Anti-smart

As I look over some items I missed during my vacation, I find a post by Mark Thoma pointing us to a commentary by Jeffrey Sachs:

In recent years, the United States has been more a source of global instability than a source of global problem-solving.

Examples include the war in Iraq, launched by the US on false premises, obstructionism on efforts to curb climate change, meager development assistance and the violation of international treaties such as the Geneva Conventions. While many factors contributed to America’s destabilizing actions, a powerful one is anti-intellectualism...

By anti-intellectualism, I mean especially an aggressively anti-scientific perspective, backed by disdain for those who adhere to science and evidence. The challenges faced by a major power like the US require rigorous analysis of information according to the best scientific principles.

Climate change, for example, poses dire threats... that must be assessed according to prevailing scientific norms... We need scientifically literate politicians adept at evidence-based critical thinking to translate these findings and recommendations into policy and international agreements.

Sachs goes on to discuss the opposition of the Bush White House, supported by the mainstream press, to science and the policies that logically follow.

These are not isolated albeit powerful individuals out of touch with reality. They reflect the fact that a significant portion of American society, which currently votes mainly Republican, rejects or is simply unaware of basic scientific evidence regarding climate change, biological evolution, human health and other fields. These voters generally do not reject the benefits of technologies that result from modern science, but they do reject the evidence and advice of scientists regarding public policies.

Some of these uninformed citizens are ignorant, having suffered through poor education, and others are willfully denying reality based on religious fundamentalism. It doesn't have to be this way:

The issue here is not religion versus science. All of the great religions have traditions of fruitful interchange with -- and, indeed, support for -- scientific inquiry. The Golden Age of Islam a millennium ago was also the age in which Islamic science led the world. Pope John Paul II declared his support for the basic science of evolution, and Roman Catholic bishops are strongly in favor of limiting human-induced climate change, based on the scientific evidence.

[For a wonderfully stated view of how to reconcile religion and science, see E.O. Wilson's article from 1998, quoted by Andrew Sullivan - "mutual respect" being the takeaway here:

Which world view prevails, religious transcendentalism or scientific empiricism, will make a great difference in the way humanity claims the future. While the matter is under advisement, an accommodation can be reached if the following overriding facts are realized. Ethics and religion are still too complex for present-day science to explain in depth. They are, however, far more a product of autonomous evolution than has hitherto been conceded by most theologians. Science faces in ethics and religion its most interesting and possibly most humbling challenge, while religion must somehow find the way to incorporate the discoveries of science in order to retain credibility.

Religion will possess strength to the extent that it codifies and puts into enduring, poetic form the highest values of humanity consistent with empirical knowledge. That is the only way to provide compelling moral leadership. Blind faith, no matter how passionately expressed, will not suffice. Science, for its part, will test relentlessly every assumption about the human condition and in time uncover the bedrock of moral and religious sentiments.

The eventual result of the competition between the two world views, I believe, will be the secularization of the human epic and of religion itself. However the process plays out, it demands open discussion and unwavering intellectual rigor in an atmosphere of mutual respect.]

Sachs sees this situation, given our current global challenges, as absolutely critical:

The US must return to the global consensus based on shared science rather than anti-intellectualism. That is the urgent challenge at the heart of American society today.

It's difficult to argue with any of this, so I won't, but I think Sachs understates the problem by using the word "intellectual." In common parlance, "intellectual" is associated with a tweedy, elbow-patched professor expounding on obscurities while puffing away on his pipe. It is a term taken by many to express a kind of inert pondering of each problem, in lieu of a muscular action-oriented approach. Intellectuals are by common understanding ineffective; therefore, what they do, thinking, is discounted as a strategy.

The bigger problem, of course, is that this country is anti-smart. Oh, we like the word, crediting people with intelligence even as we confuse stupidity with authenticity, glibness with depth. There are no shortage of articles with statements like, "George W. Bush is smart, but...." It is a strange necessity that we call him smart at the same time we recognize that he has profoundly misunderstood his office, his duty, his nation. And now we find the same idea attached to Sarah Palin, a woman who is credited as smart while she shows a complete ignorance of the fact that her statements can be recorded and played back.

