama, to lay out the rationale for thinking about the F-22 and defense planning in general. Why "go to the war colleges to discuss this topic?" Gates asked rhetorically in the speech. Because "these recommendations are less about budget numbers than they are about how the U.S. military thinks about and prepares for the future."

If you're interested in such thinking and preparation, the speech is very much worth reading. It includes passages like the following, which to put it mildly are not what we've mainly heard from Secretaries of Defense over the decades (emphasis added):

Another important thing I looked at was whether modernization programs, in particular ground modernization programs, had incorporated the operational and combat experiences of Iraq and Afghanistan. The problem with the Army's Future Combat Systems vehicles was that a program designed nine years ago did not adequately reflect the lessons of close-quarter combat and improvised explosive devices that have taken a fearsome toll on our troops and their vehicles in Iraq, and now in Afghanistan.

Finally, I concluded we need to shift away from the 99 percent "exquisite" service-centric platforms that are so costly and complex that they take forever to build and only then in very limited quantities. With the pace of technological and geopolitical change, and the range of possible contingencies, we must look more to the 80 percent multi-service solution that can be produced on time, on budget, and in significant numbers. As Stalin once said, "Quantity has a quality all of its own."

Does this mean that everything Gates proposes is right, that the defense budget has been pared to the essentials, and that all systemic problems have been solved? Of course not. The best single starting point for the necessary ongoing critique is the venerable "Defense and the National Interest" site here, or the book America's Defense Meltdown which I have so often touted, now on sale here.

But Gates in this speech (and some previous ones) does the very things I found admirable in Barack Obama's recent long-form economic presentation. He treats the audience like adults, he fairly presents opposing viewpoints, and he explains why he nonetheless considers the path he's on the most sensible one. All in all, he sounds like a man who makes his own decisions on the basis of evidence and logic -- and who presents issues as if he expects the public to do the same. That's worth noticing.

Update: For an extensive (and very supportive) parsing of the intellectual and argumentative structure of Obama's economic speech, see this entry at XPostFactoid.

Words I never thought I'd hear from a Secretary of Defense

From Robert Gates's press briefing today on the 2010 defense budget:

It is important to remember that every defense dollar spent to over-insure against a remote or diminishing risk - or, in effect, to "run up the score" in a capability where the United States is already dominant - is a dollar not available to take care of our people, reset the force, win the wars we are in, and improve capabilities in areas where we are underinvested and potentially vulnerable. That is a risk I will not take.

Emphasis mine; sentiments his. This has obvious bearing, as Gates made clear, on whether it is worth "running up the score" in an area of current U.S. dominance by buying more F-22s, among other systems. (Previously on the F-22 here and here.) More later on the details and implications of Gates's budget, and whether he'll be systematic in applying the rationale he has laid out. For the moment, the simple logic of his statement is worth noting. As is the sense of shock at hearing something so logical as part of a budget presentation.
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* Update: I see that Fred Kaplan is already on the case.

More on Obama, exceptionalism, and impromptu speaking

The transcript of the NATO press conference I mentioned a few hours ago is now available here, via CQ Politics. For some reason, I don't see the transcript at the official WhiteHouse.Gov site, though a blog item about the conference is here. Ie, if the transcript is there, at the site run by this famously tech-hip White House staff, it is not in an immediately obvious location, like via a link from the aforementioned blog entry, nor does it come up on a "NATO press conference" search of the site.

After the jump, the text of what Obama actually said when asked about "American exceptionalism." To my relief, it more or less resembles the way I characterized it from memory! On re-reading, I'm more impressed by how terse it is -- and, as mentioned earlier, how hard it would be to improve on it in the same space, especially in real time.

Also after the jump, two other excerpts, prompted by this comment from reader Edward Goldstick:

I think two other moments were even more 'remarkable' than the one that caught your attention (though it is, too):

1) In response to the provocative Major [Garrett] of Fox News who asked about Afghan laws that supposedly endorsed spousal rape and other dubious practices, I found that Obama walked confidently between the moral imperatives that the questioner presented so blithely and the primacy of the post 9/11 mission and the complex and uncomfortable realities in which the United States and NATO are currently operating.

2) Perhaps it was a setup, but I thought the question to the audience about US journalists getting questions from the other heads of state was a sly move... though I won't hide my lack of surprise (nor my glee) when he used Sarko as a target.

On #2, the context of which will be apparent in the excerpt, what I noticed was his light use of the term "Sarkozy" -- not "President Sarkozy" -- which had the same cheeky effect as the reference to "the Brits." Details below.
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Obama on exceptionalism

It's after midnight in China, but I wanted to mention in real time an oratorical performance that deserves a second look. It's from Barack Obama's NATO press conference that just wrapped up, and the part worth studying is the two or three minutes that followed a question by Edward Luce of the Financial Times.

I have nothing against Luce, who wrote a very good recent book about India, but here he asked in what can only be called plummy tones whether Obama still clung to the idea of "American exceptionalism." The general phrasing of the question held that idea out at arm's length as a kind of yahoo colonial oddity.

"I believe in American exceptionalism," Obama said after one beat for thought. "Just as the Brits believe in British exceptionalism, and the Greeks in Greek exceptionalism..." I don't have a transcript here, but what was impressive was how rapidly he seemed to have figured out the full shape of his answer; how effortlessly the term "the Brits" (and the instant pairing with "the Greeks") offset the seeming Oxbridge hauteur* of the question; and how he went on to give so balanced a response that no one, Yank or otherwise, could fail to be satisfied.

Of course he was proud of his country, Obama said. But it was also objectively exceptional in several ways: it still had the world's largest economy; its military power was unmatched; and -- with emphasis here -- its Constitutional principles enshrined values and ideals that truly were exceptional. Therefore it should be proud of its role in the world, and embrace its responsibilities.

Then came the pivot, introduced as usual with the word "Now..." Of course America's strength didn't mean it could do things wholly on its own. And of course Obama's pride in his country didn't blind him to the fact that it sometimes could be wrong, nor to the idea that other people from other countries had good ideas that had to be heeded. Indeed, the very fact of American leadership made it all the more important to show respect and listen attentively. He wrapped it all up by saying he saw "no contradiction" between the idea that America was exceptionally strong and had an exceptional leadership role, and the reality that it needed to work with others as part of a team.

When a transcript or YouTube clip comes out, give it a look. The thoughts may seem banal, but I challenge anyone to come up with a clearer explanation of American exceptionalism to an international audience in the same number of words -- not to mention doing so on live TV with maybe five seconds to figure out what your answer will be. In a world where evidence mattered, these few minutes would put an end to the "can't talk without a teleprompter" madness. More important, they're a way of explaining to Americans the potential and limits of our international role.

And, yes, Obama did end the press conference by ducking a question about Kosovo. But knowing what not to answer is a part of rhetorical effectiveness too. Update: He also appeared to refer to the language of Austria as "Austrian," thus: "I don't know how you say it in Austrian, but we call it wheeling-dealing." If this had been GW Bush, it would have been taken as an obvious gaffe, as in his calling the residents of Greece "Grecians." Here you can't be sure whether it's a plain error or a knowing casualism, as in saying that Australians speak "Australian" -- eg, in the ad that says, "Foster's: Australian for 'beer.' "

* UPDATE #2: The questioner has convinced me that he didn't really mean it that way. See this mea culpa.

One last point about teleprompters, Obama, and speaking

Following this and this.

Obama's opening statement at this evening's press conference, delivered no doubt with the help of a teleprompter, sounded smoother and more polished than his real-time answers through the rest of the event.

The same is true for any public figure who has learned to use a teleprompter (harder than it seems) and whose teleprompter-ready material suits his or her natural speaking style. It sounds smoother than extemporized speech because it should be smoother. People don't naturally speak in parsed and polished sentences, even eloquent people. When we are listening to what we know is spontaneous rather than scripted speech, we listen in a different way -- we listen past grammatical glitches, repetitions, and other things that would be "flaws" on a printed page or in a formal oration. If you don't believe me, look back for any extemporized performance that was judged to be riveting by audiences in real time. (A campaign rally, a TV interview, a debate, the closing argument in a trial.) If you then read a word-by-word transcript, it will look like a mess.

The important point with Obama is that the content, command of fact and concept, and overall intelligence of his extemporized answers matched that of the scripted presentation. That could not have been so if he were teleprompter-dependent. For example: by the end of his term, George W. Bush had become quite effective in delivering a formal speech. His interview- and press conference performance if anything deteriorated through his time in office.

The whole "Obama can't talk on his own" concept is bizarre, given his performance through two years of stump speeches and debates during the campaign. But it seems to have gotten so much credence in the right-wing world that it is worth addressing head on.

A fourth point about the Obama press conference

Following these three.

4) Boy, if some of the questions from reporters were examined as mercilessly for their logic, factual basis, clarity, coherence, emotional tone, etc as Obama's answers were.... I know, they're not the most powerful people on earth with the might of the presidency behind them. But unlike him, the reporters are not reacting on the fly but instead have hours and hours to think of exactly the way they want to make their point. Just an observation.

Three-sentence instant reaction to Obama press conference

1) After seeing a session like this, it is hard to understand how right-wingers can keep up their "Obama can't talk without his teleprompter" theory -- although it's hard to know, given his campaign-debate performance etc, how anyone could have advanced this view in the first place.

2) All successful politicians know how to turn a question to the answer they want to give ("The real point is..."), but Obama showed several times exactly how that should be done -- eg, when asked about changing tax rules for charitable deduction, he brushed that aside and said "what does affect charitable giving is the economy, and..."

3) Explicitly, in his closing comments about being in it for the long haul "even though" he had not brought peace to the Middle East or solved the economic problem in his first 60 days, and implicitly in his manner, he conveyed the same, steady, 'let's keep plugging along and we'll make it' message that had run through his presentations through the campaign.

OK, those are very long and ungainly sentences, but there are only three of them.

In fairness...

... After learning something about the now-resigned Chas Freeman, I came to disagree with, and think tendentious, Jon Chait's opening salvo against Freeman in the Washington Post. And I have received enough pro-Freeman letters from his working associates in the last two days to make we wonder: is there anyone who actually dealt with the man who considered him a crackpot, an anti-Semite, a menace -- terms thrown around by his critics? Obviously Dennis Blair -- Naval Academy graduate, Rhodes scholar, former CINCPAC, Asia/China expert, no one's idea of a nut -- thought Freeman's irreverent perspective so valuable that he sought it out. Personal knowledge isn't everything, but it is dramatic to me that people who have known Freeman seem so solid in support for him, in contrast to those who don't. It's all moot now.

Still, in fairness: Chait's take-down of the absurd Amity Shlaes interpretation of the Great Depression and the New Deal is both important in its own right and a model of the systematic demolition of a flawed though alluring argument. Among the admirable aspects of this essay is that it it painlessly conveys some of the Ec 101 principles that somehow have been assumed out of existence in day by day political discussion.* This is very well done; worth reading; and worth learning from. I look forward to more from Chait in this area.
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* Eg that critics of a stimulus bill can denounce it because it means "more spending" suggests that they don't understand anything that has been written about economics in the last 70+ years. The point of a stimulus bill is to spend extra money and therefore bring total economic output to a higher level than it would otherwise attain. Even having to mention this point is like having to explain the connection between caloric intake and body weight, or the role of gravity. But Chait nicely and non-condescendingly lays it out in his article:

Prior to Keynes, the economy was held to be self-correcting. The only cure for a recession was to let wages and prices fall to their natural level. The prevailing attitude, as Paul Krugman writes in his recently re-issued book The Return of Depression Economics, was "a sort of moralistic fatalism." Keynes upended the orthodoxy in a way that was every bit as dramatic as Galileo challenging geocentrism. He insisted that recessions are not a natural process, or the invisible hand's righteous judgment against our sins, but a simple failure of consumer demand.

When people worry about losing their jobs, they sensibly cut back on their spending. But that decision, in turn, reduces demand for goods and services, which results in reduced income or lost jobs for other workers. Keynes called this phenomenon "the paradox of thrift": what makes sense for individuals turns into a disaster for society as a whole. The recession was therefore a failure of collective action that required government action. Government needed to encourage spending by reducing interest rates or, failing that, to inject spending into the economy directly by deliberately running temporary budget deficits.

The end for Freeman

As I mentioned originally, I had no intention of getting into the Chas Freeman matter. It has ended in an ugly way -- Freeman's departure statement is intemperate, but even calmer people might sound testy if they had been accused of "hostility toward Jews generally" without, to my knowledge, any evidence for that claim.

I want to think carefully before saying much more about this episode. For the moment my sentiments are closest to those expressed by David Rothkopf, friend and stalwart supporter of Freeman, in this post at the Foreign Policy blog:

The genesis of that crisis is that we have lost perspective on what the criteria for selecting and approving government officials ought to be. Financial trivia, minutiae from people's personal lives and political litmus tests have grown in importance while character, experience, intelligence, creativity and wisdom have fallen by the wayside. Ridiculous threshold obstacles stand alongside obscene ones and when taken with the relentless personal attacks associated with high level jobs in Washington -- the low pay, and the extreme difficulty of getting anything done -- we are seeing even those selected for senior jobs turn away in droves. We are at a moment of not one but an extraordinary array of great crises and challenges for America and we are effectively keeping the people we need most out of the positions we most need filled.

Emphasis mine. The friend I quoted when I first raised this topic said that, in his view, the controversy over Freeman's appointment amounted to the "self-lobotomization" of the US policy-making apparatus. He was talking just about Freeman, but the problem is clearly broader, as Rothkopf points out. Thought experiment: Steven Chu, our new Secretary of Energy, was previously director of the UC-run Lawrence-Berkeley Lab. The Lab receives a tremendous amount of funding from the US government, largely through the DOE. Chu himself is recused from being involved in such deals for a ceratin period. Suppose instead that this background had been considered a "conflict" that would bar him from office. You could imagine people making the argument, if Chu's reputation were less bullet-proof or if he had offended some interest group.

One other point. Rothkopf ends his post this way:

The result [of problems described above] is not a government of people without conflicts of interest or troubling ties, rather it is a government full of people whose conflicts and ties are with groups powerful enough to protect them. This among other reasons is why I, as a Jew with a memory, was so opposed to the attacks on Freeman. But for the record, the most compelling reason I found for believing Chas Freeman would have been a superb Chairman of the National Intelligence Council was one that seldom came up in all the articles I read. I actually know him.

As I initially pointed out, I do not know Freeman and had never paid attention to him before this controversy. But it turns out that nearly twenty people I know well enough to respect and trust have themselves known and worked with Freeman. Every one of them supported his nomination. And -- as it is unfortunately relevant to point out in these circumstances -- most of them are Jewish.

We'll all think about this episode for a while.

Two more on Chas Freeman and China

I realize that there's no point in getting into an endless endorsement-competition to see how many authorities can be lined up for and against the embattled Chas Freeman, nominee-apparent as head of the National Intelligence Council.

But anyone who has seen a Washington scandal get rolling understands the almost unstoppable momentum when one "revelation" follows another and you wait breathlessly to see what the next one will be -- and when the "embattled" victim will finally give in. That is very much how it looked for Freeman when -- on top of the original complaints about his views on Israel -- apparently-damaging new information about his views on China popped up.

To put a brake on the momentum, and to give a chance for deliberation about a man's reputation and a president's ability to get the range of advice he wants, I think it is worth reinforcing the idea that the people who know Freeman and China policy best think the complaints about him on this front are a crock. That was the point of the previous post with the views of Sidney Rittenberg and Jerome A. Cohen. Here, the views of the China scholar John Frankenstein of Brooklyn College, and the Beijing-based blogger and writer (and rock musician) Kaiser Kuo:

John Frankenstein:

I have known Chas Freeman ever since we were next door neighbors at the State Dept's Chinese language School in Taiwan over 35 years ago. (At the time he was studying Hong Lou Meng; most of us were struggling with Hong Qi) He's damn smart, speaks his mind, dedicated to the best interests of the United States, and has little tolerance for bullshit. I cannot think of a better choice for NIC chairman than Chas.

Kaiser Kuo, in an entry two years ago from his Ich Bin Ein Beijinger blog, reported details from a speech Freeman gave on the importance of independent-minded intelligence analysis, especially as it applied to China. According to the transcript Kuo quoted, Freeman said:

To deal effectively with China, Americans need to understand it in terms of its own complexities and authentic aspirations. This is unlikely to be achieved by officials engaged in writing narrowly focused and highly tendentious reports mandated by Congress to justify the single-issue agendas of our military-industrial complex or, for that matter, our humanitarian-industrial complex. Nor can it be accomplished by analysts stir-frying intelligence to suit the political appetites of those they work for....

Predictions about China based on a priori reasoning, ideologically induced delusions, hearsay, conjecture, or mirror-imaging have been frequent and numerous. They have racked up a remarkable record of unreliability. To cite a few relevant examples: contrary to repeated forecasts, the many imperfections of China's legal system have neither prevented it from developing a vigorous market economy nor inhibited foreign investment -- of which China continues to attract more than any other country, including our own. China's failure to democratize and its continuing censorship of its media, including the Internet, have not stifled its economic progress or capacity to innovate, which are increasingly impressive. China's perverse practices with respect to human rights have not cost China's Communist Party or its government their legitimacy. On the contrary, polling data suggests that Chinese have a very much higher regard for their political leaders and government than Americans currently do for ours.

The second paragraph, with Freeman's observations of China, rings almost all* true to me -- based on living here for nearly three years. The first paragraph, about the importance of truly independent-minded intelligence analysis, commends him for the job rather than disqualifies him. So let's slow down, stop the stampede, and -- since we're talking about a "non-confirmable" post that is presumably within the president's discretion -- look for actual proof that Freeman's views on other topics are so extreme, deep-held, and unreasonable that he should be banned from further service as a bigot or pariah. It doesn't look to me as if such proof is there.
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* Exception, for later discussion: I think there is more tension/contradiction between the Chinese government's determination to control the media and public discussion, on the one hand, and its desire to foster an innovative economy, on the other, than Freeman suggests here. Also, his comments about the relative popularity of US and Chinese officials was made during the late GW Bush era, not Obama's time. But all that is for another time -- and is certainly not a reason to think he should be banned from public office.

Chas Freeman and China

For the record here are two interesting statements on Chas Freeman and his fitness for public office, by people deeply familiar with the China-related part of his experience and outlook. Quick points of context:

- I don't think anyone seriously contends that Freeman's views on China are the central reason for the opposition to him. As Andrew Sullivan convincingly (IHMO) demonstrated, the real argument, for better or worse, concerns his views on Israel.

- On the other hand, his most often-quoted view about China -- that the regime erred mainly in waiting too long to crack down on the Tiananmen Square demonstrations -- has added to the argument that he is a doctrinaire "realist" who has no time for ideals of any sort.

- The two people whose views I quote below have absolutely unquestionable standing to speak on this subject. One is Sidney Rittenberg, who first went to China with the US Army in 1945 and ended up spending 35 years there, 16 of them in solitary confinement for alleged espionage and disloyalty to the Mao regime. The other is Jerome A. Cohen, of NYU Law School and Paul Weiss, who has been tireless in his efforts for legal reform in China and was instrumental in freeing John Downey, who had been held in Chinese prison for two decades after the Korean War.

Both of them strongly support the expansion of individual liberties and civil society in China. Both of them strongly support Chas Freeman and his candidacy for his now-disupted job.

After the jump, a long email Rittenberg sent me today about Freeman. Here, comments each of them made on a private China-related discussion group, quoted with their permission. Read these and ask yourself: based at least on the China part of his background, does this sound like a man so far beyond the range of reasonable opinion that he must be prevented from holding appointive office?

Rittenberg:

To my knowledge--and from personal experience--Chas Freeman as DCM [Deputy Chief of Mission, #2 to the Ambassador] in Beijing was a stalwart supporter of human rights who helped many individuals in need. Not political bluster,but intelligent and courageous action. He is strong in both wisdom and integrity.

Cohen:

Chas Freeman is one of the most brilliant, analytical, balanced and skeptical people I have known in the last four decades. I first knew him as a young State Dept China-watcher and was so impressed I persuaded State to stake him to a year at Harvard Law School so he could finish his JD and hone his skills in international law. Chas had left HLS after two bored, ho-hum years to join the Foreign Service, but when he returned he took full advantage of the opportunity and, if memory serves, had a perfect third year record. I have not been close to him since that time but we have occasionally crossed paths and I always benefited from and enjoyed the experience.

Chas is a keen observer, a wicked wit and a fearless critic. It is ludicrous to portray him as a "panda hugger" who endorses the slaughter of June 4 or someone who can be seduced by Saudi enticements. As far as I know, he has always been fiercely independent, and an enemy of "group think", and I will be glad to have him analyzing Israeli politics and policies as well as other problems.

In 1973, when Chas was helping to establish the pre-Embassy U.S. "liaison office" in Beijing, a time when the Cultural Revolution led PRC officials to obscure their titles from foreigners by identifying themselves as "responsible member of the department concerned," Chas had his own name cards printed in Chinese and English bestowing the same sobriquet on himself.

I congratulate Admiral Blair on selecting Chas to be "responsible member of the department concerned" and certainly will think less of President Obama and his advisors if they back down.

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Own worst enemy, Tomorrow Square edition

I've mentioned once or twice, or maybe fifty times, my wonderment at the contrast between the sophistication with which Chinese officialdom can address domestic audiences and sensitivities, and the comic-if-it-weren't tragic cluelessness of many official efforts to explain China's views and "feelings" to the outside, non-Chinese-speaking world.

I don't have time for a full presentation-and-gloss at the moment, but see if this recent item, which I found while leafing through back copies of my favorite newspaper, the China Daily, rings any bells. It was about the nomination of Gary Locke, former governor of Washington, as US Commerce Secretary, and it featured "inside" analysis from an experienced Chinese diplomat:

Story as it looked on the page, showing the local Chinese angle:

http://i142.photobucket.com/albums/r96/jfallows/IMG_6399A.jpg

Near the end, the experts step in, displaying their perfect ear for the nuances of the way race is lived and discussed in Obama-era USA. Analytical conclusion of the story, from someone with that indispensable on-the-ground knowledge of America:

Ah, the talents with the yellow skin. In a similar development, the new issue of the local That's Shanghai magazine has a rundown of events for the Shanghai International Literary Festival, including a talk I'm giving at 3pm today. Most of the items list the writer and the name of his or her most recent book. In my case, that proved to be awkward -- since the title, Postcards from Tomorrow Square, includes the now-sensitive word "Square," which officials feel might stir up emotions about unpleasant events that happened twenty years ago this June in another Square. I am not kidding (and I'm also not just guessing about this). A friend has suggested that perhaps the Tomorrow Square building, 明天广场, in central Shanghai -- right on People's Square, as it happens -- will have to have its nameplate removed during the sensitive period ahead. It is sometimes unbelievable but never dull here.

The building formerly known as Tomorrow Square. Maybe everyone will agree not to notice it:

A fight I didn't intend to get into: Chas Freeman

I have never met Chas Freeman, the man whose reported selection as head of the National Intelligence Council has drawn such criticism, including from my colleague Jeffrey Goldberg. Not having had a chance to assess him first hand, and not having put in time studying his views, I have not felt comfortable weighing in on the dispute about whether his outlook was unacceptably extreme. Here's the gist of the argument against him: that he is too close to the Saudis (as a former US Ambassador to the Kingdom, and now head of a think tank that has received Saudi funding); too tolerant of repression in China (because of comments saying the Chinese regime had no choice but to crack down in Tiananmen Square); and too deaf to the moral claims of Israel as the only democracy in the Middle East.

But very recently I met with a friend who had worked years ago with Freeman -- on China, not the Middle East -- and was upset about what he called the "self-lobotimization" of US foreign policy that the campaign to discredit Freeman represented. As I've looked into it, I've come to agree.

His first point was that Freeman was being proposed for a post within the president's discretionary appointment power, like one of his White House aides, and therefore didn't have to reflect the Senate's sense of who should be in the job. The more important point, he said, was that Freeman's longstanding contrarian inclination to challenge conventional wisdom of any sort, far from being an embarrassing liability, was exactly what a president needed from the person in this job.

A president's Secretary of State had to represent the country's policies soberly and predictably around the world. His National Security Advisor had to coordinate and evenhandedly present the views of the various agencies. His White House press secretary had to take great care in expressing the official line to the world's media each day. His Director of National Intelligence had to give him the most sober and responsible precis of what was known and unknown about potential threats.

For any of those roles, a man like Freeman might not be the prudent choice. But as head of the National Intelligence Council, my friend said, he would be exactly right. While he would have no line-operational responsibilities or powers, he would be able to raise provocative questions, to ask "What if everybody's wrong?", to force attention to the doubts, possibilities, and alternatives that normally get sanded out of the deliberative process through the magic known as "groupthink." As Dan Froomkin of NiemanWatch wrote in an item that called Freeman "A One-Man Destroyer of Groupthink,"

He has... spent a goodly part of the last 10 years raising questions that otherwise might never get answered -- or even asked -- because they're too embarrassing, awkward, or difficult.
For him to be put in charge of what [Laura Rozen of Foreign Policy] calls "the intelligence community's primary big-think shop and the lead body in producing national intelligence estimates" is about the most emphatic statement the Obama Administration could possibly make that it won't succumb to the kind of submissive intelligence-community groupthink that preceded the war in Iraq.

Again, I don't know Freeman personally. I don't know whether the Saudi funding for his organization has been entirely seemly (like that for most Presidential libraries), which is now the subject of inspector-general investigation. If there's a problem there, there's a problem.

But I do know something about the role of contrarians in organizational life. I have hired such people, have worked alongside them, have often been annoyed at them, but ultimately have viewed them as indispensable. Sometimes the annoying people, who will occasionally say "irresponsible" things, are the only ones who will point out problems that everyone else is trying to ignore. A president needs as many such inconvenient boat-rockers as he can find -- as long as they're not in the main operational jobs. Seriously: anyone who has worked in an organization knows how hard it is, but how vital, to find intelligent people who genuinely are willing to say inconvenient things even when everyone around them is getting impatient or annoyed. The truth is, you don't like them when they do that. You may not like them much at all. But without them, you're cooked.

So to the extent this argument is shaping up as a banishment of Freeman for rash or unorthodox views, I instinctively take Freeman's side -- even when I disagree with him on specifics. This job calls for originality, and originality brings risks. Chas Freeman is not going to have his finger on any button. He is going to help raise all the questions that the person with his finger on the button should be aware of.

Read carefully this NiemanWatch Q-and-A with Freeman from 2006 (or read any of Freeman's recent policy articles here) and ask yourself two questions: do these sound like the views of an unacceptable kook? And, would you rather have had more of this sensibility, or less, applied to U.S. policy in recent years?

More on Newt and airplanes

If you'd like to hear more about Newt Gingrich's plan to "reform" air-traffic control from someone who really knows the subject, I heartily recommend this entry from Don Brown's generally admirable Get the Flick site. Brown is a retired air-traffic controller with a knack for explaining technical matters clearly - and with an attitude, which makes reading his accounts fun. I think he is closer to Andrew Sullivan's original mockery of Newt than to my more respectful reference. In any case, definitely worth considering if you care about the topic.

Tom Geoghegan comes in 7th

Congratulations to Cook County Commissioner Mike Quigley, who came in first, with 22% of the vote, and gets the Democratic nomination (in an overwhelmingly Democratic district) to succeed Rahm Emanuel as Representative from the 5th District of Illinois.

Tom Geoghegan, often mentioned here, finished in 7th place with 6% of the vote. After the jump, the email he just sent out to supporters.

As I've said all along, I don't know the politics of the district but I do know that Geoghegan is an outstanding voice and thinker in contemporary politics. If his run for Congress, unsuccessful at this stage, call more attention to his books and outlook, it will have done some good. And having some idea of how hard it is to run for any political office, my heart is with just about anyone who gives it a try. (Just about....)
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Let a thousand-and-one flowers bloom at the Atlantic!

(Following the previous thousand blooming flowers, here.)

I hear via my aviation grapevine that my colleague Andrew Sullivan is making fun of Newt Gingrich in general, and in specific for this idea about modernizing the US air-traffic control system:

[Newt says:] "One of the projects I'm going to launch -- we don't have a name for it yet -- is an air-traffic modernization project... You can do a space-based air-traffic-control system with half the current number of air-traffic controllers, increase the amount of air traffic in the northeast by 40 percent, allow point-to-point flights without the controllers having to have highways in the sky, and reduce the amount of aviation fuel by 10 percent."
[Andrew asks:] Why would I be even more terrified to get on a plane after that "reform"?

As for making fun of Newt in general, have at it! But on this idea, he turns out to be saying something smart.

To play the role of Mr. Gradgrind for a moment, if you're terrified getting on a plane, it has to be for reasons beyond the realm of the statistical or the "reality-based," since on average this is about the safest way you can spend your time. Often entire years pass without a single death from a crash on US airlines - something that can't be said of riding in a car, walking down the street, taking a bath, lying in your own bed, etc. Yes, when things go wrong, they're grisly, but traffic deaths, random murders, bathtub drownings, etc are also bad ways to go. (And yes, yes, I realize that Andrew is exaggerating for effect.)

Still, there are risks both real and perceived in flying. The system Gingrich is talking about is designed to reduce at least the real ones.

What he has in mind is no doubt a variant of what is called "NextGen," for Next Generation Transportation. It involves a satellite-based navigation system (think: GPS) called ADS-B. Not everyone agrees on every detail of these new systems. But the approach as a whole constitutes a mature, vetted, sensible, picked-over-for-years proposal that has most everything going for it except the long, slow process of getting it accepted and implemented. I described its potential back in 2001 in this Atlantic cover story and the related book Free Flight. More available here, here, here, and here.

As for why this system is more modern: Today's air traffic control system is essentially like a telephone network in which you must ring up a central switchboard and ask an operator's help in placing each call. The new system would allow a lot more automated routing - with less needless, switchboard-operator-type human intervention but (as with anything in aviation) human and automated safety measures piled on triple-depth.

As for why it could be more efficient and ultimately safer: Today's system funnels a great deal of traffic through a small number of specified routes - which therefore become the only crowded places in the sky. A newer system would allow more planes to take a variety of courses, staying out of each other's way. (It doesn't solve the problem of too many airplanes wanting to land at the same few over-crowded airports, but as a side effect it is designed to make smaller, under-used airports more attractive and practical.) In a sense it's like the difference between cars, which can take a variety of routes through town, and trolleys, which go where the tracks are laid and nowhere else. I am oversimplifying, but there actually is something to Gingrich's plan. It's part of what is good about him, not what's bad.

Should this be the basis of the GOP's new program? They could do a lot worse -- and, as I'm sure Andrew agrees, they probably will.

New hope for Bobby Jindal

Still in the internet twilight zone, but happened to pass a TV that was, improbably enough, replaying Bobby Jindal's "response" speech from last week. I am the last person to say this, but let me confirm the prevailing view: Wow.

One way to think of this is: It's been a mixed week for the Rhodes Scholar tribe. Nancy-Ann Min DeParle, known in RS parlance as being of "Tennessee and Balliol College," has just been named the new White House health-reform czar(ina?), and Dominic Barton ("British Columbia and Brasenose College") was chosen capo di tutti capi of McKinsey & Co. Congratulations! On the other hand, we have .... that speech, by Gov. Jindal ("Louisiana and New College.") Maybe they can revoke these things for excessive public embarrassment? This could be called the Mel Reynolds provision? ("Illinois and Lincoln College, plus federal prison.")

Actually there is both precedent and hope for Gov. Jindal. His speech was no more humiliating a flop than was the 1988 Democratic convention speech by that other boy-wonder southern governor then making his debut on the national stage, Bill Clinton ("Arkansas and University College.") Clinton very quickly figured out that if everyone was laughing at him, the only way to come out ahead was to join in and ultimately lead the hilarity. So within a week he was on the Tonight show trading barbs with Johnny Carson about just how terrible his speech had been. Politicians' self-deprecation can never be 100% sincere, but that doesn't matter. We appreciate the gesture.

This pirouette is a little trickier for Jindal, because in addition to making fun (as Clinton did) of his ridiculous stage presence he'd probably also have to mock what he actually said, which was more or less the straight Limbaughesque anti-government line. If he's as smart as everyone ~~thought until last week~~ thinks, he'll figure out a way to show that he understands why people would snicker at a governor of Louisiana saying, "Who needs the federal government? Who needs warnings of natural disasters?" while recovery from Katrina is nowhere near complete. Turning the situation in his favor would be an act of Clintonlike dexterity, and would ideally happen under the auspices of today's Johnny Carson, Jon Stewart.

Daily Show bookers, throw this man a lifeline! Gov. Bobby, follow the trail that Gov. Bill has blazed! And act soon. Self-deprecation delayed is self-deprecation that just makes things worse. I'd love to hear Clinton counsel Jindal on this one.

Interesting little tool to use during tonight's speech

Speechwars.com, which lets you see how often presidents have used any given word in State of the Union addresses over the years. For instance, here are the varying uses of "freedom" and "liberty" since the earliest days:

Lots of surprising results available. For instance, here is China-v-India:

Try it for yourself to see how much is old and how much new in tonight's speech. (I'll be traveling while it happens so can't play along myself.) Hint: no S.O.U. address has yet contained the word "nationalization."

Interesting Tom Geoghegan interview re single-payer health care

For reasons explained several times in the past six weeks (here, here, and here), I really hope my long-time friend Tom Geoghegan can win next month's special election for the Congressional seat from the Fifth District of Illinois. This is no slight on any of the other candidates in the race. I know very little about them or the politics of the district. But I know enough about Geoghegan, based on decades of friendship starting when we were teenagers, to be 100% sure that he would bring an unusual level of honesty, intelligence, humor, and again honesty to national politics. I am saying honesty twice because I mean both the personal-probity and the plain-speaking variety.

Anecdote I just remembered: the first time I heard the name "Barack Obama" was from Geoghegan. He was visiting our house in Washington in the early 2000s, after Obama had made it into the Illinois State Senate and then lost his 2000 race for Congress against Bobby Rush, and before (I think) Obama's anti-Iraq-war speech of late 2002. "Watch this guy," Tom told my wife and me. He knew Obama from labor-organizing work on the South Side, since Geoghegan had spent much of his career representing dislocated workers in that area. "He can be our Lincoln." I thought: Yeah, yeah.

Now, back to Tom Geoghegan's honesty: His recent half-hour TV interview with Jeff Berkowitz, available on Geoghegan's campaign web site here and shown below, is a good illustration. You don't want to miss the host's unintentionally campy welcome to the program, 56 seconds into the clip. "Berkowitz is my name. Politics is our game." But the part worth studying is from 2:15 through about minute 10, when Geoghegan unashamedly argues in favor of a single-payer health coverage plan. And after that, he argues with similar directness for "soak the rich" progressive income-tax rates and nationalizing the failed banks -- or "the Greenspan plan," as we now know it.

If I were on Geoghegan's policy team, I'd be suggesting that when making the case for single-payer, he spend less time talking about Europeans and more talking about the success of VA hospitals in the US. (Phillip Longman's classic article on the VA as health-care model is here, and subsequent book here. For another time, my own recent experience with an extremely top-of-the-the-line doctor who told me how much simpler his practice would be if he could handle all his patients with the minimum of paperwork, bureaucracy, and insurance-driven hassle of his practice at the VA.) Still, it's impressive to watch a politician clearly explain why it would be cheaper and better to get rid of the massive insurance-company bureaucracy.

So whether you're interested in Chicago politics, health-care policy, or the process of making "daring" points on TV, this interview has its rewards. More about this interview, plus general campaign info, from one of Geoghegan's neighbors and supporters at the GSpot blog, here.

Further points on McCaughey

Following this post earlier today:

1) It turns out that the Senate Finance Committee has put out a set of FAQs addressing some of the problems E. McCaughey "discovered" in the fine print of the deal. It specifically knocks down the central Big Brother claim McCaughey makes -- namely, that federal health bureaucrats will use new electronic records to monitor your doctor's decisions about your care, and then penalize any doctors who deviate from federally-defined standard practice. The FAQ says:

Q: Will the health IT director have any influence on the decisions doctors and patients can make together about tests and treatment?
A: Absolutely not. This position's function is to make sure that doctors and other health care providers use good, secure technologies as they change their record-keeping systems from paper to computers.

And

Actually, the Office of the National Coordinator of Health Information Technology is not even new. President George W. Bush created the office by Executive Order a number of years ago. The bill simply codifies the office and gives it a specific job.

There are a bunch more, all in "absolutely not" or "actually" spirit. In fairness to McCaughey, she couldn't have seen this FAQ before she wrote. It came out on Tuesday of this week, after her column on Monday. But it makes you wonder: Did she bother to call anyone to check out her claims and inferences? Did she consult anything apart from her own imagination?

2) As numerous readers have written in to remind me, there is an in-house Atlantic angle to all of this. My current Atlantic colleague Andrew Sullivan was the editor of The New Republic in 1994, when the original McCaughey story came out. I like Andrew very much personally; I am very glad he's on the Atlantic team; I agree with him on most issues and disagree on some, including whether this article should ever have been published. Notwithstanding all or any of that, my beef here is with McCaughey, not with him.

I understand enough about both the editor's and the writer's role to understand that at a certain point, an editor has to trust the writer's basic honesty and operational competence. Good magazines have good fact-checking departments -- and our magazine has a great one. But you can't "check" a reporter's basic honesty. There is a difference between re-confirming facts to be sure the writer didn't miss something and having to treat a reporter like a defendant, whose every motive, claim, and observation is subject to doubt. When a publication -- or any organization -- gets into that position, as the New Republic eventually did with Stephen Glass, the normal precautions do no good. To put it differently, the 10% of an article you can check rests on faith that the other 90% you can't check, starting with the author's claim to be reading evidence honestly, is also true. If that faith is misplaced, you can easily get burned.

So: this is explicitly not an invitation to revisit the merits of publishing the original article 15 years ago. My complaint is with people who would believe or repeat similar claims from the same source (McCaughey) now.

Also: I see now that Rick Ungar, of Culture11.com, put out a line-by-line demolition of McCaughey's claims immediately after her column ran, here.

Thanks also to Neil Mackenzie for a lead. (And, for the final awkwardly-timed installment of my family-duties saga of recent weeks, I am about to leave internet range for another four days. At least this final duty is a pleasant one; next posting here likely to be in the wedding-announcement category.)

Let's stop this before it goes any further

The award for "Most destructive effect on public discourse by a single person" for the 2000s, so far, goes to Dick "no doubt" Cheney. ("Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction." Cheney, speech to national VFW Convention, August 26, 2002. Of course, this is a career-achievement award, not limited to this one event.)

My nominee for the winner in the 1990s would be Elizabeth "Betsy" McCaughey. At various stages in her career she has been a banker, a Republican politician, and a staffer at conservative think tanks, but she entered the public stage in the mid-1990s in the guise of a dispassionate, independent researcher who considered it her duty to inform the American public about the dire threats it faced. Come to think of it, that is more or less the guise Cheney took in warning about the threat from Iraq.

In McCaughey's case, the equivalent of weapons of mass destruction was the original Clinton Health Reform plan. In 1994 she wrote a cover story in the New Republic "revealing" a number of hidden dangers in the Clinton plan that less careful analysts had somehow missed. Unfortunately for McCaughey, most of what she wrote was false. Unfortunately for the Clintons, most of what she claimed was echoed uncritically and became part of the conventional wisdom of why the bill couldn't pass.

After the jump, a passage from my 1995 Atlantic article "A Triumph of Misinformation" about McCaughey's article and its effects. More on this topic in my 1996 book Breaking the News -- and especially about why sloppy press coverage did as much to thwart health-care reform under the Clintons as it did to bring on the Iraq war under Cheney and Bush.

Why bring this up now? Because McCaughey has sprung up again to "reveal" another hidden danger in another Democratic administration's plans. Buried inside the new stimulus bill, she has discovered, are new big-brother tactics similar to those she warned against years ago. In a recent Bloomberg.com opinion column she wrote:

One new bureaucracy, the National Coordinator of Health Information Technology, will monitor treatments to make sure your doctor is doing what the federal government deems appropriate and cost effective....Hospitals and doctors that are not "meaningful users" of the new system will face penalties. "Meaningful user" isn't defined in the bill. That will be left to the HHS secretary, who will be empowered to impose "more stringent measures of meaningful use over time" (511, 518, 540-541)

For what is wrong with her "analysis" this time, check out this in The Washington Monthly, which also has a chronology of how the (right wing) press -- led by Fox, Limbaugh, and Drudge -- is again picking up flatly disprovable lies. (Eg, the "new" bureaucracy she warns about already exists, and was established under GW Bush.)

Seriously, every one of McCaughey's statements about public policy from this day forward should be subjected to the "Oh yes, and how did it turn out last time?" test. We are in OJ territory here. Stop this new claim before it gets real traction.
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Good video of Tom Geoghegan in action

Last month I mentioned, here and here, my enthusiasm about and support for Tom Geoghegan's candidacy to succeed Rahm Emanuel (and before him Rod Blagojevich and Dan Rostenkowski) as Congressman from the Fifth District of Illinois.

The campaign actually has a professional-looking web site now. Its latest entry is a 22-minute video of Tom on a local interview show, called "The Interview Show." It is worth watching both to get a sense of Tom's personality, wryness and all, and to be reminded how it can sound when a public figure talks clearly and non-patronizingly about public problems. We're getting used to it from Obama, for example with the press conference last night. This is another illustration. Donation page is here.

Placeholder on recent news

As mentioned recently, for me this has been a period of extraordinary family and personal complication, ongoing for a few more days. Items for the web-site to do list, perhaps tomorrow:

* The fire at the Mandarin Oriental hotel in China: if we'd been in our apartment in Beijing last night, we would have in fact been outside the apartment, watching what was happening a quarter-mile up the street near the new CCTV tower. Last year, on the final night of Chinese New Year, my wife remarked that it was a miracle that the city hadn't gone up in flame. (To explain: this fire happened on the final night of this year's CNY.)

* Obama's first press conference, which I thought extremely accomplished in ways obvious and subtle. The answer that most repays careful study is the response to an economic question from our former Atlantic colleague Chuck Todd (transcript here, search for "Chuck.") Impressive aspect, about which more later: the premise of the question was -- no offense, Chuck -- somewhat confused. Obama addresses the confusion in the first paragraph of response and then has a conciliatory loopback to make an additional useful point.

* Introduction of Kindle 2. I think my wife will enjoy the Kindle 1 that is about to be hers.

* This NYT story about a change in emphasis at Newsweek, based on the recognition that weekly news magazines simply cannot compete in delivering "breaking news" to their readers.

The venerable newsweekly's ingrained role of obligatory coverage of the week's big events will be abandoned once and for all, executives say.
"There's a phrase in the culture, 'we need to take note of,' 'we need to weigh in on,' " said Newsweek's editor, Jon Meacham. "That's going away. If we don't have something original to say, we won't. The drill of chasing the week's news to add a couple of hard-fought new details is not sustainable."

Ah, the battles over exactly that principle ten+ years ago at the weakest of the news magazines, US News. More later on this too.

* An impressively brave post by my friend Steve Clemons about a quite startling change in the leadership of the Japan Society of New York. Twenty-plus years ago, when I first went on a Japan Society fellowship for a stay in Japan (as many journalists have done since then), it would have been inconceivable that a just-retired Japanese government official (and former Mitsubishi exec) would be in charge of this American organization, for reasons that Steve Clemons clearly lays out. Although the Japan Society is not quite the same lobbying organization that AIPAC is, it would be like having an Israeli government official head that organization. This is truly startling.

* And, later, a wrapup on the real action for me of the last few days: final visit for family reasons to my home town. The moving vans arrive tomorrow to take the last shipment from my parents' house. Onward.

Adjusting a mistuned policy: what a thought! (Public diplomacy with China dept)

In talking about Timothy Geithner's warnings on Chinese "currency manipulation" several days ago, my main criticism involved proportion.

Yes, the dollar/RMB exchange rate is one important element of US-Chinese interactions. But even if we're talking only about economic issues, it is not (in my view) the most important among them. And as soon as we think about the vast range of political, strategic, scientific, cultural and other ways in which the two countries will affect each other, it falls far down the list. I bet that from later historians' perspectives, whether the two countries can successfully grapple with climate/environmental/energy issues will matter most about their dealings in these next few years.

So why would the Administration choose to kick things off by talking about currency wars -- and nothing else?

Two positive developments today. One is a column by Rebecca MacKinnon which lays out very clearly why it is worth thinking about proportion and public opinion even in China, where the media are still heavily controlled and no national policy is subject to popular vote. She has a lot to say, in the form of a "Dear President Obama"-style open letter, but here's the gist:

if you really want to take U.S.-China relations to a new strategic level that rises above the day-to-day issues, you need to find new ways to engage the Chinese people themselves -- not just their government....The point is that while these people are not citizens of a democracy, they are by no means an undifferentiated mass of brainwashed drones.

The other is a set of comments to reporters by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton (first time I have typed those five words), in which she provided exactly the proportion missing in earlier remarks. The gist here, via Centrist Vector:

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Today's Security Theater update

Previously on the Security Theater concept here, here, here, and here, for starters.

1) From the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association, or AOPA, a pro-small plane aviation lobbying group (of which I'm a member), indication that the Obama administration's general freeze on last-minute Bush regulations and diktats might stop implementation of one of the stupidest, least defensible, most purely theatric "security" measures, the creation of a permanent Air Defense Identification Zone, or ADIZ, over Washington DC. Yes, the Guantanamo orders are more important. But this could be significant too.

2) Conference summary, with video and links, from Cato's conference just before the inauguration on "Shaping the Obama Administration's Counterterrorism Strategy." Wide-ranging, useful to hear as the Obama team considers what, if anything, is worth preserving from the Bush "global war on terror." Useful complementary essay here.

3) Yesterday I drive to DC National Airport for the first time in more than a year and see the same big neon sign I remember so unfondly from days gone by. Security Threat Level: Orange.

Really, what is the point of this? 99.9% of the people who look at it don't even see it any more, since it's just part of the "boy who cried wolf" ignorable background. Anyone who does think about it has to wonder: is there a threat to the entire country? Just to Washington? Is there new information? Is there anything different I'm supposed to do? Does this sign have any purpose other than to make me just a little bit more fearful and a little bit more accepting of anything done in the name of "security"?

Yes, there are serious ongoing genuine threats to the safety of people in this country and many others, and we need to support all shrewd, effective measures to deter them. But does it occur to no one in the government that we do terrorists' work for them by making our own population cower all the time, rather than to be brave in the face of danger? Taking his lead from President Reagan, President Obama can say: "Transportation Security Administration, Tear Down This Sign!"

4) Someone has finally seen how security theater can become part of our economic stimulus plan. Playmobil is offering new action toys:

I grew up playing with little toy Army men who refought Gettysburg and Okinawa. My kids grew up with Star Wars action figures. Isn't it heartwarming to think of today's kids growing up with toy TSA security screeners! (Thanks to Gavin Bradley for this tip.)

Broader point about Geithner, Obama, China, and "manipulation"

Here's what increasingly bothers me about the recent flap over Timothy Geithner's "currency manipulation" criticism of China. I am showing this in "extract" format below not because I am quoting someone else because I am quoting the thought that has been running around in my head:

Because Barack Obama has been so knowing-sounding and aware of complexities on so many issues, it's natural to assume that he and his team will display the same sophistication when it comes to dealing with China. But in reality, virtually nothing that the President or his appointees has said or done on the subject has shown much sophistication at all. I made this point at various stages in the campaign. But as time goes on you inevitably start wondering: If these people are so smart, when will they get around to acting smart about the country whose cooperation they need more than any other's to avoid true financial catastrophe?

Now, the reasoning behind that assertion:

- During the campaign, Obama did not (to my knowledge) give a speech about relations with China, unlike his major addresses on his European tour or his speech about Israel when at AIPAC. Fine: it wasn't a big, direct in the campaign. What he did say was pretty much confined to "I won't buy poisonous Christmas toys for my kids" in early campaign debates. Meanwhile, his web site did have an all-points China policy, noting the various ways in which the countries cooperate and compete.

- Since the election, there has been one indirect but important signal of the new Administration thinking creatively about how to handle China. That is the nomination of Steven Chu as energy secretary.This was significant not because Chu's parents were immigrants from China (though that was huge and celebrated news inside China) but instead because in recent years Chu has been deeply involved in efforts to work out US-Chinese collaboration on environmental and climate-change issues. Anyone who has thought about this problem understands that if America and China are not both seriously committed to dealing with this issue, it's not going to be dealt with.

- The all-star economic team we're relying on to avoid true financial/economic catastrophe will need to work with China on just about every aspect of this plan. China has been the main buyer of Treasury notes (as you might possibly have heard). It has its own domestic economic emergency to deal with, and the tools it chooses in responding to that crisis will either ease or aggravate other countries' problems.

- Yet what is the most famous thing we've heard about China from any member of the Administration since the time the transition began? This, as reported in the China Daily:

As I argued here recently, China's management of the RMB's value (as opposed to the huffy and hyperbolic term "manipulation") is one part of the economic snarl that the US, China, Europeans, and others need to contend with. And it could become a more important and more dangerous part, if the Chinese authorities decide for their own reasons that they will try to push the RMB's value back down again, after letting it rise for years. (For details, here.)

But at the moment the exchange rate is not the most important element of US-China relations, even the financial aspect of those relations. And it most certainly is not the only element in US-China relations, which is the impression the Chinese readership and leadership could get from recent Obama Administration signals. This would be as if the only thing Obama had said about Mexico so far was, "Stop flooding us with illegal immigrants." It may seem unsporting, but it's worth pointing out that the reason Geithner's tax problems are being overlooked is that his expertise is thought to be so necessary in dealing with China among others.

So where does this lead? Mainly to a hope that the Administration will start recognizing all the different elements of this important relationship -- good and bad, financial and otherwise, business and academic, scientific and purely personal, ones where the US needs to adjust its policy (after the Bush years) and ones where China does too.

There are lots and lots of areas where Chinese government policies deserve criticism. (For a recent example, ridiculous censorship policies.) But there are many other where it deserves support -- and most of all there are areas where the US simply needs China's cooperation for its own and the world's survival. So: less gum-flapping about "manipulation," and more serious recognition of the thousand other issues where, no joke, the two countries really do need each other. Save the harsh criticism for the questions that really deserve it.

Interesting extra twist on "censoring" Obama in China

As noted several times earlier (here and here), the CCTV authorities in charge of the live broadcast of Barack Obama's inaugural address apparently got flustered when they started hearing him talk about "dissent" and "confronting communism," and cut away from live coverage.

Now (thanks to several friends who have pointed this out), the official People's Daily has carried a Chinese translation of the speech that includes even the "sensitive" parts. Chinese version here.

I am not capable of judging the refinement of this translation. But I can see that it carries the two passages that caused problems for the broadcasters. Details after the jump.

Moral? First, as mentioned so many times before here and in the Atlantic, the uncertainty about what will be allowed or forbidden is itself an important control tool. If you never know when you might be crossing the line, you end up being extra-careful (which may have been the mentality of the people inside CCTV). Second, and also familiar to readers here, this is a reminder that China itself and even the ruling Chinese Communist Party is full of countless contradictory views, factional and ideological differences, individuals who see things their own way, etc.

And, finally, something about the difficulties this kind of ruling system has in making decisions quickly, before checking what the "proper" response is supposed to be. I won't bother with a long list of similar examples, but I'm struck that while Chinese business and many Chinese individuals are amazing fast-reacting and adaptable, the political structure is much less so.

Explication de texte below.
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Might as well make this an all-Geithner day

Usually journalists are in the position of being told that they have lamentably "oversimplified" or "hyped" their discussion of topics -- and told this by the real policy experts in academia or think tanks or specialized government agencies. Often enough, the accusation is true. Part of journalism's basic function is to explain, in simpler (and often necessarily less nuanced) terms, what the real experts are trying to say. If they do that well enough, they can reach people who would never sit still for the full, rococo, expert version and give them a better understanding of important ideas and problems than they would otherwise have.

But now we've got a situation where a journalist (moi-meme) is listening to a renowned expert and wondering, Can he possibly believe that things are as simple and bald as what he's just said?

The expert in question is our old friend Timothy Geithner, who when he was not being grilled about his tax problems today was saying (in his written answer to questions) that China is "manipulating" its currency. Oh my. Where do we start with this.

- That the Chinese government manages the value of the RMB against the US dollar and other currencies is not an accusation but an observation of universally-accepted plain fact. Until about three years ago, the RMB's value was flat-out pegged against that of the dollar, at a rate of just over 8:1. Was that "manipulation"? Yes, in the same sense that the yen was for years "manipulated" at a steady rate against the dollar, or perhaps in the sense that the US "manipulates" its national borders by controlling them. Here's the basic pattern of the dollar's value against the RMB from mid-2003 to mid 2008 (via Yahoo Finance), with the big change to a "managed float" happening in the middle of 2005. It went from more than 8 RMB to a dollar, to less than 7, during this period:

(Update note: There is no Y-axis scale on the left side of this chart, because I couldn't find a chart with a scale at the time. But as noted above, the chart shows a decline from about 8.2 RMB/$1 to about 6.8/1 -- so the dollar lost about 1/5th of its value against the RMB, not 90% as this truncated chart might suggest. Still, the main point is the change from the absolute peg of the pre-2005 years to the managed float since then.)

So, to the completely obvious extent that the Chinese government was manipulating (ie, fixing) the value of the RMB before 2005, they're manipulating it less now. Obviously they are preventing it from rising as fast as it would in an entirely uncontrolled market exchange, but again that's hardly secret from anyone on earth.

- Is the Chinese suppression of the RMB's value a fundamental reason Americans don't sell more goods there? It makes a difference but -- as I argued at very great length in this article two years ago, it's nothing close to being the main reason. Wage rates, Chinese infrastructure, US fiscal patterns, and a lot of other factors play a huge part. Details too exhaustive to go into here.

- Is the Chinese determination to control the RMB's value within a set band an important factor in current world financial patterns? In this article I argued that it was, but in the non-obvious way of directing the fruits of China's labor disproportionately into foreign investment rather than higher living standings for its own people. That is, "manipulating" the currency has been an important part of subsidizing US living standards in recent years. Details in the piece.

- Could a Chinese government attempt to protect its own recently-ravaged manufacturing work force by pushing the RMB's value back down -- after many years of letting it drift higher -- cause problems for the rest of the world? Yes indeed -- as explained in this very valuable post by the Beijing-based financial authority Michael Pettis. So they should be strongly discouraged from doing so.

- Do we think that the Chinese authorities who have put some $2 trillion into US assets will respond blandly to being labeled manipulators -- or to a policy that would effectively devalue the investments they've already made here? If Americans think that, they're naive -- in my view, based on this interview with a man at the center of Chinese decision making.

I lack the energy to go any further down this list, and this is enough to make the point. These are just a tiny few of the factors that go into any US government consideration of how the RMB/dollar relationship affects the economies of both countries. And to boil it down to the bald assertion that "China is manipulating its currency" ignores, vulgarizes, and misconstrues a lot more than it clarifies.

Oh well. My personal pledge: as many cheery things as possible to say about our future Treasury Secretary from this point on. We all have a stake in his success -- including the "manipulative" Chinese!

Last words on the Geithner SE Tax issue

After the jump, samples from a surprisingly strong stream of reader mail about a comment earlier today on whether our Treasury Secretary-designate made an innocent error, or did something more, in neglecting to pay part of his federal taxes for several years. Summary of my view: I think he should be confirmed, since dealing with the economic crisis matters more than anything else. But that doesn't mean that I believe his tax story.

Mail has run approximately 3-to-1 in favor of this interpretation -- which is to say, against Geithner's explanation. (With most but not all people saying they think he should still take office, and soon.) Paragon of fairness that I am, I include samples from three posts on "I'm not buying it" side and two on the "innocent oversight" side. After that, let's move on to coping with the emergency.
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Continue reading "Last words on the Geithner SE Tax issue" »

A word about Timothy Geithner

I recognize that dealing with the world financial/economic crisis is the most important next thing the Obama Administration has to do. Without detailed knowledge, I am willing to accept that Geithner is a crucially well-prepared member of the team that will help in this effort -- and that getting the right team is a first-order national priority. I don't know him, but friends who do know him like and respect him. Fine.

I also think that it is sensible to move past the Zoe Baird / Kimba Woods era (look it up) when any tax irregularity of any sort could be taken as an absolute bar, in itself, to service in any position subject to confirmation. Some standard of reasonable judgment has to be applied here.

So by the standard of what the country needs right now, I would probably vote for Geithner's confirmation as Treasury Secretary, if I were in a position to do so.

But I do not believe, and will never believe, that his failure to pay his own self-employment tax while at the IMF was an "oversight" or a "mistake." I have many many friends who have worked for this and similar organizations. I have myself over the years juggled the complexities of what is self-employment income and what is W-2 income and how to handle income from non-US sources -- and I have a lot less financial acumen than any Treasury Secretary aspirant should and must have. (Though I also use Turbo Tax!) Not a single person I have known from the IMF or similar bodies, not a one, believes that Geithner could have "overlooked" his need to pay US self-employment tax. When I have received similar income from international sources, the need was obvious even to me -- and I wasn't receiving and signing all the forms to the same effect Geithner would have gotten from the IMF. I could go on with details but I'll just say: if this were a situation more average Americans had experienced personally, he would not dare make his "mistake" excuse because everyone would say, "Are you kidding me???"

So we're back to a judgment call. I accept the argument that he is a necessary part of what has to be the best possible team America can assemble at this moment. But I don't like the fact that he is obviously dissembling on this point, and that he obviously was not playing it straight over a long period of years.

Marker for later comment: Chinese censorship of Obama's speech

During 48+ hours on US soil during this visit, I've had several flashes of the realization that I have been more affected by the preceding 2.5 years in China than I thought. For instance: if I were still sitting watching CCTV in Beijing, I would have taken it for granted if certain live dispatches from the US or Europe suddenly disappeared from the screen, because an interviewee had unexpectedly made a "sensitive" point.

But from within the US on this trip, I realize that it's actually quite incredible that Chinese broadcast authorities-- representing the world's most populous nation, the one whose relations with the U.S. will make a huge difference to the entire world's future, the country that presented itself to all other countries as a full, major, mature power with its Olympic games -- would pull the plug on live coverage of Barack Obama's inaugural address just because Obama began talking about the virtues of dissent.

Obama apparently also erred by mentioning America's struggle against communism -- sensitive because, even though much of China seems more openly market-minded than the United States, it is still officially ruled by the Chinese Communist Party.

Account from Danwei.org here. My first reaction is, Jeeesh!! Can a big country really act in this tinhorn way? And my second reaction is the depressing realization that I would barely have noticed if I were still on scene.

More on the nuances of this shortly. In the meantime, this is connected to the phenomenon I discussed here. Also, read the comments on that Danwei site. (Plus this.) They bring it all back!

Not from the Atlantic, but worth reading all the same!

1) A very interesting collection of very short essays from the Washington Monthly, in which 19 writers and academics answer the question: what book do you really hope our new reader-president will take time to read? Disclosures: I am a proud alumnus of the Washington Monthly, and I have a brief item on the list. But I was surprised and impressed by the recommendations in general and in turn recommend that you read it.

2) An extensive "Oral History of the Bush White House," by Cullen Murphy and Todd Purdum, in the current issue of Vanity Fair. This is a timeline recreation of the last eight years -- not all the big moments and turning points, but a lot of them -- in the words of original participants. I read this two days ago on the flight from Beijing to Washington (don't worry, it only took 20 or 30 minutes of the 13 hours of reading time, with plenty left over to watch the Chinese pirate video of Pineapple Express) and was both riveted and newly shocked about our recent history. Several of my Atlantic Voices colleagues have already reported similar reactions.

If I had been shown this project with no names attached, I would have guessed immediately that Cullen Murphy was involved. During his twenty years as the Atlantic's managing editor, I worked with Cullen on dozens of articles. He had many inspired, favorite approaches, of which one of the most favorite was the careful recreation of "familiar" events, which usually led to surprising results. Two of my Iraq-policy articles -- Blind Into Baghdad, and Bush's Lost Year -- grew out of exactly this approach. This latest package shows the power of this simple idea.

When you're done with those two, return to our great Jan-Feb issue.

One other thing you missed by not being there yesterday:

First-hand knowledge that widespread newspaper claims (like this one) that crowd-control and logistics for the enormous inaugural event went "smoothly" or "well" were incomplete, to say the least.

As I mentioned yesterday, people headed for the vast "no ticket" zones on much of the Mall got in with relatively little trouble (and no security checks, which made sense given how far away they/we were from the Capitol itself). But getting out was a different matter -- and could have been quite dangerous were it not for the good humor and cooperation of nearly everyone in the crowd. People in my zone pushed by the thousands toward what they thought would be exits but in fact were absolute dead-ends, closed off by newly-erected cyclone fences guarded by police and National Guardsmen on the other side.

Probably those temporary fences would have given way before the people piling into them were literally crushed, but it was a bad situation for which there was absolutely no -- zero -- supervision or guidance from police, park attendants, volunteers, etc. (Comments from police boiled down to "Do not enter! Do not cross this line!" etc. In fairness, they probably had no idea of what was happening and where we were supposed to go.)

I was taller than most people in the crowd so could generally see around me rather than having that terrifying feeling of blind drift. But I did have the unhappy feeling of being carried along by simple crowd movement in directions I didn't intend. As reported yesterday, people like the one below, who climbed into trees or atop Porta-Potties to see where the exits were, eased what could have been a nasty situation. Bear in mind that there were limitless thousands of people behind me as I took this shot, all pushing forward toward what no one realized was a fenced-off barrier. The guy on the Porta-Potty is discovering that there's no way out in the direction people are heading. He and others turned and started shouting that to people -- and the tide moved, eventually, off to the left.

http://i142.photobucket.com/albums/r96/jfallows/IMG_6148.jpg

People who did have tickets often ran into the opposite problem -- simply never getting anywhere near the action. Michael Tomasky's comment in the Guardian sums up the situation very well. (He also did a great instant-analysis of the speech.)

So: it was a great and historic occasion; a very strong speech, as I'll eventually elaborate; a reverent and caring and fellow-citizens feeling among the throngs; and all of that. But flawlessly planned and handled it was not. The Obama campaign appears to have been a marvel of foresight and organization. So, on the whole, has the transition been. Let's hope that the Obama Administration is more like its campaign than like its inaugural day.

Very late night inauguration points

Still early for the First Family, who have several more inaugural balls to go, but late for a mere citizen after his quota of evening events -- capped by the pleasure of seeing a Metro car jammed at 1:00am with people in every station of life and mode of dress, from tuxedos and evening gowns to greasy night-shift overalls.

1) More on the speech itself tomorrow, but here is a point to bear in mind. Several of Barack Obama's big rhetorical performances have been recognized as hits from the minute he stepped off the stage. His 2004 Democratic convention speech is one example. His Philadelphia speech on race, which quelled the Rev. Wright controversy last spring, is another.

In many other cases, especially late in the campaign, the red-hots among his supporters thought he had "underperformed" or been "just so-so" immediately after an event, only to see the days-later and weeks-later reaction to the performance turn much more positive. The clearest example was his first debate with John McCain, where supporters thought he had missed chances to go in for the kill -- but over time it was clear that he had established his steady, gravitas-worthy persona.

I think his inaugural speech will be in this second category. Now that I have a chance to look at some blog-world commentary, I see that some is underwhelmed, as after the first debate. I think that the speech was in fact very well-pitched to this moment in history and the messages Obama wants and needs to send. That is, both artful and useful. More detail tomorrow.

2) As I may have mentioned from time to time, I view the Reagan-onward tic of closing all presidential speeches with "God bless America" as just a tic. That is, a substitute for doing what FDR, TR, Abraham Lincoln, Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, and all pre-Reagan American presidents had done: namely, find a "real" way to end a speech. Here is interesting proof that it is a tic. The prepared version of Obama's inaugural address - here, among other sources -- does not include those words at the end. But the transcription of what he actually said -- here -- confirms what we all heard, that he tacked them on at the end.

When he had time to think about the shape of the speech, Obama, as a writer and thinker, realized that he had a strong close without those cliched words. In real time, he threw them in, as any of us (including me) might throw in "you know" or "I mean" when answering a question. Let me say that again: when he had time to think about it, Obama the literary craftsman thought better of it.

3) In keeping with earlier testimony to the basic good will of the crowd -- as I witnessed it as one of the 2 million or so (my crowd here) -- the "boos" when George Bush or Dick Cheney appeared on the screen seemed almost perfunctory. People felt they had to do it, but their hearts weren't in it. To me, the most spontaneous-sounding and surprising cheers were for (a) Colin Powell, and (b) Jimmy Carter, and the most spontaneous surplus-hostility boos were for ... Joe Lieberman. Just reporting on my part of the crowd.

4) I gather that my experience with inauguration security -- easy to get in, tough to get out -- was not the same for people who, unlike me, had real tickets to the inauguration and weren't just standing among the hordes on the mall. (Eg here and here.) More on this later too.

Reading assignment before Obama's speech

Full text of Martin Luther King's "I have a dream" speech from 1963 (here and many other places). Everyone knows how that speech ends. Not that many have ever read, or now remember, the first two thirds of the speech that built up to the famous close. Here's a guess that it might be an important complement to hearing Barack Obama's inaugural address three hours from now. And even if not, it's too impressive a piece of thought and rhetoric not to revisit every so often.

More after the event, plus compare-and-contrast reports on this past 24 hours in DC (after the PEK-IAD longhaul) versus other inaugural ceremonies I've seen here over the years -- just about all of them, by the way, in colder weather than today's.

Keep hope alive

Good news travels fast around the world. A few minutes ago a woman watching US TV called my sister-in-law in Rome, who quickly emailed the information to me here on the wee-hours watch in Beijing:

My friend Helen just called to tell me that "God Bless America" has been substituted out! She was watching Obama starting on his train ride to DC, and he gave a nice inspired speech. And at the end, using the same [august] intonation, he said instead, " I love you guys" !!

Conceivably over time we would grow tired of this phrase, too -- though you can imagine Obama delivering it with a twinkle in his eye, rather than with the super-earnestness that typically encases the cliched "God Bless America" rhetorical close. But any presidential speech that ends with any words other than GBA is a step toward mental and linguistic freedom. Perhaps Obama really is aiming for greatness.

In conclusion I have only this to say: I love you guys too.

Most impressive nomination yet, IMHO

In several previous dispatches (here, here, and here) I emphasized what good news it was that Barack Obama had chosen Steven Chu as his new Secretary of Energy. I based this on Chu's own reputation and record:

Because he is an eminent physicist, Chu's very presence in the job would hearten proponents of more emphasis on pure science. Because he has devoted his attention in recent years to the technological advances and the international cooperation necessary to deal with climate issues, he would both symbolize the important of this challenge and potentially lead the Administration's efforts. There were many other virtues of this choice.

I said all this without having any idea of the kind of team that would surround Chu at DoE. But if this report, on Al Kamen's Washington Post site is correct, he has made an inspired choice for his Deputy Secretary and closest working associate. This is Susan F. Tierney, of Boston.

She has been a leader in energy, environmental, and climate-change issues for decades, in academia, government, and business. Her bipartisan bona fides are such that she was appointed a commissioner of the Massachusetts Department of Public Utilities by Governor Mike Dukakis, and then Secretary of Environmental Affairs by Governor William Weld. She was an assistant secretary at DoE during Bill Clinton's first term, and since then has worked as a consultant at the Analysis Group and served on countless national and international commissions dealing with energy, environmental, and climate issues. She is an honest a person as you will find in public life, and is a skilled manager. Assuming Kamen's report is correct, this is another superb choice.

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I am not an expert on energy or climate issues, but about Tierney's character and temperament I feel very confident in my assessments. I have known her as long as any person on earth has, since I was just under two years old when she arrived in the household as my little sister. Her mother and father would be extremely proud; her sister and two brothers, plus her husband and two sons and many others, are proud enough to make up. Really, her only failing is that she has never, once, given me any inside info of any sort on any topic that she has been working on. Sisters!

Last words on pitying Bush

(At least before his really-final farewell speech in a few hours, which I won't see because I'll be at a factory in the boondocks of Beijing.)

About GW Bush's last press conference as president (previously here, here, and here), a reader says:

President Bush's goodbye conference ... made me think of how I identify his waning days. The official White House website has a video of President Bush giving a tour of the Oval Office. Throughout the video, President Bush makes mistakes and starts over, expecting the mistakes to be edited out of the video. But they weren't. The video makes me feel pity for him, much the same way people have felt pity for him after his press conference: not for what he did say, but for what he was trying to say. At the end of the day, he's still just a man as much as you and I are, and for the first time in the eight years of his presidency, I saw him as human.

The 8-minute video is here, shot in 2006. More background here. Judge for yourself.

Bush, by Eugene O'Neill

While watching our 43rd president's final press conference two days ago, I noted in real time, here and here, that I felt the first flickers of empathy for a man whose effect on America and the world I have relentlessly deplored. (Try this, for a sample, a story the Atlantic had the guts to put on its cover just before the 2004 election that I'm still proud of.)

I got a fair amount of "how dare you feel sorry for this guy?" response -- but also one note that conveyed a reaction I wish I had captured at the time. In fairness, this came in two days after the press conference, and I was writing in the wee hours in Beijing with a Yanjing beer in hand while Bush was on the air. Still, I thought it impressive. It is from David Carr, not the NYT writer of that name, from North Carolina:

I too thought the final Bush press conference was a remarkable performance; if an actor were to memorize and replicate it, it would seem like something out of Eugene O'Neill, staged in a barroom, and we might feel pity. The inept man without words realizes that he cannot say what he must say: an admission of failures across the board, a realization that his pipe dreams were deadly, an understanding that his nation and the world now hold him in low esteem and wish him gone. And not to be able to say these things is to remain their captive forever. But there is no expiation for Mr. Bush, and that is the objective tragedy. How can he live without awareness? He also must see how much Barack Obama is his opposite, how much he is admired and welcomed to the office, so unlike the stolen Bush arrival in 2000. It's a remarkable achievement for Mr. Bush: every moment of his presidency is touched with a shame that cannot be bathed away. I think he will disappear; I cannot see any post-presidential role he could fulfill without the full recollection of that shame.

Refining the point about GW Bush's final press conference

I mentioned a few minutes ago, while GW Bush's final press conference was underway, that the president seemed unusually "self-aware."

That's not quite right. On matters of policy, he revealed himself to be as isolated and out of touch as his critics (including me) would have assumed all along. Two illustrations: he hotly challenged the premise of one question that his policies had made America less prestigious and respected around the world, saying that was just the view of some "elites" and other pantywaists in part of Europe. Go to China! he said. They still respect us there. Yes, sort of. As I've written many times in the Atlantic, China does not seem in any deep way "anti-American," and they generally think US-China relations are good. But no thinking person has the slightest doubt that the Iraq, Guantanamo, and Abu Ghraib policies, in particular, have hurt America's image badly here as they have in most other places. To say what the President did indicates how carefully he has been protected from any unfiltered feedback from the real world.

So too with his wistful, regretful-sounding comments about the "harsh tone" in Washington DC. He was completely believable in saying that he hoped things would go better for Barack Obama. But does he recall the name Karl Rove? Does he remember which Vice President told a U.S. Senator from the other party to fuck off, on the Senate floor? There is no point refighting these wars. I'm simply saying: the very sincerity of the President's comments indicated how isolated he has been, or what he has chosen to forget.

Nonetheless: I think even people who oppose the Bush Administrations policies would find it somewhat harder to dislike him viscerally after this performance -- rather than getting angrier the more they see him, as with most of his appearances over these last eight years. The self-awareness I mentioned was purely on a personal level. Even though he defended his tax cuts and his other policies and even the execution of the Katrina response, everything in his posture, expression, and body language -- even his emphasis on the word defeat in talking about the 2008 results -- indicated that he has taken in the fact that things have not gone well.

It is true, he can hardly express himself in anything resembling sentences. But he displayed none of the little moue of pride when he got out a tricky name or a big word, a tic very familiar from his past speeches. To me, he helped rather than hurt himself with this last performance. And to recognize what an achievement this is: think how it would be to hear a valedictory hour's worth of Dick Cheney.

I didn't think I could empathize for even a second with GW Bush...

...but for at least the first fifteen minutes of his final press conference still underway, I did. I think it is because the internalized sense of defeat and unease was so patent that any human being would have at least an initial impulse of feeling sorry for him. More, he seemed to have dropped any of the masks he normally wears, and seemed to be expressing his real thoughts, emotions, and feelings, at least for a while. And his comments about Obama had not a trace of snark or edge.

The switch was thrown when someone asked him about tax cuts and he gave a little standard speech. But this is the first time I can remember when I could imagine why people who knew him earlier in his career considered him "likable," or at least appealingly self-aware.

More later.

Presidential rhetoric evolves toward its perfect form

From today's NYT, an account of a dry run of next week's swearing-in ceremonies. An African-American soldier built roughly like Barack Obama, Army Staff Sgt. Derrick Brooks, stood in as the "Faux-Bama" as the participants walked through the planned movements on the stage. These included his inaugural address:

Mr. Faux-Bama's entire inaugural speech consisted of six words: "My fellow Americans," he said. "God bless America."

Noooooooohhhh!

By chance, I was standing in the crowd (teleported from Beijing) watching the run through, as a C-SPAN crowd shot reveals:

Thanks to many readers who wrote in to make sure I knew about the ceremony. Later, a compare-and-contrast exercise between those two modern imperatives of Presidential comportment: the "God Bless America" sign-off and the American-flag pin in the lapel. The similarities are obvious, but there are some interesting differences.

Sorry to hear Obama talking this way

This may be a small thing, but:

I hate, hate, hate the lazy modern presidential habit of ending all major addresses with the phrase "And God bless the United States of America" or simply "God bless America."

I love the Irving Berlin song. I agree wholeheartedly with the sentiment. But a little chunk is hacked away from the national brain each time a president gets out of a speech not with a thought or original phrase but with this mindless pablum. This has become the political equivalent of "Have a nice day!"

Isn't this how presidents have always talked? God, no. You didn't get it from George Washington. You didn't get it from Abraham Lincoln, either in the hands-down winner as Greatest Inaugural Address Ever, his second or in that work of political haiku, Gettysburg Address. You didn't hear it from FDR.

Many of these titans spoke of God -- but when they did so, it was with some actual thought-content. For instance, from the close of Lincoln's Second Inaugural:

Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said "the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether."
With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in...

As I know first-hand, you didn't hear this from probably the most sincerely religious president of recent times, Jimmy Carter. To choose an example of a speech I was not involved in, his "crisis of confidence" speech in the summer of 1979 -- often called the "malaise" speech, though he did not use that word -- touched on spiritual issues but ended this way:

I will do my best, but I will not do it alone. Let your voice be heard. Whenever you have a chance, say something good about our country. With God's help and for the sake of our Nation, it is time for us to join hands in America. Let us commit ourselves together to a rebirth of the American spirit. Working together with our common faith we cannot fail.

But then Ronald Reagan began using the phrase to mean "The speech is over now," and ever since then politicians have seemed afraid not to tack it on, perhaps out of fear that we'll have the aural equivalent of phantom-limb pain if we don't hear the familiar words.

Apparently Obama began sliding down this slope early last year, but in most of the speeches I heard he ended with a composed thought, not a cliche. (I must not have listened all the way to the end of his otherwise-perfect election night speech in Grant Park.) But just now, groan, he ended his economic-stimulus speech, at George Mason University, in this same lame way. Can there be hope for the inaugural?

You are better than this, Mr. President-Elect. Your speechwriter, though more wizened than some who have held the job, presumably still has the vim to come up with a good closing line -- even one involving God. For example, this from John Kennedy's inaugural, six months before Obama was born:

With a good conscience our only sure reward, with history the final judge of our deeds, let us go forth to lead the land we love, asking His blessing and His help, but knowing that here on earth God's work must truly be our own.

All I have left to say is... nah, to hell with further thought. God Bless America

Geoghegan-for-Congress update and linkfest

(Earlier post and background here)

Official campaign website here.

Donation site here.

Via ChicagoReader.com, a rundown on the many other candidates, their positions, and their prospects, here.

"Robert Bartley is spinning in his grave" encomium by Thomas Frank on today's WSJ's op-ed page here.

Update: Kathy Geier, another Chicago friend of Geoghegan's has an eloquent profile/endorsement here.

Tom Geoghegan for Congress

Two years ago, I said I was making an exception to the "no active involvement in politics" stance I had maintained through my previous decades of journalistic life. (After leaving a one-time stint in politics in the Jimmy Carter years.) That exception was to support my friend Jim Webb's then-improbable run for the U.S. Senate from Virginia.

Here is exception number two: Tom Geoghegan for Congress. He will be running in the special election for the seat Rahm Emanuel is vacating to become White House chief of staff. This seat, representing the 5th District in Illinois, has a colorful lineage, to put it mildly. Emanuel's predecessor was Gov-for-the-moment Rod Blagojevich. Earlier, for 36 years, the 5th was Dan Rostenkowski's base, before his unfortunate indictment and imprisonment on fraud charges. Tom would continue the tradition of having a difficult-to-spell last name. It's Irish and is pronounced Gay-gan.

(Photo from LaborBeat.org)

The basic background on Tom Geoghegan is here, written by his Chicago friend Rick Perlstein. Having been a friend of Geoghegan's for most of my life, I couldn't be more enthusiastic about his deciding to run.

To the extent Tom is known publicly, it's mainly because of his books, like Which Side Are You On?, The Secret Lives of Citizens, and In Ame rica's Courts. These really are masterful and original pieces of thinking and writing, which most writers would be content with as their entire contribution to the human endeavor during the period Tom has turned them out. Which Side, which was published in 1991, begins this way:

'Organized labor.' Say those words, and your heart sinks. I am a labor lawyer, and my heart sinks. Dumb, stupid organized labor: this is my cause.

The remarkable thing is that in Geoghegan's case writing has been a sideline. Day by day for several decades he has been a lawyer in a small Chicago law firm representing steel workers, truckers, nurses, and other employees whose travails are the reality covered by abstractions like "the polarization of America" and "the disappearing middle class." Geoghegan's skills as a writer and an intellectual are assets but in themselves might not recommend him for a Congressional job. His consistent and canny record of organizing, representing, and defending people who are the natural Democratic (and American) base is the relevant point.

The people of Chicago would have to look elsewhere for Blago-style ethics entertainment. Tom Geoghegan is honest and almost ascetic. Because it's an important part of his makeup, I mention too that he is a serious, Jesuit-trained Catholic.

Not living in the 5th district, I can't vote for Tom Geoghegan. But I can give him money, and just did, via his online donation site here. The campaign's mail address is Geoghegan for Congress; PO Box 1145 Chicago IL 60690. Email is GeogheganForCongress @ gmail.com

The race will be wide open, and I have no idea now what Tom's chances might be. It's a winner-take-all, no-runoff contest. I do know that the Congress would be better if Tom Geoghegan were part of it. Check out his record and see what you think.

NOTE: Several typos now cleaned up in what was originally a very late-night post -- including, unfortunately, a mistyped email address for writing to the Geoghegan campaign. The name is hard to spell, but not THAT hard.

Maybe Fox News has come to Indonesia?

On New Year's Day I mentioned an Indonesian military policeman's heartening response when he heard that my wife and I were Americans -- not Australians, as he had assumed. I also mentioned the traces of the top-to-bottom corruption of Indonesia in the old Suharto era that can be seen even in its spiffy new airports these days.

From reader Aaron Connelly, of Georgetown U., this amplification and reality check.

It seems the government must have upped the departure tax since I left in late November, when it was a mere 5,000 rupiah. [For me, it was 150,000.] I suspect this is related to the 20% decline in the value of rupiah vis-a-vis the dollar since October. If it is, this might be a land speed record for an Indonesian government policy change.

I also wanted to spoil your excitement, just slightly, with regard to the Indonesian airport official's enthusiasm for the President-elect. It is likely that this gentleman was either "orang sekular," ["secular person'] or a Muslim. While I was in Jakarta and Yogyakarta for the three months leading up to our elections, opinions on Barack Obama were very neatly divided along sectarian lines: Muslims and secular Indonesians [the great majority] were generally enthusiastic; Christians were uniformly pessimistic or wary of Obama.

When asked why, Christian Indonesians would tell me that they believed Obama was a Muslim, or that they were suspicious because their Muslim friends or coworkers were "too excited" about Obama. I was always surprised to turn on TVRI [the national network] week to week and hear another "investigative report" on Obama's Muslim school days. Unlike in the American press, in the Indonesian newsmedia the "Obama was a secret Muslim" accusations were never off-limits, though there they were treated as a much more cheerful sort of intrigue than they were by the Jerome Corsis back in the States. Muslim Indonesians were fascinated by the possibility, even if they ultimately doubted the substance of the argument.

The effect of this sort of coverage, however, in the context of Indonesia's sometimes tense sectarian politics, was to turn off Indonesian Christians to the President-elect. Asking natives of North Sulawesi and Flores about American politics in Jakarta, I learned to settle in for a long diatribe against Obama, our "Muslim Senator," and for a very strangely impassioned, wholly superficial defense of the virtues of John McCain. It was amusing at first, frustrating and tiresome by the end of my time there-- because it says nothing positive about the direction of sectarian politics in Indonesia.

In a followup note, Connelly said he wanted to make clear that when referring to Indonesian Christians he was talking about that country's counterpart to America's "low information voters" -- people who followed US politics hazily if at all. He did not mean the very sophisticated cadre of Christians in think tanks, academia, etc.

In any case it makes you wonder whether the anti-Obama Indonesians found this information on their own, or whether instead Roger Ailes has quietly reached a new target audience.

A new era begins....

11 am Indonesia time, January 1, 2009. Present our boarding passes to uniformed military police supervising the entrance to an international airport in Indonesia, for first of several connecting flights back to Beijing. For reasons that will be evident after the next posting, I'm not naming the airport.

"Where you from? Australians?" one of the policemen asks. It is the most likely guess for people who look like us in this part of the world. Amerika Syarikat, I reply - "the United States." We used to live in Malaysia, and after our struggles with Mandarin the Malaysian/Indonesian language feels practically like our native tongue.

The officer pulls himself up to attention and with a huge smile gives us a snappy military salute. "America - very good!" he said. He lowers the salute and says "Barack Obama!!" with a big thumbs up.

It's been a while...

(Yes, yes, Obama is a particular favorite in Indonesia because his childhood years in Jakarta make him seem a local boy made good. Still, this is not the spontaneous reaction to the name "America" that traveling Yanks have gotten used to in recent years.)

Pensee dept: followup on the "no buffer, no resiliency" economy

Yesterday I mentioned a summary of the latest John Boyd conference, which included the argument that today's lean, hyper-efficient, "just in time" economy was magnifying the effects of today's economic collapse. Problems in one sector instantly become problems in another, since so many businesses were fine-tuned to await the next order, the next payment, the next shipment from someone else.

Via reader Evan Oxhorn, I learn that the novelist David Brin has recently expanded on just this theme. Anyone interested in the first dispatch will find it worth reading Brin's thoughts, here. As a preview:

I refer to a brittle weakness in our economy, courtesy of the same smartaleck caste of MBAs who brought us derivatives and hyper-leveraged finance. A frailty that could, potentially, turn some short-term crisis into full-scale disaster -- and all because of a good theory that's been taken way too far.

For decades, we've been told -- by the same fellows who brought us "efficient finance" -- that manufacturing and commerce should be fine-tuned to squeeze every penny of profit, by trimming away all "fat." ... Under this principle, any reserves that are kept on-premises will only encourage sloppy management and incur unnecessary storage costs -- a calculation that has long been exacerbated by shortsighted tax policies that punish warehousing and inventory-keeping.

This approach, called "Just-In-Time," is based upon ... a wholly unjustified wager that the economy and its supporting systems will always remain stable and never experience disruption.

The whole question of what today's economic seize-up does to comfortable, accepted economic creeds -- from management theory, as above; to the pluses and minuses of full globalization; to the role of regulators; to theories of trade -- will be with us for many years. I do not remember a time when so many ideas seemed to be pressed so hard by fast-breaking events. Probably the last time it happened quite this way was in the 1930s.

I am enough of an optimist to think that the process of working out new ideas won't be as protracted as that last time, and that it need not end in world war. My cheering thought for the day.

Poll results are: NYTimes.com is being blocked throughout China (updated)

There seems to be no question: the New York Times web site is being firewalled right now all across China.

Exactly one person wrote me, from Shunde in Guangdong province, to say that he had no problem getting to www.nytimes.com and following links from the main page.

A second person wrote, from Beijing, to say that his connection was also working - and then wrote back a few minutes later to say, sorry, he forget he had the VPN turned on. Without the VPN, the site was blocked.

All the other replies (of slightly over 100) reported either that the home page wouldn't load at all, or that it loaded but that all of the links were blocked. As explained earlier, both of these are typical of the way the Great Firewall operates.

I got "blocked-connection" reports from people in the far west, in Urumqi; in the south, from Zhuhai and Shenzhen and Dongguan and Guangzhou; from the north and northeast, in Shenyang and Dalian and Changchun; and from all the other big cities (Beijing, Shanghai, Tianjin, Wuhan, Chengdu, Xian, Qingdao, Nanjing, Changsha, Hangzhou, Suzhou) and a bunch of smaller ones like Baoding and Ya'an.

Hypotheses:

Is the site blocked because of this big story today by Jim Yardley, about the economic perils China faces after 30 years of growth? Maybe .... but I have heard far worse prospects routinely discussed here at conferences, on Chinese TV shows, and by Chinese government officials in recent weeks. So that doesn't seem to make sense.
Is it blocked because of this story, by Edward Wong, reporting on the death sentences issued for two Uighurs convicted of killing 17 people in an attack on a police/military station in the far nothwestern town of Kashgar just before the Olympics? This could well be the problem. The threat of separatism in the mainly-Muslim northwestern Xinjiang region is an extremely sensitive topic in China. As Wong points out, his story carries several details of the action that differ from official Chinese government accounts.
Or is it blocked because of this unbelievably fatuous passage in yesterday's column by David Brooks: "Chinese people work hard because they grew up in a culture built around rice farming. Tending a rice paddy required working up to 3,000 hours a year, and it left a cultural legacy that prizes industriousness." Yes, culture matters; and yes, the structure of Chinese education, family patterns, and still-dominant agricultural life makes a difference in how people behave (not to mention the legacy of the Cultural Revolution, the years under Mao, the one-child policy, and so on). But to write something like that with a straight face suggests that one has never seen actual Chinese people at work (or ostentatiously not working) or thought about how many factors account for the wild variations in work ethic, purposefulness, scholastic aptitude, basic honesty, devotion to duty, etc among people who all supposedly share the rice paddy legacy. I would give some credit to the Chinese firewall minders if exasperation with this sort of talk were the reason for the shutdown. In fairness to Brooks, in the column he might have just been paraphrasing an argument by Malcolm Gladwell.
Or is it being blocked for some other reason?

I don't know. But this is a more heavy-handed step than I remember seeing in the past two and a half years.

Anyone who really wants to, can get around this barrier. Via proxy server or VPN; by going to the International Herald Tribune's site, which carries many of the same stories but is not blocked; through other news aggregators; by just waiting for the policy to change. But something is going on. (And, as also explained in the earlier Great Firewall article, the goal of interfering with the internet is not to make the barrier air-tight. It's simply to make finding unauthorized information enough of a nuisance that most Chinese people won't bother.)

I'm left with one other mystery: why my own connection in Beijing has been working just fine, even when I don't use the VPN. Hmmmm.
UPDATE: Mystery solved. As of midnight Friday China time, now I can't reach NYTimes.com without a VPN either. The home page loads but all the links time out. I am one with the masses!

Thanks to all who answered.

Another very impressive Obama pick

No, not Pastor Rick Warren; I'm with the multitude thinking this is one of Obama's rare clumsy steps.

Instead: John Holdren, who according to AAAS's Science Insider site will become the president's main science advisor, as head of the Office of Science and Technology Policy.

Unlike, say, the inspired choice of Eric Shinseki to head the Department of Veterans Affairs, there is no fancy multi-level symbolism in the selection of Holdren. His nomination is more comparable to that of Steven Chu at the Department of Energy: he is a figure of unquestioned eminence in his field, with significant experience not just in hard science but also in the application of science to public policy.

And like Chu, much of his recent professional attention has been directed at energy and climate questions. Holdren has also worked extensively on nuclear nonproliferation, and seven years ago won the $250,000 Heinz award largely for that effort. Noting the wide range of disciplines and pursuits that have engaged him (he has also directed Woods Hole Research Center), Holdren said in his Heinz acceptance speech:

One might wonder from the array of interests of mine that have just been mentioned, whether I simply have a short attention span, but I do like to think that there is some method in this madness. I think that many, if not most, of the great problems of the human predicament - population, resources, environment, prosperity, security - are not separate problems, but are intimately interconnected. And I believe if they're not all addressed and solved together, they won't be solved at all.

After the jump, some quotes from Holdren on energy and climate change from an Atlantic article by Mark Sagoff back in 1997.

Here's the only reason I can think of to worry about this pick: Knowing how bureaucratic politics works, but not myself knowing much about Holdren or Chu personally, I can imagine their shared roles as scientists-in-chief working very well, if they're a natural team, or not so well, if they are in the slightest degree turf-conscious or jealous. We'll see.
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I am shocked to see a factual error in today's Washington Post!

Though to be fair, it is an error that probably only one person in the entire world is likely to have noticed. (Rather, that person's wife, from the computer in the other room just now.)* It comes in this story about Obama's chief speechwriter Jon Favreau, and it is hidden somewhere in this paragraph:

During the campaign, the buzz-cut 27-year-old at the corner table helped write and edit some of the most memorable speeches of any recent presidential candidate. When Obama moves to the White House next month, Favreau will join his staff as the youngest person ever to be selected as chief speechwriter. He helps shape almost every word Obama says, yet the two men have formed a concert so harmonized that Favreau's own voice disappears.

Easily fixed! If the story were merely tweaked to say "the youngest person ever to be selected as a chief speechwriter for someone renowned for giving great speeches," fact-checkers would be content. Not that I'm counting, but Favreau is roughly two months more grizzled than the person who did that job under Jimmy Carter was at the time. Personally, I think the extra maturity will be a plus.
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* I was emboldened to post this by an email from someone else who noticed. The message's subject line was, "Have you given up the mantle?" No indeed! Until some 26-year old shows up, or someone younger than my 27-years-and-4+-months at the start of the Jimmy Carter era, I'm clinging to the title!

While disagreeing with G.W. Bush on almost every item of policy...

... I thought he showed considerable physical agility and temperamental aplomb while the shoes were coming at him yesterday. This is the kind of moment when people simply react, rather than having time to think or control their behavior. He might have been recorded forever curling up in a ball or hiding behind Maliki. He didn't. It's something.

(Offset by the total humiliation of the episode, the reasons for Iraqi grievance, the unseemliness of physical assaults, etc etc.)

My last words on the Steven Chu front

Previous words on Chu here and here.

1) A great 57-minute TV interview with Chu, conducted in 2004 by Harry Kreisler of UC Berkeley as part of his generally-great "Conversations with History" series.

In my experience over decades of conducting interviews, the people who are truly the greatest masters of their own rarefied fields often have a gift for explaining complex problems to outsiders in vivid, non-condescending ways. Think years ago of Richard Feynman, of Caltech, plunging a rubbery "O-ring" into a glass of ice water to demonstrate how it might have become rigid and failed during the launch of the doomed space shuttle Challenger. Think of Bill Clinton illustrating any point with one of his home town analogies.

Chu comes across very much that way in this session. Modest, funny, and willing to explain the work of of a scientist in terms and images most people can understand. A scientific explainer-in-chief? It would be nice to have such a person once more on the public scene.

2) Let's analogize one more time to another great Obama cabinet pick, Eric Shinseki as Secretary of Veterans Affairs. "Identity politics" was not the most important element in Shinseki's selection. "Policy politics" was what mattered most: Shinseki's having been right about Iraq. But there was an additional grace note, noted in particular by many Japanese-Americans, that a military leader named Shinseki was given this honor on the anniversary of Pearl Harbor Day.

So too with Chu. Identity politics is a second- or third-order aspect of this nomination. Mainly his choice says something about the role of real science in public life, about America's commitment to retain its leadership as a research power, and about the redoubling of scientific/technical efforts to deal with energy and climate problems. But in karmic terms it doesn't hurt that Chu, who was born in St. Louis of Chinese parents, will head the very department that, under then-secretary Bill Richardson, was involved in the Wen Ho Lee imbroglio in the late 1990s. (In brief: Lee, who was born in Taiwan and who worked at Los Alamos, was accused of massive theft of U.S. nuclear secrets on China's behalf. The NY Times loudly trumpeted this story. Eventually nearly all the charges were dropped, and the presiding federal judge apologized to Lee for government excesses.) Again, this is not a reason to have chosen him, but it's worth noticing.

More on the case for Steven Chu at energy

When Eric Shinseki was nominated as the new Secretary of Veterans Affairs, I argued that this was an inspired pick, on its own merits and for its sublime symbolism. (The man whom the Bush administration had ridiculed for being right about Iraq now restored, with honor, to cope with, among other things, the consequences of the Bush policy).

When Steven Chu was nominated as the new Secretary of Energy, I said that this was an even better choice, in both symbolism (no-kidding scientist to head what has become the government's leading science agency) and substance (his post-Nobel prize work has largely involved pushing for fundamental research on energy). Fortunately my friend Steve Corneliussen has done the work of spelling out some of the support for that assertion. Corneliussen, who is a writer rather than a scientist, has worked with the American Institute of Physics and other professional organizations. After the jump, parts of his email reporting reaction among the scientists he has been talking with.
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An even more impressive pick than Shinseki (updated)

Steven Chu, as the new Secretary of Energy.

More to say about the whys and wherefores later. For the moment: the ability of an incoming administration to select such people, and -- even trickier -- convince them it will be worth their while to move to Washington and wrestle with the most complicated politico / technical / diplomatic problems, given all the hassles and built-in frustrations and lack of privacy in governmental life, is both surprising and encouraging. Very good news.

Update: to flesh out a point made while I was rushing out the door earlier: obviously a Cabinet position is "a [bleeping] valuable thing," as the still-governor of Illinois might put it, and many people scheme and scramble for the offer. Also, I am not in the camp of people who feel very sorry for those who accept the "burden" of public service in high appointed office. It's a great challenge, a great opportunity, and a great thrill.

My point was that there are real trade-offs in public life: making all of your finances public, for example, or realizing that while you're in office everything you do or say is on the record and potentially embarrassing. Precisely the kind of person who is not actively scheming for the job, who already has a very good position (as Chu does), and who may give some weight to these personal tradeoffs, is the kind of person an administration may not manage to attract. When that person brings unusual eminence ot the job, as Chu does, then it's worth noting this achievement.

Annals of agitprop

Today's category: phrases that have outlived their time.
Today's winner: "hurting the feelings of the Chinese people."

The front page of the Dec 8 edition of the (state-run, English-language, indispensable) China Daily had this item on Chinese-EU tensions, especially Chinese-French, because of Nicolas Sarkozy's recent decision to meet with the Dalai Lama:

http://i142.photobucket.com/albums/r96/jfallows/IMG_5874A.jpg

Fair enough: it's an area of genuine contention. But then we have the quote from China's deputy foreign minister laying out the specifics of France's offense:

http://i142.photobucket.com/albums/r96/jfallows/IMG_5874B.jpg

Ah, it "hurt the feelings of the Chinese people." This is the phrase I wait for in every Chinese government statement on matters of international disagreement.

Yes, there is a real concept buried beneath this boilerplate slogan. The concept might be expressed other places as "an insult to the dignity of our nation," or "disrespect for our people and their principles" or something. But it is generally used quite sparingly in other nations' pronunciamentos, because in the end listeners don't find it that persuasive.

Yes, one nation should not gratuitously offend any others -- a point my recent interviewee, the Chinese mega-banker Gao Xiqing, makes very effectively.* And, yes, in many personal dealings, saying "you hurt my feelings!" may be an important part of reaching a resolution. But you don't find Talleyrand, Metternich, George C. Marshall, and even Sun Tzu recommending this complaint as a big part of international strategy. And remember, this is not some sand-bagging trick of mistranslation. These are the English words the Chinese government itself selects.

As I argued last month in the Atlantic, China's official spokesmen make the country seem far less appealing than it really is, because their sloganized responses display so little grasp of how outsiders act, think, and respond. Important evidence that my contention is out of date will be the disappearance of "hurt our feelings" from future official statements.
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* The way Gao put it, talking about what he learned from hardships working on a railroad gang during the Cultural Revolution:

I learned that, from a social point of view, no matter how lowly statured a person you are talking to, as a person, they are the same human being as you are. You have to respect them. You have to apologize if you inadvertently hurt them. And often you have to go out of your way to be nice to them, because they will not like you simply because of the difference in social structure.

Zut alors! C'est une blague!

Many people in the blog-o-world, including several of my Atlantic colleagues, have noted the, umm, similarity between Barack Obama's most famous poster and the recent "SarkObama" campaign by Nicolas Sarkozy in France.

Loyal Atlantic reader Edward Goldstick sent me a note suggesting that I read what the posters actually say. As soon as you do so, it becomes evident that they're not pro-Sarkozy posters at all! They're an elegant little bit of jiujitsu to both mock and pressure Sarkozy by appearing to commit him to positions more progressive/leftist than he in fact holds.

"Produce clean and sustainable energy for Europe," the one on the upper left says. "Yes we can!" "Make polluters pay," says the next one down. "Yes we can!"

Others are in the same vein. And, as it turns out from a story in Le Monde (in French, here) published five days ago, this is part of a guerrilla campaign by Greenpeace to push its climate-change programs during EU talks on the summit in Poznan, Poland, this month.

Ah, the subtle French. But at least we know that Sarkozy is not as derivative as he seemed -- and that it takes much longer for material to make its way from the mainstream French press into English than the other way around.

Vox militis* on Shinseki

I am grateful for a flood of mail from active-duty and retired military people, and their families, expressing admiration and excitement about Barack Obama's choice of Eric Shinseki as his Secretary of Veterans Affairs. (On the merits and symbolism of the choice, here; on the politics, here.)

Below, from reader Larry Senechal of Seattle, a representative note of appreciation. After the jump, from a currently-serving Army officer, a representative complaint -- which may surprise many people outside the military.

First, the appreciation:

I'm an old former Marine, infantry type.

General Shinseki is old school General Officer corps, unlike many Generals and senior officers who go through the revolving door to become Defense contractor lobbyists, media analysts and Defense contractor employees. It seems when this happens "Duty, Honor, Country" are secondary to making money. In my opinion after 37 years of service to this country, this doesn't seem appropriate payback to a country who gave them so much and continues to do so with their OWN legacy costs to the American taxpayer. The stories of just how corrosive this has been on the military services and our Defense policy abound and have yet to be dealt with effectively.

My father was a retired senior Army Officer as was my father-in-law and both highly decorated infantry commanders. My dad often lamented the growing "revolving" door and the poor leadership of many in the General Corps and the dileterious effect it was having on the Army. When the military first started using bonuses during the Clinton years to keep captains and majors in the service, he observed that the retention problem said less about the attractiveness of the private sector and more about the quality of senior leadership who seemed more committed to their careers and less to the men they commanded. I didn't fully appreciate and understand his remark at the time. I now do after the last eight years.

Imagine my surprise when I read an article at MSNBC quoting Shinseki stating,....""You must love those you lead before you can be an effective leader," he said. "You can certainly command without that sense of commitment, but you cannot lead without it. And without leadership, command is a hollow experience, a vacuum often filled with mistrust and arrogance."

Next, the complaint.
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Bonus points for elegance in the Shinseki pick (updated)

Barack Obama is all about bipartisanship, conciliation, binding up wounds, and so forth. Great! If only more presidents saw things that way.

But in his ~~(reported)~~ choice of Eric Shinseki as Secretary of Veterans Affairs, there is also an extremely refined aspect of sticking in the shiv.

Whenever he talks about this selection, Obama (plus his lieutenants) can describe it completely, sufficiently, and strictly in the most bipartisan high-road terms. They have selected a wounded combat veteran; a proven military leader and manager; a model of personal dignity and nonpartisan probity: an unimpeachable choice. Symbolic elements? If people want them, they can work with Shinseki's status as (to my recollection at the moment) the first Asian-American in a military-related cabinet position, not to mention a Japanese-American honored for lifelong military service on Pearl Harbor Day.

As for the other symbolic element -- that Obama is elevating the man who was right, when Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Cheney, et al were so catastrophically wrong -- that is something that neither Obama nor anyone around him need say out loud, ever. The nomination is like a hyper-precision missile, or what is known in politics as a "dog whistle." The people for whom this is a complete slap in the face don't need to be told that. They know -- and know that others know it too. So do the people for whom it is vindication. And all without Obama descending for one second from his bring-us-together higher plane.

The artistry here is remarkable. Along with the inspired nature of this choice.

UPDATE: I see from the MTP webcast just now available (below) that Tom Brokaw directly asked Obama about Shinseki's disagreement with Rumsfeld, and Obama said of his new nominee, "he was right." Consistent with the argument above, that's as much as he ever needs to say.

Karmic justice: Gen. Eric Shinseki

One of the truly nauseating moments in the run-up to the Iraq war was the humiliating public rebuke that Paul Wolfowitz, then Donald Rumsfeld's #2 at the Pentagon, delivered to Eric Shinseki, then a four-star general serving as Army chief of staff.

Shinseki, a wounded combat veteran of Vietnam, was by career and reputation a cautious, methodical person. Those who criticized his performance as Army chief mainly complained that he was too traditional and non-innovative in his approach. Thus, he was constantly at odds with Rumsfeld's crew, who viewed him as a passive-aggressive, fuddy-duddy obstacle to doing things in their new lean-and-mean way.

The showdown came just before the war began. Shinseki, who had direct experience with land warfare (in Vietnam) and post-combat occupation (in the Balkans), was urging that the U.S. go in with a force large enough to ensure that it could maintain order and genuinely control Iraq's sizable territory and potentially fractious society after it ousted Saddam. Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz hated this whole idea.

After the jump, a passage from my Atlantic article and subsequent book, both called Blind into Baghdad, describing what happened next. I think this also explains why it is so satisfying and right that Barack Obama will (reportedly) name Shinseki to his Cabinet as the Secretary of Veterans Affairs.

(Shinseki after his retirement, at a museum in his honor in Hawaii. Photo from a profile of him at this official Army web site.)

Here's one other point that is not as widely known as Rumfeld's and Wolfowitz's bullying of Shinseki: Despite being unfairly treated, despite being 100% vindicated by subsequent events, Shinseki kept his grievances entirely to himself. Although my book contains accounts of Shinseki's inside arguents with Rumsfeld et al, and his discussions with his own staff, zero of that information came from Shinseki.

I made a complete nuisance of myself requesting an interview, or a phone conversation, or an email exchange, or even some "you're getting warmer" guidance from him. Nothing doing, in any way. (I did track him down at an ROTC commissioning ceremony where he was speaking; he greeted me politely, but that was it.) I am confident in the accounts I presented, which came from a variety of first-hand participants; but Shinseki, who could have had a lucrative career on the talk show/lecture circuit giving "I told you so" presentations, has not indulged that taste at all.

So congratulations to Eric Shinseki, who has stoically served his country for decades and was wounded in that cause, in several senses, on this new honor -- and on the responsibility to help others who have served. Congratulations, too, that a Japanese-American patriot from Hawaii should receive this news on December 7. And not just congratulations but wonderment at the Obama team's deftness in the symbolism and substance of this choice.

Details of Shinseki-Wolfowitz showdown after the jump.
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A little Thanksgiving holiday reading

When you're in a tryptophan - induced daze and looking for stimulants of the most wholesome and enjoyable sort, the place to start is of course with the latest great issue of The Atlantic.

After that, two suggestions:

1) The Global Trends 2025 report from the National Intelligence Council. (Intro page here; 8MB pdf file of whole report for free download here.) Projections of how the world will look 17 years into the future are by their nature preposterous. One conducted in 1991, looking toward the present day, would have found it hard to imagine the defeat of George H. W. Bush (then on the top of the world politically) and the subsequent Clinton and Bush II and possible Clinton II eras that made possible; the tech induced stock boom, and tech bust, and second boom, and second bust; the current situation of both China and Russia, then mere glimmers of what they are today; the resonance of the names bin Laden and Guantanamo. And... a whole lot more.

Still, for what it is, this forecast is sensible and provocative. It has gotten a lot of ink as a forecast of US "decline," but it is more interesting and less blatant than that. I disagree with a lot of it but am glad to have had the occasion to think through its arguments. And 17 years from now, we can see how it stands up.

2) I can't say this often enough: seriously, anybody who presumes to hold an opinion on America's defense needs, defense spending, and long term military strategy really has to read "America's Defense Meltdown," available in free 2MB pdf download here. (More words than the NCI report above; fewer graphics.)

This report has facts; it has figures; it has history; it has to-do lists for the next administration; it has things you might expect and things you don't.

From what you might expect, an introductory passage about what's happened to our military establishment:

Our equipment is the most sophisticated and effective in the world. We easily whipped one of the largest armies in the Middle East, not once but twice, and we have now clearly mastered a once difficult and ugly situation in Iraq. Success in Afghanistan will not be far away, once we devote the proper resources there. Those who take comfort in the last three sentences are the people who need to read and consider the contents of this book the most. Reflect on the following:
• America's defense budget is now larger in inflation adjusted dollars than at any point since the end of World War II, and yet our Army has fewer combat brigades than at any point in that period, our Navy has fewer combat ships and the Air Force has fewer combat aircraft. Our major equipment inventories for these major forces are older on average than at any point since 1946; in some cases they are at all-time historical highs in average age. [etc etc]

For a sample of something you might not expect, the following, from probably the most right-wing of all the authors in the book -- a man whose cubicle wall, in the Senate office building where he worked, was adorned with a poster of Mussolini when I met him in the early 1980s. He is discussing the overall balance between the US Navy and the Russian and Chinese fleets -- especially the looming Chinese "menace" that drives the need for new US ships:

Overwhelming any comparison of fleets is the fact that war with either Russia or China would represent a catastrophic failure of American strategy. Such wars would be disastrous for all parties, regardless of their outcomes. In a world where the most important strategic reality is a non-Marxist "withering away of the state," the United States needs both Russia and China to be strong, successful states. They need the United States to be the same. Defeat of any of the three global powers by another would likely yield a new, vast, stateless region, which is to say a great victory for the forces of the Fourth Generation. No American armed service should be designed for wars our most vital interest dictates we not fight.

Read these between football games over the weekend. You won't be sorry. And consider sending copies of #2, especially, to the Obama household for Christmas.

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Hero of Journalism Award

I will present this coveted prize to the next reporter / pundit / columnist who gets through a discussion of the pros and cons of Hillary Clinton as Sec of State without using the now-unbearably hackneyed term "team of rivals."

Nothing against Doris Kearns Goodwin, who in prehistoric times was my professor in a college course on the American presidency. And nothing against her application of the concept to the composition of Lincoln's wartime cabinet and the political challenge of holding Union factions together before and during war. (For somebody who does challenge that application, go here.)

But this is not the Civil War, Obama is not Lincoln -- and even if he were and all circumstances were identical in every way, out of simple self-respect you'd think people would get embarrassed about using the catch phrase they'd heard a million times for the million-and-first. To me, listening to this unvaried refrain is like hearing "bitchin' !" among my fellow teenagers in the late 1960s or "groovy! " after that. And I'm in China!

We do already have words for the underlying concept, and many other examples in history than Lincoln's bringing Seward et al into his administration. You could call it an "inclusive" approach. Or "big tent" politics. Or "bipartisanship," if the rivals in question are from the other party. Or "coalition-building." Or "compromise." Or a "unity cabinet." If you really want a hoary adage, you have two familiar ones to chose from: something about bygones being bygones, or about keeping your friends close, and your enemies... America needs a lot of things, but not additional cliches to stunt political thought before it has a chance of taking place. (This reminds me of the tech cliche "mashup," to describe what really is an "overlay" or a "combination" or "fusion.")

As I write, the Sunday talk shows have not yet begun in America. My guess is that no one who appears on them will still be eligible for my award at the end of the day. But I am an optimist and hope to be proven wrong!

The Asian angle on the Geithner nomination

In an email from Bill Bikales, the senior economist for China/Mongolia with the UN Development program, based in Beijing:

Two nice things about this pick - I should say first that I do not know him personally.

First, his Asia background. Geithner's father, Peter Geithner, was a development specialist who opened the Ford Foundation's China office - the first foreign NGO here, under a special agreement that continues to this day. That was just before Tiananmen Square, and the father was part of the Foundation's difficult but, ultimately, undoubtedly correct decision to remain engaged. Tim apparently also studied Chinese, was posted in Tokyo for Treasury, and focused on Asia studies as undergraduate and graduate student. This is all great background for Treasury's international dealings in the coming years.

Second, he was head of the IMF's Policy and Development Review Department (PDR) for two years. PDR are the people there who provide the intellectual framework for, and monitor and sign off on the work that the country missions do. Some of the best people I ever dealt with at the Fund. I like this because I've thought more than once in recent years that what the US needs to do is take a step back and look at itself just as the IMF looked at, say, Argentina, during those years, and develop a tough IMF program; get your fiscal act in order, get serious about risks in the financial sector, establish external sustainability. Basic flow of funds accounting techniques, the core IMF methodology, would be extremely helpful. Obviously nobody will impose anything on the Congress a la IMF conditionality - but US macroeconomic policy has been seriously off track for 8 years, and a strong IMF style program is precisely what is needed. I will take pleasure these coming months in speculating about what must be going through Geithner's mind. It won't only be bail-outs and stimulus packages - the short-term fixes -- I am quite sure.

Why didn't I know this before? (Math dept: Benford's law)

One reason math is so satisfying is that it allows you to see order in what is otherwise the randomness of life. For instance, the famous Fibonacci sequence, which shows up in countless natural patterns like this:

Math is also satisfying when it helps you understand what parts of life truly are random or "chaotic," rather than adhering to patterns you haven't yet figured out. The most obvious example is the minute-by-minute movement of weather systems. The world's vast weather-forecasting computers can assess the layers and eddies of heat and moisture in the air and tell you where "convective activity" -- thunderstorms -- is more and less likely to occur. (An example from NOAA here. I spent hours looking at such stuff in my pre-China piloting days.) But a day before landfall, they can't really be sure whether a hurricane will hit New Orleans or someplace in the next state.

So I was grateful to discover, via Michael Ham's Later On blog, another mathematical tool with surprising usefulness in daily life -- and one that, to my chagrin, I had never heard of before. It is called Benford's law, and it has to do with the distribution of numbers we use to count many naturally-occurring phenomena.

Continue reading "Why didn't I know this before? (Math dept: Benford's law)" »

Academic's request for Internet/politics poll participants

I've received a request from Barbara Kaye at the University of Tennessee - Knoxville for participants in an online survey of how the Internet affects political activities and views. Like any online survey, this one is by definition non-random. But I believe it is legit, and is a continuation of surveys done after the past three presidential elections. Here is an abstract of a paper based on a previous survey.

She says she is "specifically looking for liberal/progressive respondents." If you're interested, the survey site is here. Survey is open until November 26.

A fascinating document about the internet and "public opinion" in China

Outsiders who follow Chinese events have known for years about Roland Soong's EastSouthWestNorth site*, which draws from Chinese-language and English-language sources for reports and analysis.

I've just seen this post, from a few days ago, which strikes me as something that people who don't normally follow Chinese events should know about. It's the text of a speech Soong prepared for last weekend's annual Chinese Bloggers conference (but did not deliver, for family-emergency reasons). In it, he discusses the differences the Internet has, and has not, made in the Chinese government's ability to control information and maintain power within China.

This is a subject easily misunderstood in the United States, where people tend to assume either that the cleansing power of the Internet will ultimately make government efforts at info-control pointless, or, on the contrary, that the bottling-up effectiveness of the Great Firewall will protect the government from the power of an informed citizenry. (My own Atlantic article on the subject here.)

Soong elegantly illustrates why such categorical assumptions miss the complexity of what's going on. The whole speech is worth reading, but the passage below is especially important for Americans. First he describes the way info would flow when bloggers and net connections first became significant in China, around 2003:

1. A bad thing happens somewhere in China (such as police brutality, government malfeasance, a forced eviction, a coal mine disaster, etc).

2. The local government suppresses all information.

3. All media reports are censored. (But if it wasn't reported in traditional media, there are other alternatives now on the Internet.)

4. The victims begin a petitioning process up the hierarchy in order to seek justice. The road is long and hard, and nothing ever comes out of it.

5. The Internet forums/blogs rushed to report on the case. But within approximately 48 hours, all traces of information are erased by order of the authorities. (Thus, one of the excitements of my blogging activity was to find and translate that information within this time window.)

6. Western media catch wind of the incident, and follow through. This creates an international scandal.

7. Senior Chinese officials take notice, and corrective actions are taken.

Then he describes what has changed in the past five years, in this 2008 update:

Continue reading "A fascinating document about the internet and "public opinion" in China" »

And a classier speech by Obama

The whole Grant Park pageant recalled Little Rock in 1992, when the crowd was swaying to "Don't Stop Thinking about Tomorrow" and the young-looking Clintons were in their full glory.

This was far more sober, as Obama has been throughout; and paradoxically both calming and inspiring. It's easier to sound inclusive when you have won than when you have lost, but Obama -- that is, President-Elect Obama -- did far more than the minimum with the "I will be your president, too" passage.

Performance expectations have been higher and higher for Barack Obama's set-piece high-stakes speeches, and so far he has not fallen short even once. This one was delivered with unusual poetic skill. This can't go on forever, but the string continued in a heartening way this evening.

An extremely classy speech by John McCain

Would things have been different if we had seen more of this man during the campaign? We will never know. But all congratulations and honor to him for comporting himself this way at this time.

A wonderful moment for America, which McCain did absolutely nothing to diminish. (The booing yahoos in his crowd are a different matter.) Going out on a high note.

Another brilliant GOP campaign move? (Updated)

I am away from a computer most of the time now*. But there's a TV droning in the background, which for the last two hours has been on MSNBC.

During that period, I have seen at least three, maybe four, times a voice-of-doom style TV spot about Barack Obama and Rev. Wright. It opens with a dark-visaged grainy picture of Obama, cuts to Wright's famous "not God bless America, but God damn America!" speech (with the "damn" bleeped out), and ends with bold words on the screen saying something like: Barack Obama. RADICAL. RISKY. General aura of the ad Willie Horton-ish. A group called GOPTrust.org takes the responsibility.

Brilliant move! On the last day of the campaign, using money for a saturation ad campaign (a) in California, no one's idea of a swing state; (b) on MSNBC, with no one's idea of an "undecided" audience; and (c) on a theme that the candidate himself has theoretically forsworn, therefore probably building up as much extra resentment among the California/MSNBC viewers as it does enthusiasm among the GOP base.

Not for the first time during this campaign, I've wondered whether some of McCain's "brains trust" actually are moles trying to make sure he goes down hard. (Previous occasions for wonder: the "suspend the campaign" gambit, the "angry old man" debate-prep strategy, the Steve Schmidt radio interview, the McCain SNL cameo, and, we've got to say it, the Palin choice.)

As skillful as the Obama team has been in its two-year campaign, McCain and his team have been that incompetent and ineffective. Any Republican candidate this year would have been dealt a bad hand. It is remarkable that McCain has misplayed every single card.

UPDATE: I hear from a reader that the ad is also playing in Austin. This is crazy on two fronts: Texas will go for McCain with or without this ad, and Austin will go for Obama with or without. I guess the money is burning a hole in GOPTrust's pocket.

Update 2: Apparently this is playing all over the place: Connecticut, South Carolina, and even Gotham itself. Shrewd, as part of discount bulk-buy strategy? Deliberate, as a way of limiting down-ticket losses for House races? Or just "maverick"? Maybe some day we'll know.
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* At a health-care facility where I am on family business. Now, signing off again.

Proof that John McCain has reached the "acceptance" stage

His appearance in the opening skit of SNL last night. (Clip from official NBC site here, with intro ad.)

The premise and execution of the skit were very funny. Much funnier, except for the physical-humor thrill of seeing Tina Fey and "the real" Sarah Palin on screen on the same show, than Palin's appearance a few weeks ago. This time, McCain and Fey, in the roles of McCain and Palin, were QVC hosts shilling for fine election-related collectibles, like Joe the Plumber action figures. The setup, which poor McCain himself had to lay out, was that airtime just before Election Day was essential -- but while Obama could pay for a wall-to-wall half-hour special, McCain and Palin couldn't afford anything more than a spot on QVC.

I just watched it again right now, and it's even better than I remember. The only thing we'll miss when this campaign is finished is seeing Fey in her Palin role. "OK, now I'm goin' rogue..." McCain himself was also a charming performer. Not a bit of the crabbed, offended, uncontrollably angry man we saw during the debates. Instead, a little reprise of the "I know this is all bullshit, and I can laugh at myself" McCain as he consistently presented himself in the 1980s and 1990s.

But no candidate who thought he had a prayer of winning would have appeared on this show.

For a candidate coming from behind, every second of the final week of the campaign is like a second in cardiac-surgery operating theater, with absolutely no room for fooling around or wasting time, money, or effort that could be used to sway that last crucial vote. (Think: the last days of Gore-Bush in 2000.)

For a candidate who thinks he's ahead, and might actually become president, inevitably there's a tone of new seriousness right at the end: What we've been working for years is within our grasp, let's not screw this up, and let's be sobered by how different the world is going to look in a few days.

So if McCain really thought he had a chance of catching up, he wouldn't have wasted time on an audience that might repair his reputation among liberals and journalists but does him no good with the crucial swing votes. And if he thought he were secretly ahead, he wouldn't comport himself this way. He would be more like the stiff character we saw in the debates.

Great TV! But also an unmistakable message.

My anecdote about the political ground game

Three days before the election, walking down State Street, the old-fashioned shopping area in my home town of Redlands*, California. This is a city that went for Barry Goldwater when I was a kid and that has been part of a solidly Republican Congressional district for most of the time since then. For the last 30 years it has supported Rep. Jerry Lewis, once the chairman of the House Appropriations Committee and more recently under Federal investigation for doing favors for lobbyists. (His opponent this year is Tim Prince.)

In a State Street storefront that was some kind of variety discounter the last time I saw it, I now see... Obama headquarters! And it is packed. Old people. College students. Everybody on the phones. People walking in and out with material supporting Obama, Biden, and the rest of the Democrats. I cannot emphasize enough how unusual this is. California may be a blue state, but this part of it has not been.

Most of the yard signs around town seem to be McCain-Palin. But in other times, nearly all of the yard signs would have been Republican. A bustling, unembarrassed Democratic headquarters here takes me by surprise.
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* Personal note: I spent practically no time in the United States during 2007 but have traveled repeatedly from Beijing to Redlands this year. This reason, as mentioned earlier, is the declining health of my father, which will keep me from from dealing with email or doing much more on this site for a while.

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!
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* 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.

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!

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.

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.

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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.

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.

Maybe this will help Cullen Murphy's book?

Start of headline on Maureen Dowd's column in the New York Times today: "Are We Rome?"

Cover of my friend Cullen Murphy's* excellent 2007 book:

Column, in mock-Latin, is very funny, in a way that is cumulative rather than easily illustrated in a brief clip. Book is very funny -- and erudite and informative and provocative and surprising. Like the column? Buy the book. Hell, buy it even if you didn't like the column. (I mean, "Infernus**, buy it even...."). It's written in English, after all.
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* Cullen was for 20 years the Atlantic's managing editor.
** This is probably in the wrong Latin case, but I don't care!

On presidential statements in time of crisis

To follow up the item from a few minutes ago:

When a president speaks on live TV in a moment of crisis, he should be prepared to do one or both of the following things:

1) Announce some solution, plan, change, initiative, or other specific effort that will address the source of public concern.

2) Explain the problem, or set a mood for coping with it ("we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds.. we shall never surrender"), in a way that changes the public's outlook from what it was before the speech.

If a president doesn't have the ammo to do either of those things, he should not bother. Thus, unfortunately, President Bush should not have bothered to make his statement this morning, which essentially re-stated the arguments he has presented before that did not suffice to stop the panic. Let's hope for more real action over the weekend.

I wish we emphasized some other measures

I have argued for decades that the press pays too much attention to daily stock market movement. Their immediate fluctuations are of interest mainly to day traders (ah, remember when that was a popular pastime). Their longer term connection to real national wealth, welfare, and happiness is imprecise, to put it mildly. This is especially so in the volatile and panicky mood of the moment.

Obviously my effort to get the daily market reports pushed to the inside pages is a doomed crusade. But in the short run, I wish that, instead of the DJIA / S&P 500 / NASDAQ etc, we had some comparably precise seeming, attention-getting, publicized* measure of credit availability. From all evidence, that is the real emergency driving real destruction of real companies creating real products and about to eliminate real jobs.

While waiting to see what President Bush (ah, remember him!) might have to say on the topic, anecdotage that is getting my attention:

Three weeks ago, I mentioned that DayJet, the pioneering air-taxi company, was shutting down not (it claimed) because of overt business problems but because of the impossibility of getting short-term finance. At the time, the credit squeeze might have seemed an excuse for the inevitable diceyness of the air travel business.

But just in the last few days, I've heard separately from three friends who run objectively "viable" businesses that they are on the verge of closing permanently, or laying off much of their staff, because they can't get short-term working capital. One said he was on the verge of having to close a manufacturing facility in the Midwest that, as he put it, "realistically will never open again." And this is from a group of friends that is heavy on writers, political people, academics, etc rather than a lot of business owners. I have never heard stories like this before. When I was living in northern California during the tech crash early this decade, the story was about the relatively slow deflation of (mostly) unrealistic plans rather than the widespread destruction of enterprises with a future.

My minor point: mainly because they're so precise and fast-moving, financial-market measures crowd out attention from what we really need to worry about, the imminent destruction of businesses and jobs that "should" survive.

My major point: the United States is near a moment of fundamental political choice. To have the discussion distracted by -- well, it would be nice to be even-handed about this, but the truth is that the distraction has been 99% from the McCain side, with the ongoing crap about the Weathermen in the 1960s -- is suicidal. A few weeks ago Senator McCain "suspended" his campaign because of what now seems a mild early phase of the financial crisis. Maybe he and Barack Obama could agree over the weekend to suspend discussion of any topic other than avoiding real economic devastation for the time being, at a minimum until their debate next week on economics.

Now waiting to hear Bush.
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* The LIBOR, the London Interbank Offer Rate, is one well known proxy; my point is that the DJIA gets 100 times the attention but is not 100 times as important right now.

A day of conciliation

Before these items get too far out of date, let me say:

1) I generally am on the opposite side from David Frum on questions of politics and public policy. But I have to admire the sobriety and fairmindedness with which he makes this case about the future of the Republicans.

2) As Thomas Friedman knows, I am more impressed by the many ways in which the world is not at all "flat" than those in which it is. (When I asked him about this on TV two years ago, he quite charmingly explained that "In the columnist game, you don't sell things 51 - 49.") But having complained about the broad brush he used in that case, let me do homage to the very great precision of his column yesterday on patriotism a la Sarah Palin. It is an achievement to bring into exact focus something that other people have been generally talking-around for a while. He did so in that column.

3) I have no past disagreements to mention in the case of a blog called "Delaware Liberal." But I have to admire its author Jason's headline-writing skill. He refers to an article of mine that the Atlantic published as "The $1.4 Trillion Question." His improved headline is: "I, For One, Welcome Our Chinese Banker Overlords."

Your Town Hall #2 debate wrapup in 3 points

1) From a horse-race perspective, John McCain came in behind and losing ground, in the middle of a financial/economic panic that works against him, and therefore needing a big win. This meant either damaging and flummoxing Obama, or so outshining him in audience rapport, mastery of policy, and empathetic connection through the camera, that the debate could be presented as a turning point. None of that happened. (McCain's best performance was at the end, rejecting a "Yes/No" question on whether Russia is an "evil empire.") At this stage in the race, a tie goes to the leader, and this was not even a tie.

2) "That one." Difficult to discuss. Unwise (and unnecessary) for Obama or his campaign ever to mention themselves. But creates an impression that may be impossible to erase.

3) The betting had been, including from me, that this Town Hall format would best suit McCain -- the informality, the opportunity for jokeyness, the track record of handling such questions easily. To my eye, that betting turned out wrong, partly through McCain's doing and partly through Obama's.

On McCain's side -- to my eye -- this meant a range of references that collectively amounted to something like George H.W. Bush's weary glance at his wristwatch during his own Town Hall debate with the vigorous young Bill Clinton 16 years ago. The forced and unsuccessful Bob Hope-style jokes, the repeated reference to the "overhead projector," the prevalent allusions to an era much of the electorate considers past. Tip O'Neill, the early Reagan, the Marine disaster in Lebanon -- important all, but dated-sounding in 2008.

And on Obama's side, getting away with surprising aggression -- being the first on the personal criticism, trying to shake up the format and have direct colloquy with McCain near the end, taunting McCain by talking about the "bomb bomb bomb" song, to my eye seeming physically confident in the way Bill Clinton did in that same 1992 Town Hall. A very different bearing from what we've seen from him in any debates this year. Also, in terms of modern stagecraft: Obama balanced his looks between the audience and the camera, so he seemed to engage both; McCain less natural in doing that. (And Obama said "you," when speaking the audience in nearly every sentence; McCain much less frequently.)

That's all. Up to the electorate at this point, and for me back again to "real" work.

The only thing I will say about debate #2 in real time

Two minutes ago, McCain half-pointing at Obama and calling him, in the third person, that one.

The sense of seeing in real time a gesture that will be regretted for a long time.

One clip worth a thousand words

Andrew Sullivan and others have already mentioned this clip by TPMtv, but here is why I think it is important: It does a lot to explain why many people who felt they "knew" John McCain in his earlier DC life have been slow to face and accept what he has become.

The video alternates clips of the "good" McCain, talking about respect and commitment to high-road politics, with ads and other evidence of the way he is running his campaign.

For another time, discussion of whether the "good" McCain was ever an authentic product. I'll just say, many people including me found it appealing at the time. What is undeniable is the contrast between the way he then seemed and the way he now acts. This is obviously an anti-McCain clip, but I think it's instructive even for his supporters. And, in real time before tonight's debate, it shows the range of personas he might choose to project.

Perhaps a better idea for the 28th amendment?

From a reader, building on on this suggestion:
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Section 1. No person shall be President or Vice President, or a Senator or Representative, whose relative by blood or marriage within the sixth degree of kindred according to the common law has held such office within the preceding one hundred years.

Section 2. No person shall be President or Vice President who has ever been a regularly enrolled student in any college, school or other division of Yale University.

(Sixth degree of kindred is second cousin, great-great-great uncle/aunt, or great-great-great-great grandparent.)

Admittedly this would leave the field open to a Taft in 2012, but democracy always carries risks.

DN (Yale grad)

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"Graphic novel" about the election

Am way behind on "real" writing, so without elaboration: if you want to see some very funny artwork and narrative relevant to the election, check out this site, produced by Derek Chatwood, aka The Searcher on flickr.

This will be funniest to those who enjoyed Tina Fey's latest Sarah Palin SNL riff. ("We'll ask ourselves, what would a Maverick do?..") It will be least funny who found that disrespectful. And it's not a full graphic novel, just one page, but still.

That barely took one minute! Now back to work. (Thanks to Jarrett Wrisley.)

The 28th Amendment to the Constitution (draft form)

"No Person shall be elected President or Vice President without accepting a session of questioning by the press, such session to last no less than one hour and to be open to normally accredited members of the press in the same fashion as at Presidential news conferences. The questioning shall occur and the results shall be made freely available to the public at least one week before an Election is held."

Three weeks to get it enacted.

Our capacity for self-government

From twelve time zones away, it looks as if the United States is in one of those moments where the capacity to get serious and face big problems is sorely tested.

In the short term, a worldwide financial panic and crisis. Just beyond that, the real economic and social problems that come when large numbers of people lose their jobs, their businesses, their investments, their homes, and even larger numbers become fearful about what might happen to them. And then, when we get a minute to think, profound global energy and environmental challenges, security concerns that range from loose nukes to terrorist organizations, plus a couple of ongoing wars and ever-rising medical costs. Just as starters. The United States is still incredibly rich, powerful, and productive. But the current situation is no joke, for America or the world.

In these circumstances, and with a presidential election four weeks away, is it conceivable that candidates will waste time arguing whether one of them has been in the same room with a guy who had been a violent extremist at a time before most of today's U.S. citizens were even born? (William Ayres was a Weatherman in the late 1960s. Today's median-aged American was born around 1972.) Of course, it's not only conceivable: it's the Republican plan for this final push -- "turning the page" on economic concerns and getting to these "character" and "association" questions about Barack Obama.

Grow up. If John McCain has a better set of plans to deal with the immediate crisis, and the medium-term real-economy fallout, and the real global problems of the era -- fine, let him win on those. But it is beneath the dignity he had as a Naval officer to wallow in this mindless BS. I will say nothing about the dignity of a candidate who repeatedly winks at the public, Hooters-waitress style. A great country acts great when it matters. This is a time when it matters -- for politicians in the points they raise, for journalists in the subjects they write about and the questions they ask of candidates. And, yes, for voters.

A comment that dumbfounds me

I know the Washington Post's David Broder slightly, and I've always respected and liked him and enjoyed dealing with him. But what can he have been thinking when writing this, about the VP debate, in his column today?

Those of us who know and admire Joe Biden were happy that a big national audience got to see him at his best -- a sentimental, smart, decent and generous guy.
But he was no better than Palin. She appeared cool as a cucumber, comfortable with her talking points and unrattled by anything that was thrown at her.

I've added the emphasis, my way of conveying a reaction of WHAT???????????!!!!!?????? Such an assessment can be true only if you have decided to assess debate performance on one factor alone, perky self-assurance, and to assign no weight whatsoever to such items as logic, responsiveness to questions, clarity in explaining views, factual knowledge, sentence by sentence coherence, and so on.

As everyone else including me has observed, Palin managed to pass her own particular test in this debate -- which was to improve on her alarmingly ill-informed and paralyzed appearances with Katie Couric. Biden's test was to "do well" in the normal, not the making-special-allowances, sense of that term. Each passed the respective test, but that doesn't mean there was no difference in how they performed.

In his famous 1960s book Paper Lion, George Plimpton described the thrill of running a few plays as quarterback during a Detroit Lions scrimmage. He rightly considered himself a success simply because he didn't get pulverized. That he avoided being killed by the opposing linemen was indeed impressive, but it didn't mean that they were "no better" at what they did.

The title of one of Plimpton's other books, about what happened when he got to pitch to several major league batters, gets across the idea of the different standards being applied to his appearances in pro sports lineups -- and to Palin's performance in the debate. It was called Out of My League.

Your VP debate wrapup in four bullet points

Quick guide:

Ifill, moderator: Terrible. Yes, she was constrained by the agreed debate rules. But she gave not the slightest sign of chafing against them or looking for ways to follow up the many unanswered questions or self-contradictory answers. This was the big news of the evening. Katie Couric, and for that matter Jim Lehrer, have never looked so good.
Palin: "Beat expectations." In every single answer, she was obviously trying to fit the talking points she had learned to the air time she had to fill, knowing she could do so with impunity from the moderator. But she did it with spunk and without any of the poleaxed moments she had displayed in previous questions. The worst holes in her answers - above all, about the Vice President's role, also either mishearing or ignoring the question about her "Achilles heel" - were concealed in ways they haven't been before.
Biden: No mistakes. This is a bigger deal than it seems, since Biden could easily have seemed bullying, condescending, chauvinistic, or whatever. He didn't. And while he was woolly-sounding in the beginning, he was commanding and authoritative - from his side's perspective - on issues of foreign policy and constitutional balance. And to all appearances sincere in his choking-up near the end when talking about having a child in peril. Overall, don't see how he could have balanced all the conflicting pressures on him much better.
The race: No fundamental change. Which is better news for Obama than McCain.

That's all for instant-analysis. On to the next debate.

Update: How was it, considered strictly as a debate? Of course Biden did a far better job -- he answered the questions rather than moving straight to talking points, he drew on a vastly broader range of factual references, he attacked his opponents in ways that were relevant to the subject under discussion. But this is not how the event was being watched or scored.

The main thing I will say about the Veep debate in real time

The loser 38 minutes in is Gwen Ifill, who is doing nothing at all to keep the discussion on track or having the candidates engage.

The circumstances don't allow her to do anything close to what Katie Couric achieved, but she seems not even to be listening to the answers when moving to her next question.

UPDATE: Forty minutes in, Ifill completely missed the followup on the gay marriage / civil rights question. Where is Katie C?

The debate tonight

I have no idea what to expect any more. And, hey, I'm the champion debate watcher in the entire world!

For instance:

"Everyone knows," based on a long string of past episodes, that some unintentional flash of character revelation usually turns out to be the memorable aspect of a presidential debate. Eg: Nixon looking furtive and sweaty in 1960, Ford momentarily seemed befuddled in 1976, Dukakis seeming bloodless in 1988, etc. All these moments "mattered" because they crystallized a feeling that, in retrospect, people knew they'd "always had" about the candidate.

In the days since the first Obama-McCain debate, it's become ever clearer that John McCain's sourness and anger are the traits unintentionally revealed in the debate and now working against him. His shockingly dyspeptic performance two days ago at the Des Moines Register was as remarkable as Bill Clinton's worst moments during the primary season this year. The difference is that in his prime Clinton never allowed the public to see that side of him. Plus, the image Clinton had cemented back then was of someone who was genial and talented though undisciplined. Thanks to McCain's hostile refusal to engage Obama as a human equal face-to-face at the debate, the image he is cementing is that of a seething older man. Like Bob Dole in 1996, with less of a gift for one-liners.

It all fits into a pattern in retrospect -- but I don't know a single "expert" who predicted that avoiding eye contact would be the enduring image of the first debate. By similar reasoning, I'm sure that two or three days from now, we'll all say "Of course!" about some moment in the Biden-Palin debate that none of us can foresee now. That's why we watch!
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"Everyone knows" that Sarah Palin has set expectations so low that she is likely to do "surprisingly" well. Joe Biden will be judged on whether he gets anything wrong; Palin, on whether she gets anything right.

But each time we think we've seen the bottom of her performance, she has gone on to do even worse. Looking back, her reponse to Charlie Gibson about "the Bush doctrine" now seems harmless and comparatively well-informed. Each of her interviews with Katie Couric has revealed greater ignorance, compared with the previous one.

The latest, about the Supreme Court, was unbelievable not for the most highly-publicized reason (inability to name any Court decision other than Roe v Wade) but for her apparent unfamiliarity with the relationship between the U.S. Constitution and individual states' rights. She asserted, with great geniality and calm, that a right could be "inherent" in the Constitution but then be administered at each state's discretion. Kind of like the right to vote regardless of gender being recognized in the 19th Amendment, but then left to each state to enforce or not. People have remarked on her nervousness when grasping for names or references. I actually find her confidence at moments like this more disturbing, since it indicates that she has no idea of what she has revealed.

I still think she'll beat expectations, because her basic political and empathetic skills have to be better than what we've seen so far. Also, the format of the debate allows less room for the immediate follow-up questions that Katie Couric used to such polite but devastating effect. But it's all a guess.
"Everyone knows" that Joe Biden has to be careful tonight -- not make any more of his own frequent gaffes, not do anything that would engender (interesting word in itself) underdog sympathy for Palin. But no one really knows beforehand how much assertiveness by Biden would seem too much, too little, or Just Right. Once it's over, we'll all be able to judge whether he struck the right balance. Ahead of the game, no one can be sure.

Sign of my sincerity in saying this will be deeply interesting: postponing a big trip for 24 hours, because the original schedule would have had me on an airplane when the debate goes live. This is not to be missed.

Who you gonna believe, me or your lying eyes?

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.

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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.

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.
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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.

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.
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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.

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.
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The prescience of Chuck Spinney

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.

Continue reading "The prescience of Chuck Spinney" »

More about "My First Kill"

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.

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.

Two things are 100% certain about this article:

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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.

If campaigns are driving you crazy

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 University~~College~~ [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.
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The Palin interview

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.

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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.

Solving the Huckabee "earn your desk" mystery

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.....
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* 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.

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.

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.

Continue reading "A word more on Palin and the riskiness of mockery" »

Sarah Palin

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.

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.

My prediction about Sarah Palin

Unless you have seen it first first-hand, as part of the press scrum or as a campaign staffer, it is almost impossible to imagine how grueling the process of running for national office is. Everybody gets exhausted. The candidates have to answer questions and offer views roughly 18 hours a day, and any misstatement on any topic can get them in trouble. Why do candidates so often stick to a stump speech that they repeat event after event and day after day? Because they've worked out the exact way to put their positions on endless thorny issues -- Iraq, abortion, the Middle East, you name it -- and they know that creative variation mainly opens new complications.

If someone is campaigning for the presidency or vice presidency, there's an extra twist. That person has to have a line of argument to offer on any conceivable issue. Quick, without pausing in the next ninety seconds, tell me what you think about: the balance of relations between Taiwan and mainland China, and exactly what signals we're sending to Hamas, and what we think about Russia's role in the G-8 and potentially in NATO, and where North Korea stands on its nuclear pledges -- plus Iran while we're at it, plus the EU after the Irish vote, plus cap-and-trade as applied to India and China, and what's the right future for South Ossetia; and let's not even start on domestic issues.

The point about every one of those issues is that there is a certain phrase or formulation that might seem perfectly innocent to a normal person but that can cause a big uproar. Without going into the details, there is all the difference in the world between saying "Taiwan and mainland China" versus "Taiwan and China." The first is policy as normal; the second -- from an important US official -- would light up the hotline between DC and Beijing.

The further point is that not even the most accomplished person knows all this off the top of his or her head. Example: Barack Obama. He is a quick study and has been campaigning very hard for 18 months. But this summer, when he tried to offer a reassuring message about his commitment to Israeli security with his AIPAC speech, he made a rookie error by getting the standard phraseology slightly wrong.

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. This is long before she gets to a debate with Biden; it's what the press is going to start out looking for.

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.

The Palin pick is not like the choice of Dan Quayle

But it is exactly like the nomination of Clarence Thomas to the Supreme Court. That is, an unbelievably obvious but potentially effective attempt to jiu-jitsu the standard identity politics of the moment in a way that flummoxes the Democrats. I would spell out the logic but I think it's obvious and am at a computer for only sixty seconds.

The image to have in mind is not Dan Quayle: a person with quite a bit of grounding in national issues who was added to the ticket in an attempt to jazz it up. Always and only the comparison should be with Clarence Thomas -- with this one interesting difference. Thomas was a shrewd choice not simply because his race made it more complicated for Democrats to oppose him but also because, once confirmed, all evidence suggested to conservatives that he'd be the kind of Justice they were looking for. In Palin's case, this seems to be a choice that looks forward to Election Day, and not one day beyond that.

Convention speeches

Here is what's unusual about the lineup of Democratic convention speeches. Usually each convention features one very strong speech, sometimes two. Barbara Jordan with the keynote at the Democratic convention in 1976. Teddy Kennedy with his memorable (though damaging to Jimmy Carter) "the dream will never die" speech in 1980, bidding farewell to his presidential aspirations. Ronald Reagan speaking to Barry Goldwater's supporters at the Cow Palace in San Francisco in 1964, beginning his own presidential aspirations. Barack Obama serving a similar function in 2004.

I don't know of any parallel to what just happened for the Democrats in Denver, where a series of speakers all performed at the top of their form, notably:

- Hillary Clinton, doing as much for "party unity" as she plausibly could, with her best delivered speech of the whole campaign cycle;

- Bill Clinton, reminding everyone in the party (and much of the country) of why he had won two terms; giving Barack Obama an implicit lesson on how to cast the choice in this election; and erasing in 30 minutes 98% of the problems he had created for himself in his party over the previous year;

- John Kerry, speaking with an intense, tough, terse contempt for Bush administration policies that would have gotten him elected four years ago;

- Al Gore, like Kerry liberated from any previous starchiness by contempt for Bush-Cheney and by knowing he has nothing more to prove;

- Michelle Obama, who in terms of presenting herself and her husband for the election could not have been more cannily effective -- and appealing;

- And of course Barack Obama himself, who showed his own canniness in using his familiar oratorical virtuosity in an unfamiliar way, with a specific, by-name, respectful contempt for the ideas of John McCain. Respect for the serivce of John McCain; contempt for his record.

Joe Biden is an honorary member of the list. His speech was the one slightly-short-of-expectations moment among the big speakers, but its very artlessness probably added to its political effectiveness in the long run.

This has never happened before. Usually there are a number of obvious turkeys among the big-kahuna speakers. This time, the biggest names came in facing very tough tests (how will Bill and Hillary behave? How can Obama re-position himself?) and very high expectations. They aced the tests and beat the expectations in every case.

John McCain's speechwriters have one thing going for them at the moment: a week to look over what the Dems have said and work out a response.

About Biden as speaker (updated x2)

Because of my recent forced immersion into the entirety of the primary debate season, I have this reaction about Joe Biden's presence on the ticket:

As a questioner at Senate hearings, Biden has often been disappointing. He typically uses up too much of the time listening to himself talk, and at the end he's left with barely time enough to pose an easily escapable question like "Isn't that right?" or "I'd like to hear your reaction to that."

But as a debater within his own party and as a rhetorician against the other side, the Biden of the primary campaign was very good. He stuck to the time limits because he had to, and with that discipline he almost always made the points he wanted to, and forcefully.

He also showed a certain bearing in the debates that could come in handy as a running mate for Obama. This was his "let's cut the crap" impatience with what he considered fatuous questions and what he also considered the plain foolishness of Bush Administration policy.

Politicians have to be egomaniacal to be in the business. Anyone who enters the US Senate with a limited appreciation of self soon has it expanded. But while Biden's ineffective hearing "questions" often sounded as if they came from "normal" Senatorial egotism -- I'm on stage now, listen to me -- his debate comments and his partisan anti-Bush arguments reflected a more attractive egotism of knowledge and policy. Let's call it simple confidence, of the sort that Bill Clinton in his prime displayed when dismissing Republican economic arguments. The subliminal message in this pose is: I know what I'm talking about here, I've dealt with this for years, and I have no time for the other side's ignorance.

It may seem a small difference, but it can make Biden more effective as an authoritative and unhesitating mean-cop counterpart to Obama during a campaign.

After the jump, one example, based on one of Biden's answers at a debate last year.

UPDATE: Here is a YouTube clip of Biden giving the answer quoted below, and some more. Fortunately it looks as strong as I remembered! Thanks to Christopher Adams.

Extra update: This clip is really great until about the last 20 seconds, when Biden gives an answer about dealing with China that is as glib as his other answers are well-informed. Unfortunately, all the Democrats took that line in the debates. Topic for another time.
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McCain and Pastor Rick Warren

I didn't see Barack Obama's session with Rick Warren. Hey, I'm in China. Just now I saw that John McCain's session with Warren is being shown.

McCain looks comfortable and is doing well. How do I square saying this with my argument in this recent article that he is a poor public speaker who does not show up well in debates? Easy.

1) Although Obama and McCain appeared back to back, this was in no sense a debate. This was the Larry King show, minus the usual incisive follow-up. In 45 minutes or so I saw, Pastor Rick Warren did not once ask "what do you mean by?" or "but what about?" He served up topics and sat aside as the candidate gave his standard answers, which were subject to no examination. OK: that's one approach.

It is an approach basically similar to the "Town Hall" meeting format, where average citizens present questions -- often more barbed than Warren's -- and then the politician says what he wants, usually without rebuttal or followup. As I pointed out in my article, this is the one form of spoken discourse that McCain enjoys and often does well at:

In these circumstances, McCain's tactics against Obama are obvious. He will ask for as many debates as he can, starting with informal town halls before either he or Obama is officially nominated. The informal setting shows him off to his best advantage, with the affable bantering that has long made him a favorite with the press.

2) The candidates did not have to perform under pressure, which is what makes face-to-face debates different from every other form of political discourse.

I mean, of course there is pressure in any campaign appearance. In this one, Obama faced the pressure of entering presumably hostile territory; McCain, of figuring out the right way to shore up his conservative support. But they did not have to deal directly with each other -- with challenges to their arguments, with taunts and repartee, even with the effects of body language and the knowledge that viewers were sizing them up side-by-side. Again as the article said:

We don't watch debates to learn what someone thinks about Social Security. We watch to see how the contenders look next to their opponents, how they react when challenged, how well or poorly they come up with the words we later see in print.

These are the things we didn't really see --at least about McCain, in the part I watched. Not even how well or poorly he comes up with words, since most of what he said was part of his standard repertoire.

3) If I were in the Obama campaign, I would ban all mention of points #1 and #2 and would instead stress as often as I could: Boy, now that we seem him in action, we have a sense of how good a debater this John McCain really is! Frankly, the best we can hope from the debate match-ups is to get out alive. Everybody knows that our guy is not at his best in debates. And with that charm and wit, there's no way McCain won't win over the crowd. Expectations for him have to be sky-high.....

My own personal Olympic marathon (NPR dept)

Sure, Michael Phelps may swim practically back-to-back Olympic finals just now and win gold medals in both of them. But I'm pulling an all-nighter for the greater good of publicizing our outstanding magazine!

Will be on NPR's Talk of the Nation live around 2:30pm EDT Wednesday, 2:30am Thurs China time, discussing my article on presidential debates in the hot-off-the-presses September issue of the Atlantic. It may not have as many juicy inside memos as does Josh Green's wonderful story on the Clinton campaign's final days. But it has more words! And it has great video-clips of debates and debaters, added by Jennie Rothenberg Gritz and other members of the Atlantic web team. (Plus, it has an obscure reference to Marshal Petain.) We all sacrifice when Going for the Gold.

Update: The audio of the interview is here.

PS: If you're going to see only one of the clips, make sure you see the one from the Obama-v-Keyes Senate race in 2004, which is the third video clip on the web version's first page. It gives a sample of the rhetorical phenomenon that is Alan Keyes, along with how easily Obama was able to handle him back then.
But of course you should see all the clips and read the whole thing....

Non-Olympics, non-China: check out Josh Green's memo haul

In case you have not seen any of the (deserved) zillion other references to this at various Atlantic sites, it is very much worth reading my colleague Joshua Green's new story about what went wrong with Hillary Clinton's campaign, and the trove of memos he collected while reporting the story.

Josh has done an outstanding job on this beat for a long time, starting with his definitive article nearly two years ago about how Hillary Clinton's success in the Senate had prepared her, and perhaps mis-positioned her, for a run for the presidency. Also, as everyone in media-land knows, a year ago GQ commissioned him for a big piece on the Clinton campaign -- which the magazine then killed, by all accounts as part of a deal to get better access to Bill Clinton for a different story. Josh then published this excellent account instead in the Atlantic.

The magnum opus among the memos, based on what I've seen, is this one from Mark Penn, which is sure to be parsed and reflected-upon for months and years.

Related thought that comes to my mind while reading through these documents: I make my living writing things down, but even I have reached the point where I am not willing to put any sentiment whatsoever into reproducible form -- in an email that could be forwarded, in a document that could be cut-and-pasted -- without thinking about how it would look if it got into unintended hands.

That is, the perfection of the technology for spreading and sharing written material has made writing weirdly less useful for conveying private thought. It's risky as a way to share thoughts about running a political campaign; it's reckless as a way to say anything about any other person you might not want him or her to hear. The evolution of technology may return us to the era when the no-tech face-to-face meeting, or the hard-to-copy handwritten note, is the most secure means of communication. And when written statements, even in the "privacy" of email, are necessarily blanded-down by pre-knowledge that they could turn up somewhere unexpected months or years or decades later.

I don't get a chance to say this very often, so.... (compliment to GWBush)

... good speech by America's 43rd president in Thailand, before his arrival just now in China. Official text, opening jocularities and all, is here on WhiteHouse.gov.

What made it good was that he emphasized the big picture -- that China, the U.S., and the world will be much better off if China and the US can cooperate than if they fight -- while also being clear about the values the U.S. should stand up for. After the jump, the passage we hard-boiled journalist types call the "nut graf," summarizing his point.

GW Bush gives a speech that displays some familiarity with specifics and some subtlety about larger themes. Plus a mixture of idealism and practicality! I will stop here and offer no speculation about what might have been in other areas of policy. But I will suggest that members of the IOC might read the speech as a guide on being both cooperative and principled.
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I turn on the TV in America, and in the first ten minutes I see...

Barack Obama in Iraq, meeting with the troops and sinking his long basketball shot. My Lord. Politicians have to be tough, and driven, and indefatigable. They also have to be lucky.

We can think of unlucky examples. Gerald Ford, who out of college was offered pro football contracts, tripping on his way down the steps to Air Force One. The first George Bush, ~~all-American~~* college baseball player, bouncing a ceremonial First Pitch before tens of thousands in the Astrodome (as immortalized in Richard Ben Cramer's What It Takes). Jimmy Carter, lifelong outdoorsman, being caught in a surreal photo that made it look as if he were being attacked by a crazed rabbit.Let's not get into Al Gore's luck in 2000.

I don't know how many times out of ten Obama would make that shot -- but with the (military) cameras running, he made it this time. And it becomes much harder to portray him as an anti-military outsider weirdo after the pictures of the troops clamoring to shake his hand. Politics is only partly rational. The late Mike Deaver, who didn't care how much TV reporters criticized Ronald Reagan as long as they kept broadcasting handsome-looking shots of him, would have appreciated the importance of this footage. If Obama wins, we'll see film of this trip three or four years from now and be amazed that the the worn, haggard looking man in the White House ever looked so carefree and fit. But that's how he does look now, and anyone who has seen campaigns knows how powerful these images are. (And I'm not even talking about the whole godsend for Obama of P.M. Maliki's comments.)

T Boone Pickens bewailing America's dependence on imported oil. I have spent no time on Pickens' plan and don't know whether it makes any sense. For purposes of argument, let's assume it doesn't. The mere fact of a grizzled tough guy saying, "This is an emergency," was startling to see -- and welcome. Much like grizzled tough guy Ross Perot talking about budget-balancing in the 1992 campaign. His own plan had its problems, but he changed the debate.

Health Care Now with its wonderful "Magic Eight Ball" ad mocking the health insurance companies. History would be different if some comparable campaign had been launched in 1993 when Bill and Hillary Clinton were pushing their health care plan.

TV seems more interesting than I remembered, at least in this first blast. I hope it's as interesting in my next three days here.

UPDATE: Kumar, of Harold and Kumar fame, is now on House? WTF??? This is not right.

* Sorry, hyperbole. Thanks to Garrett Epps.

Two sophisticated and well-worth-reading documents on national security

1) From Bruce Schneier, renowned and sensible expert on taking terrorist threats seriously without overreacting and defeating ourselves in the process, on exactly which aspects of the Chinese "hacker" menace are worrisome, and which ones aren't.

Executive summary: these hackers aren't controlled by the Chinese government or military and basically are sharp, cocky young men showing off their technical skills. "The hackers are in this for two reasons: fame and glory, and an attempt to make a living." That is reassuring in some ways and not in others. But the essay should be read in full. (Thanks to Edward Goldstick for tip.)

2) From one Barack Obama, on the mixture of military strength, non-military influence, assertiveness, and restraint that will advance American interests in this era of ongoing terror threats, ongoing Iraq and Afghanistan combat, financial and economic chaos, resource and energy crises, rise of China, unruliness of Russia, and so on. Full text and some video here.

Executive summary: any speech that begins and ends with allusions to George C. Marshall's vision 60 years ago is quoting the right authority but setting a high standard for itself. This is a speech rather than a whole implemented years-long program, in contrast to the great Marshall's achievement. But as a speech it stands up very well and deserves to be read and absorbed in toto rather than relying on news clips.

Probably no one will notice this outside the Blue State liberal elite...

Box on the front page of the (state-controlled and Beijing-based) China Daily, July 15 2008:

To be fair, it was below the fold, and underneath a giant picture of the Miss Universe pageant winner:

http://i142.photobucket.com/albums/r96/jfallows/IMG_4121A.jpg

Click for larger, and to see some other interesting stories.

Personal economics in three easy pictures

Here's how the dollar's value against the Chinese RMB has changed during the two years I have been in China.

Yes, yes, I realize that this is a truncated scale, and that the dollar's value has fallen by around 15% (from 8 RMB/$1 as we arrived to just over 6.8 now) rather than by around 90% as the graph might suggest. Here's the 5-year graph, with similar scale, showing the trend since China switched from a strict peg to a "managed float" three years ago.

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Gore endorses Obama

Three quick points:

1) The sizzle and pomp that build around a presidential candidate, which Gore was plunged back into for this one night, remind us yet again of what Gore lost, or had taken from him, eight years ago. It must be about the billionth reminder for Gore. That he has gone on at all in these circumstances, let alone achieved what he has, surpasses my understanding. Of course he let out a little sign of it with his not-fully-joking "take it from me" line about the importance of elections.

2) A very powerful and heartfelt speech on behalf of Obama. But the contrast between his "hot" approach and Obama's cool was a dramatic demonstration of how much political time has passed in eight years.

3) Gore's well-crafted rhetorical sequence of reasons why "elections matter," after the jump, had one off-key element. Supreme Court appointments -- fine. War and peace? Of course. Wounded veterans, yes -- and Katrina, and impending recession, and the mortgage crisis. The environment? We were waiting for Gore to say it. But lead-tainted toys from China, and pet food?? Those items built toward the nice line about even dogs and cats knowing that elections matter. But they're out of scale with the rest of the list. And willing as I am to blame George Bush for just about anything, it's much more of a stretch to connect a mis-managed Mattel factory in Guangdong Province with White House policies than is the case with the other, graver problems Gore mentioned. So, the dog-and-cat line is nice, but the logic behind it can use some work. Peace, prosperity, accountable government, saving the planet -- those should be enough.

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Jim Webb as "Confederate"

I am on record as liking and admiring Sen. Jim Webb of Virginia, and also hoping that he stays in the Senate rather than joins the Obama ticket as VP.

But I am underwhelmed by the latest "revelation" about him: that he has expressed sympathy and respect for Confederate soldiers, including many of his forbears. (FWIW: Such of my relatives as were then in America lived in Pennsylvania and New Jersey and fought on the Union side. Many were killed.)

First, this is hardly a secret or news. The dignity of ordinary Confederate troops and their battlefield leaders, as opposed to the evil of the southern slaveholding system, was a major theme in Webb's widely-noted and generally-praised book Born Fighting, published four years ago.

In addition to that book, the main documentary proof of Webb's "problem" is a speech at the Confederate war memorial in 1990. That memorial, by the way, is in Arlington National Cemetery -- not in Richmond, Charleston, Natchez, etc. His speech contained a passage addressed to white descendants of the Confederate army that is hard to imagine coming from, say, David Duke:

The last twenty five years in this country have shown again and again that, despite the regrettable and well-publicized turmoil of the Civil Rights years, those Americans of African ancestry are the people with whom our [Southern whites'] history in this country most closely intertwines, whose struggles in an odd but compelling way most resemble our own, and whose rights as full citizens we above all should celebrate and insist upon....

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The lines in today's NYT most likely to raise Bill Clinton's blood pressure

From Bob Kerrey, former governor and senator from Nebraska, as part of the "What went wrong" panel on the Hillary Clinton campaign:

I am a supporter of Hillary Clinton with an unusual perspective: I was defeated by her husband in the Democratic presidential race of 1992...

No doubt she’s feeling the disappointment that all of us who have lost races feel...

She shouldn’t be too hard on herself. If Barack Obama had been born 10 years earlier and had been a candidate for the Democratic nomination in 1992, neither I nor Bill Clinton would have defeated him.

This last sentence takes us into "thinking the unthinkable" territory, as Kerrey certainly knew when writing it. Once I interviewed Bill Clinton at a public event shortly after the Atlantic had published a cover story by me that had nothing to do with Clinton himself. But it did have a throwaway line about how Clinton might not have won in 1992 without the disruptive presence of Ross Perot in the race. Charmingly, but pointedly and with a lot, lot of detail, Clinton revealed to me the many aspects of my error before the interview began. I would pay to be there when he straightens Kerrey out.

Coming a day late to Hillary Clinton's speech...

... I have to say, I agree with the conventional wisdom that it was magnificent. Having complained about some of her recent performances, I felt it fair to register in this modest way a "public" thumbs-up vote.

For her campaign it was a distinct weakness that she could present such different faces day by day. But it certainly is a strength for Barack Obama and for the Democrats that this is the face she now wears. (After the jump, my favorite passages.) There is no point wondering where this eloquence and delivery were before. That she mustered them yesterday is to her great credit
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Worst moment of TV commentary (that I can think of at the moment)

Gloria Borger just now on CNN, reading credulously from a Hillary-supporter email saying that this "needed to be her night" and thus it was OK for her to perform the way she did.

Best moment: Jeffrey Toobin's instant, unscripted, "What are you TALKING ABOUT???" response, saying that except for the "deranged narcissism of the Clintons" the point would be that she had lost and Obama had won and it was time for her to step aside. That was "hard" on her, but elections are hard. It was no picnic for Bob Dole or George HW Bush or Paul Tsongas or Jerry Brown when Bill Clinton beat them, either, but that is life and they didn't try to stay on stage. This last part is me talking, but it's what Toobin implied.

Of course, CNN is the only source of real-time U.S. commentary available here, so my pool of possible worst-remark candidates is restricted.

Way to unify the party, HRC!

You HAVE LOST the nomination. There are NO MORE primaries. And you're urging your supporters to nurse their bitter feelings on your web site, and keep selling their bikes to give you money that you'll spend on... what? The unseemliness -- and, yes, destructiveness -- of this is too obvious to mention, though perhaps not obvious enough to have occurred to you.

This is a new low.

Update: Having an (intended?) effect already. Maybe he'll get going, but first 10 minutes of Obama's speech seem oddly off-his-stride and not looking as sunnily victorious as he should at this moment. Likely hypothesis: what he just heard in Clinton's speech.

Update-update: Recovers somewhat from minute 15 on, finishes very strong. Still, it seems undeniable that he spent his first few minutes looking like something other than the man-who-has-just-clinched thanks in part to the slap he had just received from HRC.

How Hillary lives with herself (one hypothesis)

From a coldly logical perspective, the last few months of Hillary Clinton's campaign approach are self-destructive at worst, puzzling at best. Doesn't she realize the damage she's causing the party by encouraging divisions like those in the Michigan-Florida flap? Does she have any idea of what this has done to her reputation, and her husband's? Do they really not care whether they help John McCain win?

I offer no psychological speculation, about the campaign or any other aspect of her life. I do have this political observation, which is consistent with John Heilemann's thorough and convincing exploration of the topic and which is based on contacts with Clinton partisans over the years.

The Clinton team doesn't worry about hurting Obama's prospects of winning in the fall, because they assess those prospects at zero. Always have. Obama might not win if he leads a bitterly divided party, but (in this view) he was never going to win. Not a chance. He would be smashed like an armadillo in the road* by the Republican campaign machine, and he would be just about as ready as the armadillo for what was coming.

Continue reading "How Hillary lives with herself (one hypothesis)" »

Simple comment on Jim Webb as veep

Since I am the last person within reach of a computer to weigh in about Jim Webb as a running mate for Barack Obama, I'll make up for the lateness with the simplicity of my point:

- Until 7pm November 4, 2008, Webb might well be a very strong addition to the ticket.

- On November 5, the troubles -- for Webb -- would begin.

About Webb's value up through election day, I realize that there's an argument: Would his credentials on national security and as an undoubtedly tough southern Populist offset, among other problems, the perceived slight to older women among Hillary Clinton's base? It's like a vector problem in physics. My belief is that, purely as a matter of electoral math, Webb would help Obama much more than he would hurt. But I know that's a judgment call, with countless ramifications to argue out.

The problem is what would happen if he did help Obama win. Having first met Webb nearly thirty years ago -- and having co-written an Atlantic cover story with him, and having broken my rule against giving money to political candidates two years ago when he began his Senate run -- I can't imagine a job he would enjoy less than the vice presidency.

Continue reading "Simple comment on Jim Webb as veep" »

Obama at Wesleyan: a subtle elegance I missed the first time

Via reader Rachel, a heads up on a sublime aspect of Barack Obama's recent commencement speech at Wesleyan. (Previously on the speech here and here.)

To review: Obama was there in place of the ailing Teddy Kennedy. Kennedy had given Obama a huge boost in the legitimacy-and-legacy category by endorsing him, even if it didn't help much in the MA. primary. And Kennedy's most famous speech was his "concession" speech at the 1980 Democratic convention in New York, when he brought the house down (I was there) with his defiant reassertion of the liberal values that he thought the doomed incumbent, Jimmy Carter, had abandoned. His speech ended with these words:

For me, a few hours ago, this campaign came to an end.

For all those whose cares have been our concern, the work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives, and the dream shall never die.

The structure of Obama's speech, these 28 years later, built toward praise of Kennedy's legacy and record, and ended with these words:

That is all I ask of you on this joyous day of new beginnings; that is what Senator Kennedy asks of you as well, and that is how we will keep so much needed work going, and the cause of justice everlasting, and the dream alive for generations to come.

As Rachel points out, this ending was

an allusion so subtle that Kennedy himself might be the only person who caught it. Obama took the speech of Ted's lifetime... and put the three key words - work, cause, dream - into the last line of the text. Poetry into prose, a private tribute to the man whose endorsement took Obama from runner up to winner.

What is so elegant about this touch? Precisely that Obama did not feel obliged to spell out all the links. ("And what I ask of you, in Senator Kennedy's own unforgettable words...") Politicians shouldn't be obscure. But a willingness to assume good things about the public -- its knowledge, its understanding, its ability to rise above the most immediate appeal to pocketbook or prejudice -- is part of what makes a politician into a leader. Even if the intended audience for this close was strictly the Kennedy family, it is an impressive bit of craftsmanship.

More on speechwriting and Obama's Wesleyan address (updated)

(Major update after the jump)

Yesterday (China time) I mentioned that, based on comparisons of a commencement address he delivered two years ago and one he gave this weekend, Barack Obama "has gotten better at the necessary poetry of ceremonial speaking."

Several people have written back to say: Well, maybe he just has better speechwriters! And: Since you (me) used to work as a speechwriter (for Jimmy Carter), shouldn't you be particularly sensitive to this point?

Answer, to the second question: No. And it's precisely because I have worked is this field that my answer to the first question is: I don't care who originally came up with these phrases or drafted the speech.

If a public figure's basic quality of mind or ability to express himself is in question, as frankly is the case with President George W. Bush, then it might be worth investigating whether the words he is uttering actually reflect his underlying outlook and comprehension.

Continue reading "More on speechwriting and Obama's Wesleyan address (updated)" »

The future lies ahead (Obama at Wesleyan)

I have written (for myself and others), delivered, and heard a large number of Commencement speeches over the years. It is a surprisingly difficult form to pull off without embarrassment. The tricky part is to make the homily-type "seize the challenge of the future!" points that really are required on such occasions, without sounding sappy, pompous, cliched, or --worst --long-winded. The test is: could someone read the transcript, at a safe remove from the emotions of the day, without giggling or yawning?

Barack Obama passed that test yesterday, when subbing for Sen. Kennedy at the Wesleyan commencement ceremony. Or so I judge by reading the transcript of the speech just now.

For instance, this is a subtler version of a familiar point, more deftly made, than commencement speakers -- especially politicians -- are usually able to get across.

Each of you will have the chance to make your own discovery in the years to come. And I say “chance” because you won’t have to take it. There’s no community service requirement in the real world; no one forcing you to care. You can take your diploma, walk off this stage, and chase only after the big house and the nice suits and all the other things that our money culture says you should buy. You can choose to narrow your concerns and live your life in a way that tries to keep your story separate from America’s.

But I hope you don’t. Not because you have an obligation to those who are less fortunate, though you do have that obligation. Not because you have a debt to all those who helped you get here, though you do have that debt.

It’s because you have an obligation to yourself. Because our individual salvation depends on collective salvation. Because thinking only about yourself, fulfilling your immediate wants and needs, betrays a poverty of ambition. Because it’s only when you hitch your wagon to something larger than yourself that you realize your true potential and discover the role you’ll play in writing the next great chapter in America’s story

By wild chance, I actually sat a few feet from Obama when he gave another commencement speech, at Northwestern, two years ago.* That speech was good, but based on this latest transcript he has gotten better at the necessary poetry of ceremonial speaking since then. These speeches are poems in that they don't allow the space to spell points out prosaically, and in their goal of evoking familiar, universal feelings in an unusual way. Such progress, from a high starting point, is worth noticing.

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* Obama was the university's commencement speaker, and recipient of an honorary degree, that day in 2006. Just before leaving for China, I also got a Northwestern honorary degree at the same ceremony. In addition to the obvious humbling honor of that fact, the wild chance was that I walked just behind Obama in the long, slow procession and sat next to him on the stage. The tens of thousands of people in Ryan Field erupted in cheers as soon as they saw Obama in the procession -- he had not announced for president at that point, but he was already a star, and after all he was the state's new senator. It is quite a strange phenomenon to be two feet away from the object of a gigantic crowd's attention. Strange, but fun.

Update: I see that M. Yglesias also picked out this very passage in a post from Sunday night.

Hamilton Jordan

I am surprisingly moved and saddened at the news that Hamilton Jordan has died of cancer, at age 63.

Wikipedia photo of Jordan in his 30s:

Actuarially the main surprise is that he lived this long: his first serious encounter with cancer happened nearly 25 years ago, and he had many subsequent bouts. And to the extent that people remember him at all from the Jimmy Carter era (nearly half of today's living Americans had not been born at that time), they may think of him as the wise guy/bad boy of the Administration.

Compared with that image, I thought he was a surprisingly sweet-hearted, decent, and serious person.* My impression is probably colored by the career and identity he fashioned after Carter and his team were turned out of office, when Hamilton tried hard and earnestly to write serious books and grappled for years with his disease. Eight years ago I wrote this review in the Washington Monthly of one of Jordan's books, No Such Thing as a Bad Day. This ending of the review is a little crabbier-sounding than I might write today, but I still mean its basic point:

An unstated operating assumption of the permanent D.C. establishment is that outsiders like Jordan are essentially brought into town on sufferance, for tryouts. They can adapt, "make it," and survive when their time with the administration has ended--or they can be drummed out of town and dismissed as losers. In D.C. terms, Jordan was in the latter category; he worked for a losing administration, and he didn't cut it in society. Yet this book suggests that he has become a more substantial person than most who dismissed him--and even before he went through this transformation, he was a more complicated person than the "Hannibal Jerkin" caricatured in the press. This has made me think of the damage done to other people hooted out of town. (Gary Hart?) If you're thinking of a midsummer gift for a favorite columnist or Style section writer, consider this book.

I feel bad for Hamilton and his family.

---
* Jordan vastly outranked me in the Carter White House hierarchy, he as chief of staff and me as a less-influential-than-the-title-suggested head speechwriter. But he was an aspiring tennis player and I was on call as a partner and practice-player, the one time in my life that sports has provided upward mobility.

What was John McCain thinking?

An advantage of being in the US again for a few days: seeing shows in real time, specifically SNL just now. What on earth was John McCain thinking, in agreeing to do a SNL spot 35 minutes into the show? The run-into-the-ground "joke" line was, "I am older than anyone can possibly believe. Hardee-har! I am so incredibly old!" Jeesh. He came across as a good sport, but, well, old. Everyone has seen SNL items that could be used as campaign ads. This is the only one I can think of where a candidate intentionally produced something that could be used as an attack ad on himself.

My immediate reaction while watching it is: if the Democrats ever move past their current intra-party bloodletting,the election might not turn out to be that close.

Evil in Burma

I have not said anything about the disaster in Burma, because I haven't had anything to say beyond "It's a disaster." And, that people should call the country Burma -- as the Bush Administration, Senators Clinton, McCain*, and Obama, and the Washington Post do -- rather than Myanmar, the term chosen by its junta and now accepted by CNN, NPR, and the New York Times.

My wife and I have been to Burma several times over the last twenty years. The first time was in the summer of 1988, around the time of the August 8 uprising and subsequent bloody repression of monks and students. The most recent was a little more than a year ago, a few days before another bloody round of repression. Like almost everyone who has been in the country, we have viewed its regime as a peculiarly pre-modern and backward form of evil. It does not seems capable of thoroughly-organized evil and repression, as in the old Soviet system. Rather it displays a benighted, superstitious, and almost unthinking indifference to whether its people suffer and die.

A minor illustration would be the decision that effectively bankrupted many Burmese people and helped bring on riots 20 years ago. This was the out of the blue decree that most denominations of Burmese currency, except those in "lucky" denominations like 45 and 90 kyat, would be valueless. The major illustration is of course its refusal to allow relief workers from around the world to spare tens of thousands of Burmese people disease and likely death in the wake of the cyclone.

Unfortunately, saying that the regime is evil doesn't automatically indicate how to help its unfortunate people. Invasions -- even for humanitarian purposes -- should be a very last resort. And without spelling out the whole reasoning, the U.S. is not in a great position now to be organizing an international invasion force, no matter how noble the cause. As the international frustrations of the last week have suggested, the main option is the unsatisfying one of putting together as much pressure from as many sources as possible, including China**, to force the regime away from its outrageous refusal to allow aid workers in.

(*About McCain: if it really is true that he has given a major convention role to a lobbyist who represented the Burmese junta, McCain needs to dump that person forthwith -- or be pilloried for not doing so every day between now and the election. Update: I see that the lobbyist, Doug Goodyear, has just quit the convention job. Next, maybe giving back the $300,000+ the generals paid him, to a human rights group? **About China: the latest outrage by the Burmese generals should not become the latest reason to threaten China with an Olympic boycott or disruption. The Chinese government has some influence over the Burmese regime -- but just some. It is better to make China part of the solution to this problem, by pointing out that a regime's refusal to save its own people is the strongest possible reason for an exception in China's "non-interference with other sovereign states" doctrine.)

A year ago, during the time of riots and crackdowns, I posted several pictures of what Rangoon looked like just before the fighting began. Here and after the jump, a few other pictures from that time.

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1: Village on the Irrawaddy delta, south of Rangoon, showing why a storm surge would do such damage. (Click for larger version that shows pagoda):

Continue reading "Evil in Burma" »

A gracious note from Hillary Clinton (updated)

Despite the opening crack about Indiana as a "tie-breaker" and the "this will really look bad in the history books" hammering on the gas-tax holiday as the big issue for America, I thought that was a surprisingly gracious-toned and party-spirited "victory" speech by Hillary Clinton just now. Few gratuitous digs at Obama; actually mentioning his victory in another state, which she has often spitefully refused to do; going out of her way to say that she would work for Democratic victory no matter who is the nominee (as she expected Obama would); and a valedictory-gratitude tone to those who have supported her.

Sen. Clinton's ability to take radically different tones day by day -- "I'm so proud to be here with Barack Obama" one day and "Shame on you, Barack Obama" the next -- is generally not such a charming trait. But here she showed its main advantage: conceivably it will allow her to turn on a dime and sound just as sincere in stumping for an Obama-led Democratic ticket in the fall as she has sounded in each of her manifestations through the primary campaign.

(And, yes, I mean to say "just as sincere" rather than "sincere," "fully sincere," etc.)

PS: Bonus points to her for saying "Burma," not Myanmar. PS #2: I see that my colleague Andrew S. sees this a different way. Hey, diversity in Atlantic-blog world.

UPDATE: Obviously this counts as gracious only if she follows the logic of the results and leaves the race now, or at least calls off the kind of campaigning that does the Republicans' work for them.

"Stupidest policy ever" contest results

Hundreds of entries later, the results are clear. An absolute majority of contestants spoke in favor of ... mandates and subsidies for ethanol use as the stupidest manifestation of bipartisan public policy in the last 50 years.

There could have been a recent-events bias in this choice. (We all think that today's athletes are "the best ever," and so too with stupid policy decisions.) Still, the sentiment was strong, and so was the reasoning. I quote from the lucky subscription-to-the-Atlantic winner, Justin Cohen, who himself begins by quoting his father Reuben Cohen on the stupid aspects of this policy. The Cohen-Cohen team is chosen winner because they entered early, and because I have decided to show a bias in favor of collaborative family efforts:

"I think bi-partisan support for ethanol is more stupid [than the McCain-Clinton 'gas tax holiday' plan], because it's actually harmful and because it not only panders to the public ... worse it panders to a special interest group (Midwest farmers and their regional politicians).

It's harmful because: 1) it helped to catalyze higher levels of food inflation, 2) it consumes as much energy to make and distribute as it provides, 3) it deflects attention from developing trying sound policies to enhance our energy security, 4) it didn't allow for removal of taxes on the import of truly energy efficient ethanol produced in Brazil from sugar, and 5) it's a such an extreme example of government disfuntionality it causes people like me to become truly disillusioned with the political process."

I would add on my own that, to my limited understanding, most of the money for ethanol goes to large corporate farms and trickles down and around through agro-business, with only minimal impact on small family farmers (the ones our politicians claim to support), making the whole venture politically disingenuous in addition to economically-unsound and environmentally dubious.

After the jump, a list of some other popular nominees. Where I can think of some reason why a particular suggestion didn't end up the winner, I include that in parentheses. Thanks to all! And God help our country.

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"Stupidest policy ever" contest interim update

Swamped with very good -- ie, very stupid -- nominees. Tabulation of suggestions, which I found interesting in their breadth, and announcement of gala prizes as soon as I can manage. Thanks all around. Though this makes me feel somewhat worse about the achievements of American democracy.

"Stupidest policy ever" contest update

Thanks to all for many good entries in the search for the stupidest moment of bi-partisan policy in the last 50 years. The search was of course inspired by this moment's stupidest idea, the John McCain/Hillary Clinton support for a temporary gasoline tax "holiday" during the summer driving season.

Update points:

- Remember, the 50-year cutoff excludes some otherwise deserving suggestions, like Prohibition, or slavery.

- Most popular nominee so far is the mandate for Ethanol use plugged into last year's energy bill, just before the Iowa caucus. But also remember that, as with the Electoral College and the Democratic primary process, mere popularity does not ensure victory.

- Results tomorrow; still time to vote.

- And while I'm at it, what happened to the usually-skillful Don Gonyea of NPR, in his treatment of this question just now on All Things Considered??? He took the traditional "one side claims, the other side responds" approach -- as if there were any identifiable economist or energy expert, from any political camp, who thought that the "tax holiday" proposal made sense. Maybe he missed the previous night's All Things Considered broadcast, which contained a very good segment about the pointlessness of the plan? And he presented the whole issue as a matter of campaign tactics: the Hillary Clinton campaign had been hitting Obama hard with a crisp attack ad about his refusal to give American motorists "the help they need," while Obama had come back only with a woolier, more "complicated" reply about why the plan was mad. Yes, this episode shows us something about the two campaigns, but it's not mainly about their relative skill in attacking each other.

For the record: stupidest moment in policy ever?

Usually I see no reason to chime in on an issue that many other people have discussed. But, perhaps because I've just come back to China, I feel obliged to register a view for the record about destructive nuttiness in my homeland:

The pandering and ignorance-across-party-lines represented by the John McCain-Hillary Clinton united front for a temporary reduction in the gasoline tax should make Americans hold their heads in their hands and moan. No one who has thought about this issue thinks that it will actually reduce prices or -- more important -- help the the people disproportionately hurt by $100+/barrel oil and $4 gasoline. And to the extent it has any effect on America's long-term approach to energy policy, transportation, oil dependence, and climate change, the effect will be perverse.

I can imagine that John McCain, who boasts about his sketchy command of economics, might consider this a good idea. But the master of policy, Hillary Clinton??

Please. This is embarrassing. It makes me long for the good old days of debating about flag pins on the lapel. And I wonder: has there been bipartisan agreement to stupider effect in, say, the last fifty years? The US Senate's 88-2 vote in favor of the Gulf of Tonkin resolution in 1964 doesn't count: they didn't know what lay ahead. Hillary Clinton, at least, knows why what she is saying is wrong. I will pay for a year's subscription to the Atlantic for anyone who can come up with a more foolishly destructive bipartisan example.

Update: The 2002 Authorization for Use of Military Force vote that paved the way for war in Iraq doesn't count either. That vote reflected terrible judgment, in my view, but not outright stupidity or, as with the current gas-tax charade, certain foreknowledge that the policy being recommended would do no good.

Most important item in Sunday's NYT

This Sunday's New York Times -- fat, varied, making me wonder how I got anything done on the weekends in America when I routinely had all this to read -- had lots of interesting stuff in it. But the most important item was the op-ed by Elizabeth Edwards called "Bowling 1, Health Care 0."

It's one of the rare expressions in print of a sentiment anyone who has covered politics has heard expressed privately countless times. Or at least that I've heard repeatedly when interviewing politicians about how they do their work. This is the politician's frustration with the behavior of the campaign press -- but not for the obvious reason.

The obvious complaint, easily dismissed by reporters, is that press coverage is biased against or "too tough on" this or that candidate. Reporters tell themselves: Hey, we're tough on everybody. You're not strong enough to take it, maybe you should find a different line of work.

The more heartfelt and bitter complaint is about the way press coverage seems biased not against any particular candidate but against the entire process of politics, in the sense that politics includes the public effort to resolve difficult issues. (Medical care, climate change, banking crises, military priorities, etc.) For twenty years I have heard this from frustrated politicians -- Gary Hart, Newt Gingrich, Jimmy Carter, Dick Gephardt, Bill Clinton, they may not share a lot of views but they are as one in this frustration. What galls all of them is the way that the incentives created by most coverage bring out the very worst in most politicians, and discourage them from even bothering to try the harder, more "responsible" path. No one says that press incentives turn potential Abraham Lincolns into real-world Tom DeLays. But the incentives push in that direction rather than the reverse.

Active politicians rarely dare say this in public, since they know the same reporters and commentators will be there to talk about them tomorrow and the next day and from then on. For reasons personal (health) and political (husband out of the race), Elizabeth Edwards no longer has to hold anything back. After the jump, a sample of what she said:

Continue reading "Most important item in Sunday's NYT" »

Two rhetorical missteps by Team Obama....

.... in the Pittsburgh election-eve rally ongoing as I type:

1) Michelle Obama, comparing her husband to his crucial Pennsylvania supporter, Sen. Bob Casey. "They both have households full of bright, beautiful young girls." Fine; charming. "And they both married brilliant, accomplished, and beautiful women." What??? The husband says "I married up." The wife doesn't make that point.

2) Barack himself, talking about his new approach to politics, points out that he discussed energy efficiency in front of an auto-industry audience in Detroit, discussed progressive taxation in front of fat cats on Wall Street, and generally believed in telling truths the hard but honest way. I was waiting to hear how he'd work in "and I discussed the biases of small-town Pennsylvania losers before rich donors in the Bay Area." But he just kind of slid to a different topic. Probably wiser not to have started down this rhetorical road to begin with -- not in the Keystone State. (Addendum: not meaning to hype the importance of "bittergate" here, just saying this is a rare instance of Obama not addressing a "Hey, wait a minute" point that would be on many Pennsylvania listeners' minds.)

I blame the fatigue (a theme close to my heart these days). Get out the vote, Pennsylvanians! And let these candidates get some sleep.

This horrible "debate"

As mentioned earlier, family concerns (my father) have trumped other concerns for quite a while. Among various consequences, and in the cosmic sense a trivial one, is the list of items building up that I am looking for a chance to weigh in on -- should that chance coincide with my being near an internet connection.

Future items range from U.S. policy toward the Beijing Olympics, to Windows Vista and Mac and Google news, to frog-related and air taxi-related developments, to other themes. Concerning a potential US boycott of part or all of the Olympics, I'm looking for the chance to explain why Jimmy Carter, GW Bush, and WJ Clinton are right on this issue, and John McCain, Barack Obama, and HR Clinton are wrong. Off-hand I can't think of any other controversial issue in which you can place Bush and Carter on the same side.

And some day I will at least look at the couple thousand emails now backed up in the system. Sorry if one of them is yours.

I want to use this moment at the computer to address the unspeakable ABC ~~bear-baiting~~ debate last night. I haven't read what anyone has said about this -- except for Tom Shales of the Washington Post. He said that what Charles Gibson and George Stephanopoulos did last night was "shoddy and despicable." I completely agree and add only these grace notes:

--- From the often-harrumphing Gibson, this is no big surprise. But from Stephanopoulos??? Who earlier in his career was a message/press/legislative man for Dick Gephardt and of course played a more visible version of that role during Bill Clinton's rise - what the hell is this????

I like and respect Stephanopoulos, and part of what I respect about him is the way he usually conducts his TV interviews. But I also remember dealing with him back in the early Clinton days, he in his role as campaign guy and me in my role as reporter. He understands thoroughly and in his bones what is wrong with the kind of mindless, substance-free gotcha questioning he and Gibson wasted their time on last night. I know he understands it because I've heard him shame journalists who were applying the same tactics to Bill Clinton back in the day. What was he thinking? What kind of pressure had been applied to him?

--- After the jump, a passage from my 1996 Atlantic article "Why Americans Hate the Media," itself excerpted from my book Breaking the News, which bears on exactly this kind of mindless "what about the flag pin?" haranguing. To summarize what this passage says: Political reporters think they are being "tough" when they take a borderline-impolite (or worse) tone and try to trap people in some provable if ultimately-meaningless contradiction. But while members of the electorate often find these gaffes diverting in a pro-wrestling sense, whenever they have their own chance to ask "tough" questions they ask the candidates about things that will affect the voters' lives. These are generally questions of war, peace, economics, etc. Again, George S. lived through the phenomenon the excerpt below describes, though he was on the other side. That he would now be in gotcha mode is depressing, to put it mildly.

--- Whatever else happens the next time we choose a president, there has got to be a better way to see candidates operate under pressure than the grotesque system that has metastasized during this electoral cycle. It makes candidates into mere props for bullying anchormen-narcissists. It does no one except the anchormen any good. I mentioned earlier the oddity of Jimmy Carter and GW Bush finding common cause about China policy. Maybe the RNC and the DNC can join hands in freeing political debate from the destructive grip of the networks. And if they can't do that, maybe we should just go all the way and have the candidates compete eating pails full of maggots on Fear Factor. That's the logical extension of where we're headed.

Article except after the jump. Then, again off line for a while.
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Continue reading "This horrible "debate"" »

Joe Conason, "Crossing the Line"

I mentioned several days ago that I was surprised to see -- ok, "disgusted" was the term -- that Hillary Clinton's campaign spokesman had emailed reporters an article from the American Spectator accusing one of Barack Obama's advisors of being an anti-Semite.

This was surprising because the Spectator had, during Bill Clinton's term of office, relentlessly accused him and his wife of crimes starting with the death of Vince Foster and moving downward from there.

It also struck me as simple malice, a try-anything attempt to injure someone near Obama with the false but always damaging claim that he was bigoted.

I see now that Joe Conason, in Salon, has had a similar strongly negative reaction to the same episode. This strikes me as a very significant reaction; if I were in the Clinton organization I would take his article very seriously indeed.

Conason is a formidable reporter in general. But in particular, anyone familiar with what The American Spectator's name implied in the 1990s remembers how redoubtable and relentless Joe Conason was in rebutting its spurious attacks on both Clintons. He and my long-time friend Gene Lyons even wrote a book, The Hunting of the President, about the Spectator-Starr-Scaife crusade to do whatever it took to bring the Clintons down. If this Joe Conason now thinks that the Hillary Clinton campaign is the one doing the disreputable attacking, that means something. His article's final words:

This incident offers Hillary Clinton an opportunity to consider how she wants this campaign to end. If she beats the odds and wins, this kind of behavior will taint her victory. And if she loses, as seems more likely now, is this how she wants her historic campaign to be remembered?

'Declaring Victory'

Mark Danner's new article assessing the Bush-era "War on Terror" is very much worth reading. (A sample after the jump.) It is one of a rapidly-increasing number of good essays, speeches, and policy proposals looking at how the U.S. went wrong after 9/11 -- and not just in Iraq -- and how the next administration can start correcting the long string of previous mistakes.

This discussion needs to become more widespread, intense, and practical. John McCain is a vastly more admirable person than George W. Bush, but his strategy for Iraq and national security in general is an extension of Bush-Cheney. If and when the Democratic party moves past its current fratricide, it needs to make a big push here, not just for election purposes but so it can do something in 2009 if given the chance.

As the discussion continues, I immodestly offer this link to "Declaring Victory," the Atlantic story I wrote a year and a half ago on ways out of the War on Terror trap. As we near the end of the intellectual paralysis and policy rigidity of the Bush-Cheney years, some of the ideas people described to me back then seem, at least to me, all the more relevant.

Continue reading "'Declaring Victory'" »

This is disgusting (Clintons, McPeak, American Spectator)

Watching from 12 time zones away, I've tried to stay out of campaign blow-by-blow.

But if, as I assume is true based on Marc Ambinder's report, the Hillary Clinton campaign is circulating a hit job from the American Spectator, this is simply disgusting. (Marc has just confirmed to me that indeed the article came in an on-the-record email from Phil Singer, the Clinton campaign spokesman.)

That the Clinton family would dignify the American Spectator, of all publications, is astonishing to anyone who was alive in the 1990s.

That they would bless this attempt to paint Merrill McPeak as an anti-Semite is grotesque.

I doubt that the author of the hit job ever bothered to speak with or interview McPeak. I have done so many times, during and after his days as Air Force chief of staff (which he was during the first Gulf War). People can agree or disagree with McPeak's foreign policy or his record at the Pentagon -- but that's not what we're talking about here. Any attempt to fish out a quote that will banish him as a bigot is exactly as fair and accurate as depicting Bill Clinton as being personally a racist based on his "fairy tale" and "Jesse Jackson" comments around the time of the South Carolina primary. I say this having heard McPeak lay out his views, starting while the Gulf War was underway 17 years ago, about how to maintain general stability, US interests, and Israeli security in the Middle East.

McPeak may have gone too far in saying that Bill Clinton's earlier comments (that it would be "a great thing if we had an election year where you had two people who loved this country" -- namely, Hillary Clinton and John McCain) amounted to "McCarthyism." But that's a pretty fair description of this latest round. I don't like attempts to stifle argument when they occur in China, and I don't like this in the United States.

I can easily believe that the Spectator would publish such an article. That the Clinton team would circulate it I'm still trying to deal with.

I keep being re-surprised...

... at how tin-eared and antique the Chinese propaganda apparatus is, compared with the way most other things seem and feel in the country.

Today's illustration: front page of China Daily, official voice to the outside world. Story at top left, about lighting of Olympic flame, contains not one word about protesters who disrupted the ceremony in Greece. (Local Chinese TV coverage also cut away at that instant.) Story at top right, today's update on the Tibet saga, is about the unified outrage of China's web population over Western news distortions. Eg,

"A video clip titled 'Tibet was, is, and always will be part of China' became an instant hit after it was posted on YouTube on March 15. [Hmmm. As I remembered it, the Great Firewall was blocking YouTube around that time.]... The 7-minute clip then lists indisputable historical facts to prove that Tibet has long been an inalienable part of China."

As an indication of what the majority of Chinese people have been taught about the Tibet issue, the story is indeed useful. What is weird is its attempt to sell the "if we don't mention it, it didn't happen" version of reality to outside, English-language readers who have other sources of information on the topic.

Meanwhile, a microscopic story at the very bottom of the front page (picture after jump), right next to the Hooters-Beijing ad, notes that shares on the Shanghai Stock Exchange fell by 4.49% yesterday. To be fair, it is linked to a longer story inside.

Continue reading "I keep being re-surprised..." »

God Bless Mike Huckabee

Two people have now elevated themselves thanks to Rev. Wright and his tirades.

One, of course, is Barack Obama.

The other is Mike Huckabee, who (as I see via Andrew Sullivan and others) dared speak as a human being rather than as an on-message apparatchik in his comments about Obama and Wright. More specifically, he spoke as a "hate the sin, love the sinner" Christian, as a preacher who has delivered extemporized sermons of his own, and as a white product of the segregated South who did not blind himself to how that world would look if he were black. Consider and be in awe of this:

And one other thing I think we've gotta remember. As easy as it is for those of us who are white, to look back and say "That's a terrible statement!"...I grew up in a very segregated south. And I think that you have to cut some slack -- and I'm gonna be probably the only Conservative in America who's gonna say something like this, but I'm just tellin' you -- we've gotta cut some slack to people who grew up being called names, being told "you have to sit in the balcony when you go to the movie. You have to go to the back door to go into the restaurant. And you can't sit out there with everyone else. There's a separate waiting room in the doctor's office. Here's where you sit on the bus..."

And you know what? Sometimes people do have a chip on their shoulder and resentment. And you have to just say, I probably would too. I probably would too. In fact, I may have had more of a chip on my shoulder had it been me.

Actual honest and empathetic discussion about race...! We've come to expect that presidential campaigns will be the equivalent of World War I trench slaughter, in which there is a "winner" at the Somme but really everyone loses and it's a matter of who is farthest from being bled dry at the end. But the idea of actual discourse about real issues -- it would be nice to think that it could happen.

It was a moment like this that first drew John McCain to my attention as a politician, nearly 30 years ago.

Continue reading "God Bless Mike Huckabee" »

Instant reaction to Obama's speech from other side of the world

I didn't mean to stay up so late to see this speech -- have to get up in a few hours for a hinterland trip -- but I am glad I did.

This was as good a job as anyone could have done in these circumstances, and as impressive and intelligent a speech as I have heard in a very long time. People thought that Mitt Romney's speech would be the counterpart to John Kennedy's famous speech about his faith to the Houston ministers in 1960. No. This was.

A reminder of a non-obvious but crucial principle in speechwriting. Make the language simple, clear, vivid, and comprehensible -- of course. But never, never talk down.

Will this defuse the Rev. Wright issue? Who knows what cable news will make of the speech. But it was a great moment, to which Barack Obama rose.

(Update: while considering just staying up until the hinterland trek, I will correct the preceding sentence. It was a moment that Obama made great through the seriousness, intelligence, eloquence, and courage of what he said. I don't recall another speech about race with as little pandering or posturing or shying from awkward points, and as much honest attempt to explain and connect, as this one.)

Further on Bill vs. Hillary Clinton

Here is the point I wish I had thought to make the first time:

One of Bill Clinton's strongest and most admirable traits as a politician was that, in his prime, he never talked down when explaining his positions. No matter what the audience -- financiers, laid-off factory workers, teenagers, foreigners -- he always encouraged them to see the big picture.

And to think. He said again and again that the Republicans' goal was to keep people from thinking, because once they did start thinking clearly, as opposed to hating or fearing, they'd see the wisdom of the Clinton plan.

Agree on the merits of his plans, or disagree: You can't deny that this was his approach. He made people feel, too -- but virtually every step of the way he encouraged them to think.

As for why this has not been his wife's approach -- well, we just don't know whether it's a difference in temperament between the two of them, or difference of talent, or difference of strategies, or difference driven by the fact that this time they're up against someone (ie, Obama) who also is very good in the "making people think" approach. But the contrast in thought-content between Clinton '92 and Clinton '08 is striking.

Bill vs Hillary Clinton

I supported Bill Clinton when he was in office, and I have liked and admired him before and since. I knew that he did some unsavory things -- OK, let's set aside the obvious, and think back to his approval of the execution of the (mentally-damaged) convicted murderer Ricky Ray Rector during the heat of the campaign in 1992. I thought, and think: this is the price leaders pay. The question is whether, on balance, the leader is a force for public good, and I thought he clearly was.

This standard of comparison sticks in my mind during Hillary Clinton's campaign. And I'm not even talking about Bill Clinton's flurry of public involvement around the time of the New Hampshire and South Carolina primaries. Rather I'm thinking: she has done things I don't remember him doing, or that he was smooth enough to do without my noticing it.

Continue reading "Bill vs Hillary Clinton" »

This is not, in itself, reason to oppose a candidate....

... but Hillary Clinton is plummeting rock-like to the bottom of the crucial "boiled frog" primary.

I still have not seen any evidence of Barack Obama using this hackneyed, heartless, and flat-out ignorant formulation. ("You throw a frog into a pot of boiling water....")

That is, he has not used it, "as far as I know."

John McCain? Again, as far as I know, he is boiled-frog-free.

But Senator Clinton goes there again and again.

When Senator Obama wants to start fighting tough on the stump, the path is clear. "Senator McCain has a lifetime of resisting boiled-frog idiocy. I have a lifetime of resisting boiled-frog idiocy. Senator Clinton has her boiled-frog speech."

(As promised for months, results of the exciting "come up with a replacement for the boiled frog cliche" contest will be announced any day now.)

My new homeland security hero: Gov. Brian Schweitzer (MT)

Listen to this item from Friday evening's All Things Considered and realize, in amazement, how long it has been since we have heard a public figure talk plain common sense about the "theater of security" and 'fraidy-cat authoritarianism of TSA-era America.

The speaker is Brian Schweitzer, elected governor of Montana in 2004. (A Democrat.) Good for him.

Point for later discussion: Right now I'd say that the biggest single difference between life as an American in China in the 2000s, versus my family's life as Americans in Japan and Malaysia for four years in the 1980s, is internet streaming audio. It's still a big nuisance to see U.S. television broadcasts in anything like real time -- or at all, given that the slowness of the Chinese internet makes streaming video difficult. But to listen to the NPR morning and evening shows live, with time zones reversed -- Morning Edition live at our dinner time, All Things Considered in the morning -- that is an enormous difference in connected-ness. We had email even back in those old days! Not Skype, of course, which rivals streaming audio in importance (and obviously is a variant of the same technology.) For now, glad that this phenomenon brought me the Schweitzer interview.

Shorter version of "right wing bloggers and China" point

As discussed previously here:

The same people -- same individuals, same organizations, same publications, same blog sites - that ginned up a war with Iraq, and that have supported ginning up a war with Iran, are settling in for a longer term confrontation with China.

These people need to be judged on their track record. And compared with a confrontation with Iraq or Iran, a military showdown with China would be 10 times as unnecessary and 100 times as stupid.

More on Clinton, Obama, and the OODA loop

Updated, below:

About two weeks ago I mentioned Chuck Spinney's analysis of the Clinton-Obama race, from the perspective of "Fourth Generation Warfare" and the famous John Boyd "OODA Loop." (Details on those concepts in the original post.)

The payoff of his argument, made shortly after Obama's Maryland-Virginia-DC sweep, was that Hillary Clinton could still win -- but that she could no longer win "well." That is, the terms of any possible victory over Obama had narrowed in a way that would compromise her ability to win the general election if nominated or to govern if sworn in. This was to Obama's credit, in showing how he had maneuvered her into that position. But it was a problem for the party, if Clinton finally did win on these Pyrrhic terms.

In making his point Spinney quoted a Washington Post column by Michael Gerson on "Hillary's Unappealing Path," written just after the Potomac primaries. It said:

"Though it is increasingly unlikely, Clinton may still have a path to the nomination -- and what a path it is. She merely has to puncture the balloon of Democratic idealism; sully the character of a good man; feed racial tensions within her party; then eke out a win with the support of unelected superdelegates and appeals, thwarting the hopes of millions of new voters who would see an inspiring young man defeated by backroom arm-twisting and arcane party rules."

Gerson is obviously not rooting for the Democrats, but his analysis, like Spinney's, has stood up.

Continue reading "More on Clinton, Obama, and the OODA loop" »

A good answer at a press conference by GW Bush!

President Bush's last answer at yesterday's press conference has got him into trouble. That's the one where he registered amazement at the prospect of $4/gallon gasoline. But on the question just before that, about the Beijing Olympics, I thought he actually gave the right, somewhat complex answer concisely and well.

Here was the question:

Q In China a former factory worker who says that human rights are more important than the Olympics is being tried for subversion. What message does it send that you're going to the Olympics, and do you think athletes there should be allowed to publicly express their dissent?

In his answer Bush confidently made the point that the Olympics had its own momentum and importance, but that respecting the event need not mean (as the Chinese government would wish) that the outside world must bite its collective tongue about political issues. And he also had a knowing aside about the particular leverage he had in raising such issues:

THE PRESIDENT: Olivier, I have made it very clear, I'm going to the Olympics because it's a sporting event, and I'm looking forward to seeing the athletic competition. But that will not preclude me from meeting with the Chinese President, expressing my deep concerns about a variety of issues -- just like I do every time I meet with the President.

And maybe I'm in a little different position. Others don't have a chance to visit with [President] Hu Jintao, but I do. And every time I meet with him I talk about religious freedom and the importance of China's society recognizing that if you're allowed to worship freely, it will benefit the society as a whole; that the Chinese government should not fear the idea of people praying to a god as they see fit. A whole society, a healthy society, a confident society is one that recognizes the value of religious freedom.

I talk about Darfur and Iran and Burma. And so I am not the least bit shy of bringing up the concerns expressed by this factory worker, and I believe that I'll have an opportunity to do so with the President and, at the same time, enjoy a great sporting event. I'm a sports fan. I'm looking forward to the competition. And each Olympic society will make its own decision as to how to deal with the athletes.

Recognizing the independent athletic (and spectacle) existence of the Olympics, and also their undeniable importance to China, but still speaking freely, plainly, and on live TV about the values the U.S. should stand for and the practices of China's it condemns -- to me, that's something like a policy. Credit where credit is due.

Ralph Nader: tragedy to farce

I have liked and admired Ralph Nader so much. I first worked for him when I was in my teens (and he was in his 30s). Under his auspices, encouragement, and relentless pressure, I'd written two books for his organization by the time I was 23 -- if only I'd been able to keep up that pace! Or that sales success, since one of them -- Who Runs Congress, turned out in eight weeks, with Mark Green and David Zwick --- eventually sold in the millions.

Nader was funny, warm, brilliant-seeming, and, yes, caring. He visited my wife in the hospital after our first child was born. For years after that, he never failed to ask about both of our kids (or my wife) whenever I talked with him. I say all this as an indication of why Ralph Nader has so many people who actually are loyal to him -- and who wish they didn't have to face the reality about the choices he has made over the last eight years.

That he stayed in the race in 2000 was tragedy. (See: Invasion of Iraq, 2003, and subsequent occupation.) That he came back in 2004 was unfortunate; his entry in 2008 is farce. Farce because it suggests detachment from political reality (the differences between the Republican and Democratic nominees are so faint that we can say, What the hell!) and, worse, narcissism. The fact that it won't make any difference in the outcome actually is sad.

I will always like and respect Ralph Nader and will always admire the wonderful things he has done. But I wish to God that he had not made this decision, or will reverse it soon. (And, I am sorry that saying this will make me an enemy in his eyes.) He is a better man than his recent decisions indicate.

4GW Meets Campaign '08

I have known and liked Chuck Spinney for a very long time, since I wrote about him and his original "defense reform" colleagues, notably John Boyd and Pierre Sprey, in the Atlantic and in National Defense in the early 1980s. Boyd of course originated the concept of the "OODA Loop." This was the idea, derived from Boyd's "Patterns of Conflict" briefing, that the victor in any conflict would not necessarily be the stronger or better-prepared party. Rather it would be the one who recognized changing realities, and chose and implemented the right new course of action, faster than the opponent. Boyd came up with the theory by analyzing aerial combat among fighter planes, but in his view it could be applied to every sort of human contest, from sports to business to armed conflict.

(OODA stands for Observe, Orient, Decide, and Act. To react to changing reality faster than the opponent can, or to interfere with the opponent's ability to perceive realistically what is happening to him, is to "get inside his OODA loop." Everything anyone would ever want to know about Boyd, Spinney, Sprey; about their contemporary colleagues like Chet Richards, Donald Vandergriff, WIlliam Lind, GI Wilson, etc; and about OODA loops and the related concept of 4GW, or Fourth Generation Warfare, can be found at two excellent, related "Defense and the National Interest" sites, here and here.)

And the theory also applies to politics, as Spinney has argued in a recent item about the contest for the Democratic nomination. His analysis, "Is Obama inside Hillary's OODA loop?" comes after the jump. The incidents he mentions are all familiar; what's at least a little new is his combination of them in Boyd-style perspective -- in particular Bill Clinton losing his sense for how the battle is shifting. I am posting this before the Wisconsin results are known, and before the (in my view bogus) "plagiarism" flap has died down, so that Spinney's observation can be tested against those results.

In any case, Spinney's analysis below:

Continue reading "4GW Meets Campaign '08" »

On plagiarism

The "plagiarism" flap over Barack Obama is bogus and overstated. It makes me think worse about whoever is pushing this complaint, rather than about Obama himself.

Continue reading "On plagiarism" »

Pot:kettle department (NYT op-ed division)

The Times's newest columnist, being brutally frank about the unwillingness to draw careful distinctions, and the lack of exposure to bracing market forces, among the leftist commentariat:

And, if I may say so, the quality of thought of the Democrats’ academic and media supporters — a permanent and, as it were, pensioned opposition — seems to me to have deteriorated as Orwell would have predicted.

We all delude ourselves about ourselves. But I wonder if Bill Kristol can imagine how this line -- criticizing scholars for a descent into hackdom, and for being comfortably ensconced in sinecures -- will strike many of his readers.

Tom Tancredo's nightmare

Outside the Instituto Cervantes, the Spanish language and cultural organization (like the Alliance Francaise or the Goethe-Institut), in Beijing . Apparently it's not just Little Havana any more!

Update: Those spots next to the bicycle, in the inset in the bottom-left corner of the map? Apparently they're the Philippines! As reader Andrew Miller points out, counting them in the world of Espanol, even cross-hatched, is a much bigger stretch than counting the United States.

----
To spell out the joke for non-Americans or those not sodden in U.S. politics: Tancredo, now disappeared from the Republican presidential race, was the main alarm-raiser about the immigrant menace to America -- especially immigrants from Mexico and points south. How would he feel about a sign saying: "Do you know that Spanish is spoken in more than twenty countries?" -- with a map showing the United States already halfway there??

We criticize because we love

First boiled frogs, now basic math. I hate to keep wondering whether the NYT Op-Ed page employs fact checkers, but it's impossible not to wonder after passages like this. From this morning's Gail Collins column:

Most people have never been to a caucus, even if their state happens to have them. In Washington, the caucuses last Saturday drew a little more than 1 percent of the registered voters.

Those wacky caucuses! But wait a minute....

As a former Seattle resident I recall that Washington state has six or seven million people. After investing 0.75 seconds in internet research time I see that a little over half of them, let's say 3.75 million, are registered to vote.

One percent of 3.75 million is 37,500 people. Now, let's think back to reports of those caucuses. All the stories talked about "record breaking turnout" and "unexpected crowds." Some 20,000 people had crammed in to a pre-caucus Obama rally in Seattle -- with thousands more outside, and presumably thousands of others in the rest of the state also supporting Obama, or Clinton, or McCain, or Huckabee. And among all of them, only 37,500 show up?

And... It turns out that four years ago, the Democrats alone had 100,000 people for their much less dramatic and consequential caucuses. By all reports, highly publicized on caucus day, at least twice as many turned out for the Democrats this year. But somehow, according to the Times, only one-sixth that many people showed up for both parties???

And... I hear from friends and local news reports that the Democratic caucuses in just one Seattle-area legislative district attracted 18,000 people. (This detail from a story with the typical headline, "Turnout Shatters Record.") So, that district accounted for half the total for both parties across the entire state????

Obviously something went wrong here. Let's say the Democrats had maybe 200,000 at their caucuses, and the Republicans mabe half that many. That would be 300,000 total. Not enough to legitimize what is in fact a wacky caucus system. Not enough to prove that people of every class and background were involved. But different by nearly an order of magnitude from what our paper of record reports, in a factoid that will no doubt be picked up and considered "true".

What's the explanation? (And, by the way, I wish that some other NYT columnist had committed this howler, since I am a fan of Gail Collins' columns.) Maybe the "too good to check" instinct when coming across a tantalizing statistic? I don't know. But if we're looking for job-creation opportunities in America, how about for common-sense checkers?

___
Update: Mystery may be solved! The number of precinct delegates chosen at the caucuses, who in turn vote for the state delegates to the national party convention, was in fact close to the magic 1% figure. An understandable mixup, perhaps -- unless you apply the "can this figure possibly be true??" common sense test.

I was feeling sorry for Hillary Clinton...

... just now, when I saw the expression on her face as she waited to go onstage in El Paso. This process is so grueling. And the rejection, when it comes is so personal, in a way "normal" people never experience. Even a performer as professional as she couldn't conceal the bone-tired, beaten-over look on her face.

But now, fifteen-plus minutes into a dreary recitation of policy-points that will do nothing to satisfy those who want her to say what her campaign is for, I am feeling less sorry. She has not had the grace to mention Barack Obama's name, nor his existence or success. Not as "Senator Obama," not even as "my worthy opponent in the contest for our great party's nomination -- for this battle we all believe in to change the course of the nation's future" and so on. This on a night when he has just trounced her fair and square in Virginia and, presumably, will in a few minutes be shown to have done the same in Maryland and D.C. (Update: Maryland just called, the second the polls closed.)

CNN has just switched off her speech (and I'm not going to see it on CCTV). This is not classy and does not help. Not that the campaign is short of critics at the moment (see my Atlantic colleague Josh Green's excellent inside account), but whoever advised her to take this petty approach made a mistake. Or maybe, reacting as a normal person, she just couldn't bear to talk about it.

When I voted last week in DC

(Updated, below.) A week ago I voted absentee in Washington, just before getting on the plane for Beijing.

I had an "I voted!" sticker on my sweater when I stepped into a cab downtown. The driver did a double-take when he saw it, so I explained and asked him if he was planning to vote on the normal election day.

He appeared to be in his 70s, a black man who said he'd been born in Washington and never lived anywhere else. He said he probably would vote, and was leaning Democratic. "But I'm kind of undecided between Mrs. Hillary and this new guy -- what do they call him, 'Bama?" As in someone from Selma or Mobile.

On balance, he said, he would probably go Clinton. "You can say what you want, but you know that he is going to be back here running things," referring to Mrs. Clinton's husband. "Those times were good!"

Ah, the pageant of democracy. Get out and vote!

(I write this from a country where people aren't given the opportunity. Also: having gone this many decades in journalism without using a "the taxi driver told me" chestnut -- at least that I can remember -- I figure I can get by with one, on an election-day theme.)

Update: Reader Edward Goldstick points out that if I really wanted to get a double-take from the next taxi driver or passers-by in general, I should have kept the "I voted" sticker on and worn it around Beijing.

Further on WA, NE, and ME caucuses

In response to this account of a Seattle-area caucus in which the vaunted Obama "organization" turned out to be hordes of enthusiasts showing up on their own, a large amount of email containing other first-hand reports from caucuses in Nebraska, Maine, and Washington state -- all won by Obama of course. Accounts fall 75:25 into these categories:

75%: It was exactly the same in the caucus I saw in Maine/Nebraska/Washington! (Spontaneous huge crowds for Obama; small and disspirited groups of Hillary Clinton supporters; outpouring rather than "organization.")

25%: It wasn't that way at all in the caucus I saw! (Light turnout, narrow margin for Obama, and anyway caucuses are idiotic ways to make these decisions.) Accounts from Washington state emphasize the oddity of the Democrats having both a caucus day and a "normal" primary election, but counting only the caucuses for choosing delegates.

I agree that caucuses are basically an idiotic practice, given that the nominee finally has to run in a "normal" election ("normal," except for the out-of-date wackiness of the Electoral College). In any case, I pass this along just for the record.

Dispatch from the WA state caucuses: it wasn't about the ground game

A reader who lives in Washington state and strongly supports Obama sends this report about the caucus activity two days ago, which of course led to a landslide Obama win.

As Clinton loses caucus states, she keeps saying they favor Obama, and so does the press. The press in particular says that the caucuses reward greater organization. Whether or not that is so, and whether or not Obama is better organized than Clinton, the fact is that NEITHER candidate was that well organized for the WA caucuses (see my note below), and I suspect Obama was not for Maine.

The dispatch goes on to say that the point is not at all to belittle Obama's organizers. Rather, it's this: that at least in Washington, the contest appeared to have moved beyond the strict get-out-the-vote, nuts-and-bolts marshaling of resources, attrition-style warfare and onto some different level. (I have removed a few personally identifying details from the note):

Continue reading "Dispatch from the WA state caucuses: it wasn't about the ground game" »

If I were voting in California

In my kind of journalism, I don't think I have any business "endorsing" candidates. I have strong and unconcealed views about certain issues -- that it was a gigantic and foreseeable mistake to have invaded Iraq (let alone to have done it so badly), that it would be just about as wrong to attack Iran, that we need to be more rather than less open to immigrant talent, that the economic growth of the last decade has been dangerously and shamelessly unbalanced, that we don't need to be terrified of China but that we have to take it seriously, etc.

While certain preferences for parties and candidates naturally flow from those views, actual "endorsement" is for organizations or public figures who feel their backing might sway others. Here instead is an account of what I would be thinking if I were voting in the Democratic primary in my original home state of California tomorrow:

- On domestic and economic and environmental policy, it’s a wash. The Clinton and Obama positions are similar to each other and different from any Republican's. Some people think there is a huge difference in their health-care proposals. Having seen administrations come and go, I am absolutely certain that the difference between Clinton's and Obama's stated objectives in 2008 matters much, much less than what either of them will be able to get through the Congress in 2009 and afterward. Thus: an important distinction in domestic policy is which candidate will bring in a larger bloc in Congress to work with.

- On foreign policy, Clinton and Obama actually do differ, and I agree with him more than with her. He (like Al Gore) was against invading Iraq before it happened; she was for it. He (like Jim Webb) opposed the infamous Kyl-Lieberman amendment, which at the time was undeniably an attempt to legitimize military action against Iran; she voted for it. (Obama, to his discredit, failed to show up to cast his No vote, but his position was not in doubt.) He has criticized the current flat-earth idiotic US policy toward Cuba; she has defended it (as Fareed Zakaria has pointed out in a strong recent essay). I understand the argument that Sen. Clinton has to take these positions to maintain her "credibility" and appearance of strength. To me that matters less than that she keeps voting in what I consider the wrong way. Thus: the positions and “mindsets” differ, and and I like his better.

- On style and governing philosophy, she is for incremental policies and incremental politics -- "experience" and "competence" – based on the underlying belief that Republican obstructionism makes nothing else possible. Not even for a dreamer like Obama. He obviously is trying for something more -- as Bill Clinton was in 1992, when I preferred him to an incomparably more experienced and time-tested President.

- On straight electability, just unknowable. Given that everyone in the country already knows her and a large minority say they don't like her, a narrow victory seems the most that is within Hillary Clinton's grasp. People can argue that Obama would be capable of much more -- or, on the contrary, even less, and that not even a narrow win would be possible once the smear machine got through with him. There is simply no way to be sure now, when it's time to vote. Thus: also a wash.

- On diversity and opportunity, a breakthrough either way. But on a deeper level of “diversity,” we have the prospect of returning a husband-and-wife team – Bill Clinton’s emergence has made this unignorable -- already in the White House for eight years, versus fresh blood.

Any vote for anybody is a gamble. Who imagined that the George Bush of 2000, with his “compassionate conservatism” and critiques of “nation building,” would become the man we’ve known in office? We have no idea what surprises will confront a President Obama, or Hillary Clinton, or Romney, or McCain, or how they might respond. We have to place bets -- roll the dice, if you will -- based on what we do know, which for me is the elements above.

The State of the Union, now with Gouverneur Morris!

For the fifth exciting year in a row, line-by-line commentary on President Bush's State of the Union speech here. Previous installments:
2004
2005
2006
2007

Last year, Dikembe Mutumbo. This year, Gouverneur Morris! All the details, including why this speech ended with the three most dreaded words in presidential rhetoric, here.

Bill Clinton on getting involved in the primaries, ca. 2002

In the fall of 2002 I flew from Washington to Little Rock and then Fayetteville, Arkansas -- in my own little propeller airplane, it was a blast -- to spend time interviewing Bill Clinton. He was just settling into his post-presidential life. Raising funds for his foundation (now a source of controversy on its own, then still a goal). Laying out plans for his presidential library, then still under construction. Working on his book -- already behind schedule, but of course it turned out well. And theorizing about how, as a young and vigorous former two-term president, he should deal with the next crop of Democratic candidates then on the rise.

Ah, if only he'd listened to his own advice five-plus years later. Sample: "Look," he told me back then. "I can't run." As I said in the article, "In his tone he reminded me again of a champion athlete whose career had come to an unnaturally early end."

"If somebody needs me to go do something [for the party], and nobody else can do it, I'll go do it." He pointed out that he had appeared at more than a hundred fundraising events for the party and its candidates in 2002. 'I'd like for my direct political involvement to go way down ..."

Full transcript of the interview is here. Passages from the resulting cover story, "Post President for Life," come after the jump.

Continue reading "Bill Clinton on getting involved in the primaries, ca. 2002" »

Man from Mars perspective on the Republican debate

As soon as this evening's Florida debate ended, the MSNBC TV commentators were wondering how it would have looked to "someone who was seeing these candidates for the first time."

Why didn't they just ask me?

This is the first debate among the Republicans that I've seen at full length and in real time.* So factoring in all the expectations I'd gathered from coverage (Romney too weaselly, McCain really the strongest one, Huckabee a charmer, etc), how did it look?

Romney by a mile. More precisely, the only candidate you could imagine putting up a plausible general-election fight. Again, I'm not handicapping the GOP race, which I know nothing about. I'm not saying how each candidate did relative to previous appearances. I am telling you how this one debate looked if you had never seen these guys on the same stage before.

McCain, Giuliani, and Huckabee all notably ill at ease when asked to say anything about the economy. (Huckabee: building two new lanes on I-95, Maine to Florida, as an energy saving measure???) When Romney asked Giuliani a specific question about how to deal with China, the answer reminded me of the way I would sound if asked to fill 90 seconds discussing my favorite fashion designers. McCain attempting to describe his economy policy by listing his advisors. (Jack Kemp?) The more the economy matters as The general election issue, the less this will cut it -- and the more Romney can use at least the veneer of his being able to discuss the issue.

Two other random points:
- Boy, do these people hate Hillary Clinton! Her name was mentioned at least ten times as often as George Bush's (and all Bush mentions, that I heard, were from Romney).

- The intrusiveness and badgering nature of Tim Russert's questions! I wonder whether the two parties will subject themselves to another presidential cycle of "debating" on these demeaning terms.

Here endeth the report from outer space.

___
* (Amazingly enough, they're not carried on TV in China. Real-time webcasts are not that easy to find, and the connections are too slow any way.)

Why I won't end up voting for Ron Paul (updated!)

The Daily Paul has a ringing new endorsement, based on.... the (cliched+ignoramus) boiled-frog principle!!!

I've heard more and more people on the forums wondering why the average Joe out there just ~doesn't get it~. Here is an analogy that I use when talking to people to get the point across... it's odd, but it works.

Take a frog and throw it into a pot of boiling water. It'll jump out as quickly as possible! Take the same frog, put it in a pot of cold water, and heat it up slowly... it will sit in the water until it dies. (I've not had the heart to bench test this theory, I'm just going with what I was told.)

Close readers will recall that Hillary Clinton also went in for boiled-frog balderdash before her defeat in Iowa. As far as I can tell, she's steered clear ever since -- and look at the results! Maybe this is what people mean when they say the Clintons will do whatever it takes to win. If only the Paul team had her discipline....

(Thanks to Dylan Matthews. And note to any sincere Ron Paul supporters who come across this item: I actually have a lot of sympathy and admiration for his role in this campaign. This is less about him than about my ongoing lament over the moron-ization of American political rhetoric. Update! Judging from recent entries in my email inbox, I guess I need to make something a little bit clearer. This post is not really about Ron Paul. It is a what we English-speakers refer to as a "tongue in cheek" reference to a bit of political bombast I am determined to shame people out of using: the inaccurate "boiled frog" story. Sometimes the term used is, "a little joke." No offense meant to Paul-dom!)

New Hampshire, from Beijing

1) From a distance, it is no surprise that Hillary Clinton apparently got a big boost from women voters. It's more surprising (if this is what the results end up showing) that she didn't have a larger margin among women who made up their minds in the last few days. She really was ganged-up on after Iowa, in a way that should have brought out the chivalry --rather, the decency -- in at least some men and the solidarity in many women. Also, if "the media" largely doing the ganging-up had been one of the candidates on the ballot, I suspect its popularity would have been below Tom Tancredo's.

2) As Andrew Sullivan immediately noted, John Edwards really did give the very same post-vote speech this week that he did last week in Iowa. Weird. Same real-world anecdotes he had delivered in a thousand living rooms in Iowa and New Hampshire and that he used on TV five days ago. Same apparent lack of recognition that this was one of his scarce opportunities to reach tens of millions of people live and unfiltered. Main difference: the (inaccurate) claim that last week he had congratulated Barack Obama on his win and this week he was congratulating Hillary Clinton. He quite notably did not mention Obama last week.

Continue reading "New Hampshire, from Beijing" »

A fact to understand about all the candidates' performances

If you have not worked or traveled on a political campaign, you really cannot imagine the importance of sheer mind-destroying, bone-sapping, emotion-straining, personality-fraying exhaustion as a factor in performances by candidates. Especially the moments that seem angry, thin-skinned, dazed-sounding, ill-advised, or clumsily-worded. Where there is a "gaffe," there is usually an over-tired candidate backed up by over-tired staff.

I'm not saying this is the only activity that pushes people beyond reasonable limits, sleep-wise. (Combat. Medical-intern duty. Overnight shift work or long distance trucking. Infants in the house. Etc.) I'm saying that it's the one where the very great importance of the fatigue-tax is most likely to be missed by onlookers.

Continue reading "A fact to understand about all the candidates' performances" »

The NYT introduces a wordsmith

Wow.

Suppose you had just received one of the most important opportunities in opinion journalism: a regular op-ed column in the New York Times. Suppose it was all the more important because it gave you a base in what would normally be considered enemy territory, right there alongside Paul Krugman and Frank Rich and the NYT's own editorials. Suppose your debut column came at a moment of peak political excitement, with the surprise of the Iowa caucuses just behind us and the New Hampshire primaries one day away.

In those circumstances, would this be the best you could come up with for the very first paragraphs of your very first column? It is what the new NYT columnist William Kristol has offered to introduce himself:

Thank you, Senator Obama. You’ve defeated Senator Clinton in Iowa. It looks as if you’re about to beat her in New Hampshire. There will be no Clinton Restoration. A nation turns its grateful eyes to you.

But gratitude for sparing us a third Clinton term only goes so far. Who, inquiring minds want to know, is going to spare us a first Obama term? After all, for all his ability and charm, Barack Obama is still a liberal Democrat. Some of us would much prefer a non-liberal and non-Democratic administration. We don’t want to increase the scope of the nanny state, we don’t want to undo the good done by the appointments of John Roberts and Samuel Alito to the Supreme Court, and we really don’t want to snatch defeat out of the jaws of victory in Iraq.

I'm saying nothing about the content here. Indeed the subject -- how the GOP should run against Barack Obama -- is one on which readers would want to hear a well-connected Republican's views.

I am talking instead about the breathtaking banality of expression.

Continue reading "The NYT introduces a wordsmith" »

Maybe this is why Hillary lost in Iowa? (Boiled-frog dept)

A head start for the historians: Perhaps it was because in the final weekend of campaigning she fell back on that hoariest and most boneheaded of political cliches, the boiled-frog canard?*

“If you want to boil a frog, don’t put it in hot water because it will jump right out,” she said. “You put it in cold water and then turn up the heat gradually and it’s a goner.”

Mrs. Clinton punctuates the parable by declaring that “we have got to figure out how not to be the frog in cold water.”

OK. But we have also got to figure out how, for the sake of scientific accuracy, freshness in language, and the dignity of the poor frogs, we can stop talking about them in this heartless and formulaic way. (By the way, minus points to the New York Times for reporting the episode as if Sen. Clinton were using a clever image.) Soon, I will release the results of the contest to find other words to get across the point that people can get used to slowly worsening circumstances that would shock them if confronted all at once.

If you're ready for more on the topic, try this, this, this, this, and this. And I'm an equal-opportunity frog defender: I'm picking on Hillary Clinton at the moment because she's the only one I've noticed picking on the frogs.

* Yes, yes, I understand the irony of using canard to describe a tale about les grenouilles

The essential exchange of the New Hampshire Democrats' debate

It involved Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, on the power of words in presidential leadership.

Each made his or her respective point clearly, calmly, and appealingly. This was not an ambush or a gotcha or a gaffe or an unintentionally revealing quicksilver exchange. It was the expression of thought-through and well expressed views. And on the merits I think it left the Clinton camp at a terrible disadvantage.

Clinton, after pointing out that Obama voted for an energy bill that was full of the special-interest tax breaks he now criticizes in speeches:

So you know, words are not actions.

And as beautifully presented and passionately felt as they are, they are not action. You know, what we've got to do is translate talk into action and feeling into reality. I have a long record of doing that, of taking on the very interests that you have just rightly excoriated because of the overdue influence that they have in our government. And you know, probably nobody up here has been the subject of more incoming fire from the Republicans and the special interests, so I think I know exactly what I'm walking into and I am prepared to take them on.

Then, after an appeal by John Edwards to the Teddy Roosevelt tradition of head-on trust-busting, this response from Obama:

Look, I think it's easier to be cynical and just say, "You know what, it can't be done because Washington's designed to resist change." But in fact there have been periods of time in our history where a president inspired the American people to do better, and I think we're in one of those moments right now. I think the American people are hungry for something different and can be mobilized around big changes -- not incremental changes, not small changes....

[T]he truth is actually words do inspire. Words do help people get involved. Words do help members of Congress get into power so that they can be part of a coalition to deliver health care reform, to deliver a bold energy policy. Don't discount that power, because when the American people are determined that something is going to happen, then it happens. And if they are disaffected and cynical and fearful and told that it can't be done, then it doesn't. I'm running for president because I want to tell them, yes, we can. And that's why I think they're responding in such large numbers.

Of course each of them was right. Each expressed part of the job of a president, or any leader. Words and deeds. Talk and action. Poetry and prose. Presidents obviously do best when they can do both.

But only Obama captured what is unique about a president's role. A President's actions matter -- Lyndon Johnson with his legislation, Richard Nixon with his opening to China -- but lots of other people can help shape policies. A President's words often matter more, and only he -- or she -- can express them. Grant led the Union Army, but Abraham Lincoln, in addition to selecting Grant, wrote and delivered his inaugural and Gettysburg addresses. Long before Franklin Roosevelt actually did anything about the Great Depression, his first inaugural address ("the only thing we have to fear...") was important in itself. The same was true of Winston Churchill just after he succeeded Neville Chamberlain. It would be years before the Nazi advance would be contained, but Churchill's words and bearing were indispensable to Britain's recovery.

Certainly Hillary Clinton knows this. And she knows the political record of poetry-vs-prose matchups in the past. Kennedy vs. Nixon. Carter vs. Ford (yes, Carter was a man of healing-America poetry in those days). Reagan vs. Mondale. And of course the first Candidate Clinton against his Democratic rival Paul Tsongas and then against the first President Bush. She is playing the hand she holds, but it's worse than the other hand.

One extra thought on this point, from Jimmy Carter himself. This is the way he described the words-vs-action tension in the major speech that laid out his human rights policy, the commencement address at Notre Dame in 1977. I am partial to this formulation, because I was involved in putting it together. But I think it, like Obama's comment, is closer to what Americans expect of their president than what Hillary Clinton has been left with, the "let me handle the details" appeal. Especially what they'll expect of the next president:

We live in a world that is imperfect and which will always be imperfect--a world that is complex and confused and which will always be complex and confused.I understand fully the limits of moral suasion. We have no illusion that changes will come easily or soon. But I also believe that it is a mistake to undervalue the power of words and of the ideas that words embody. In our own history, that power has ranged from Thomas Paine's "Common Sense" to Martin Luther King, Jr.'s "I Have a Dream."

Two political anecdotes

Yeah, yeah, anecdotes aren't proof. But they get your attention. Two that have gotten mine:

* The truly startling one was a conversation just now with a very close family friend who, through a lifetime of voting that began in the Harry Truman era, has always and only gone Republican and still refers to G.W. Bush strictly as "The President." The friend said: "If Obama is the nominee, I'll vote for him. I'd never vote for her" -- meaning Hillary Clinton. This friend lives in a swing state.

* Speaking of Hillary Clinton, just before the Iowa results I was struck by this fact: I had come across countless people in the previous two years who assumed that Hillary Clinton would be the Democratic nominee. In fact, I can hardly think of anyone who didn't assume that. But in all that time I have met only a handful for people who were actually for her. And in my experience, every one of these people had been part of the Greater Clinton team.

There had always been away to explain away this paradox. Perhaps Hillary Clinton '08 would be a version of Richard Nixon '68 -- beloved by few, but still grinding out a win. But the other possibility was that the tensions couldn't forever be contained -- if people don't really like a candidate, in the end the candidate won't win. The Nixon scenario isn't looking so likely now.

Iowa tableaux: stagecraft by the Democrats

Back to the world of the internet, and real-time TV coverage, just soon enough to see the post-caucus statements by the leading candidates. About the Democrats:

John Edwards: attractive candidate, unattractive statement. If all the others who spoke last night (this morning, my time in Beijing) were too patently aware that their bodies might be in Iowa but the audience they cared about was in New Hampshire and beyond, Edwards sounded as if he thought he were still in a living room in Cedar Rapids. It never pays to sound either grudging or angry when down. Even for the plainest operational reasons -- looking good and optimistic for the elections just ahead, not alienating the likely nominee -- and apart from its being the right thing to do, there was no excuse for not naming and congratulating Barack Obama.

Barack Obama: Of course we can't be sure that he'll win the nomination, although that seems likely right now, or that he'll be elected if he is the nominee -- though given the wounded candidates and intellectual collapse on the Republican side, that seems practically a lock. And as Bill Clinton has so helpfully pointed out, it's a roll of the dice what kind of president he would actually be. But to watch his statement live was to realize, even as it was happening, that you were seeing a moment of history people were likely to remember and discuss for a very long time.

Hillary Clinton: Everyone has said everything that can be said about the challenges for her campaign and her message. To me, the scene on camera drowned out anything she said in her statement. She, a trouper, managed a convincing-enough smile and acceptably jaunty "the fight's just begun!" tone. The staff around herself simply looked ashen -- even though as pros they surely recognized that they were on TV just like her, even though as pros they must have known how forcefully body language speaks. One just to the left of her chewed gum grimly and desperately through her speech. Another, to the right, made me think of a family member at an accident scene. (Let me not be coy about this: when looking at him I thought immediately of the stricken face of Bobby Kennedy's loyal aide Frank Mankiewicz forty years ago when he announced at Good Samaritan Hospital in Los Angeles that Kennedy had been killed. It's macabre, but it's the visual connection that immediately came to mind.)

And Bill Clinton!!! Who managed a wan smile but for seconds on end stood motionless, as if traumatized or stuffed. Better than anyone else in the country he must understand the situation. The young candidate with the sex appeal and the fun and the magic and the sense of the future and the opportunity to shed the old -- Clinton knows the advantages that candidate has. And he knows full well how feeble the appeals to "experience" and "ready from day one" and "competence and responsibility" were when they were issued sixteen years ago by a candidate who really was superbly prepared and experienced: the incumbent president, eight-year vice president, victorious war commander, former ambassador and CIA director George H. W. Bush.

Update: As several readers have pointed out, one of the people I noticed was not technically a staff member but New York's lieutenant governor, David Paterson. I thought of writing the first time around that if i had been in the U.S. over the last 18 months I might have recognized more of the figures on the stage (apart from Bill and Hillary Clinton and Madeleine Albright.) And in general I might have used the word "supporters" or "team" rather than "staff," since many were office holders or other luminaries rather than paid assistants. Whoever they were, they looked pretty miserable.

The FCC decision is bad news

The battle over media "cross-ownership" rules -- allowing local newspapers to own local TV and radio stations, and vice versa -- appeared to have been fought, and resolved, four years ago. I described the battle back then, and the stakes, in an Atlantic cover story called "The Age of Murdoch." At the time, the three Republicans on the FCC, led by chairman Michael Powell (Colin's son) voted in favor of the liberalization. The two Democrats, Jonathan Adelstein and Michael Copps, voted against. The liberalization went through, but it was so unpopular and so sloppy in its reasoning that the Congress and courts effectively countermanded it.

The FCC chairman now, Kevin Martin, was the newest White House appointee to the commission back then. I know, from reporting that story, that Michael Powell was badmouthed in leaks from the Administration for handling the whole issue so messily -- and ultimately to so little effect. (Side note; what other father-son team has as much to regret about its service in a single administration as Colin and Michael Powell do about their service under GW Bush?) Now Martin is the force behind the new effort to loosen cross-ownership rules. Nothing against him, but I hope his experience turns out to be the same as Powell's. Adelstein and Copps are still there, and to their credit once again voted No.

Changing the ownership rules was a bad idea four years ago, and it's a bad idea now. Full case in the article. Summary point is: no matter what you think is wrong with the media, corporate concentration won't make things better. Further discussion from the Media Access Project here.

Further on JK Glassman and public diplomacy

This hasn't happened in a while, but after taking a few hours to to think it over, I've changed my mind and regret something I posted very recently. This is the glory and the curse of real-time reactions via the internet. The curse is saying something in "public" I would have simply eliminated as an early draft in "real" writing. The corrective (rather than glory) is being able to say quickly: I didn't quite mean that, "that" being

Politics

November 23, 2009

Manufactured failure #6: the wrapup

November 22, 2009

Manufactured failure #5: views from China

Manufactured failure #4: more on Obama's trip

November 21, 2009

Manufactured failure #3: insider's view of the Obama trip

Manufactured failure #2: the press, Obama, Asia

November 18, 2009

Those tin-eared Americans

On Obama's Asian diplomacy -- #3

November 17, 2009

On Obama's Asian diplomacy -- #2

On Obama's Asian diplomacy -- #1

November 16, 2009

Further on local reaction to Obama's Shanghai town hall (updated)

Obama's town hall in Shanghai just now

November 13, 2009

The right kind of "security theater"

November 11, 2009

Placeholder on presidential rhetoric

November 9, 2009

Mad magazine takes on the birthers

November 7, 2009

Unemployment and airplane crashes

November 2, 2009

A very good question

October 23, 2009

On the Fox News / White House dispute

October 19, 2009

"To Obama" in Japanese

October 14, 2009

On the chain of command

October 11, 2009

The speech Obama won't ace (plus, WaPo gaffe followup)

October 9, 2009

Obama's Nobel remarks: four very skillful paragraphs

About the Nobel prize, two years ago

October 3, 2009

Olympic notes: good for Rio

September 30, 2009

A nice tool for envisioning rhetoric

September 29, 2009

Update on McCaughey and tobacco

September 28, 2009

One crucial B. McCaughey update

September 27, 2009

Obesity and politics

September 22, 2009

Two views of SECDEF Gates

September 20, 2009

More slippery slopes

September 19, 2009

Thomas de Quincey on slippery slopes

September 18, 2009

Slippery slope updates

September 17, 2009

Political rhetoric question/contest: "slippery slopes"

September 16, 2009

Discussion with John Podesta at Gov 2.0 conference

September 15, 2009

"God bless Precinct 8"

September 13, 2009

Our second president on "God Bless America"

September 9, 2009

Once again, a first-rate speech

September 8, 2009

I was wrong (again)

September 5, 2009

Festival of updates #5: Wolfowitz and Iraq

September 3, 2009

A very simple question about the 'public option'

August 26, 2009

Senator Edward M. Kennedy

August 25, 2009

If you're looking for the 1979 'Passionless Presidency' article...

Will it never end? McCaughey v. Ezekiel Emanuel

August 22, 2009

Today's McCaughey, euthanasia, and general falsehood update