In reality, we have no idea what "smart" is or how to evaluate it; even if we can, we mistrust it, as if every scientist is trying to trick us with his or her "book learnin'." Until we respect and value intelligence, instead of falsely attributing it to anyone who can read a teleprompter, we are unlikely to find our way in intelligence, politics, business, or pretty much anything else.

Review - The Whole Truth and Nothing To Lose

David Baldacci is a reliable thriller writer, mainly in the area of politics (at least in those books of his I've read). His strengths are in dense plotting, as the action tends to move quickly from scene to scene, not getting hung up on lengthy exposition or scene description or character development. He writes "popcorn" novels, ones that can be read quickly and provide visceral enjoyment. From what I've read, his quality seem to sustain itself in a way that David Morrell and Jonathan Kellerman have had trouble doing lately.

These virtues are in evidence in what is billed as "his first international thriller," The Whole Truth (2008). The main character, Shaw (no first name, something that is supposed to be taken as significant), is the typical physical and mental superman, with unique skills that make him invaluable to a secret crime-fighting organization. TWT is designed around the idea that Shaw's falling in love transforms him in ways that will presumably be interesting to the reader, so we're not just following a complex series of international machinations, but the flowering of a man's closed-off soul.

And none of the "soul" stuff is all that fascinating. You may be affected, a little, by his personal travails, but there is not enough depth there to make you care about this cipher of a man. Shaw is just not a character who grabbed me, though I reserve the right to modify that judgment if he becomes the focus of a series, as seems likely.

The rest of the book is fine, however, if not particularly memorable. You'll be buoyed along on the usual fast-moving plot, and the geopolitical nature of it is realistic, if somewhat underdeveloped for my taste (though events can conspire to make dramatic effects banal, even risible; see if you can work up horror over $130 per barrel oil, which you're supposed to see as a representation of world chaos). You'll move from page to page, you'll want to see how it turns out, and there are enough surprises to make it interesting, though the denouement is pretty much a foregone conclusion.

If the character of Shaw seems familiar other than expressing some clear lineage to James Bond, it is that he resembles Lee Child's Jack Reacher. A strong, powerful man who rights wrongs where he finds them, Reacher is one of the more compelling figures in modern pop fiction. He owns nothing but the clothes on his back, and travels where he wants to, showing no particular ties to anything. For Reacher, situations are morally clear and generally yield to some kind of violence.

That doesn't sound promising to many readers, I'm sure, but Child usually does a good job of justifying Reacher's actions, well enough so that you tend to see him as an outsider who can cut through red tape to do good, not as a vigilante who works outside the law to get what he wants. What is ingenious here is that Reacher never profits from his activities, but just moves on down the road to the next situation that he will (reluctantly) handle.

And that's why book 12 in this series, Nothing To Lose (2008), is a bit disappointing. Reacher comes across a town that treats him badly, and he decides to investigate no matter the cost. Child does find some plot contrivances that justify Reacher's actions, and he works with a policewoman from a neighboring town to provide further verification that these actions are "right," but it just didn't seem sufficient to explain why Reacher doesn't just keep moving down the road.

Now, Child doesn't seem capable of writing a truly awful book, so there is plenty of compelling description and action, and it's still a pretty good read. But it's a relatively minor entry in the series, not one I'd recommend starting with, and, obviously, I hope that the next Reacher novel gets this character back on track.

In summary, neither one of these books is a waste of time, but each has flaws that might provide fatal to any particular reader, depending on taste. Baldacci and Child have done better, and one can only hope that they will do so again.

Why Obama won the election

This will not be one of those cute posts where I follow up with another one titled, "Why McCain won the election." With 17 days to go, it seems clear that, barring anything dramatic, Barack Obama will become the 44th president of the United States. For McCain to come back now will require more than appearances with David Letterman (and isn't it telling that Letterman asks questions more probing than most of the pundits and "journalists"?).

So I'm going to offer up my take on why this victory is occurring. I'll leave to the usual suspects the standard explanations (it was the right time, the youth vote came out, the financial crisis made us realize that we didn't want any more Republicans in charge for a while). Those are all factors, but, to me, they were not the deciders. I've had a couple of thoughts, one that I haven't read anywhere else, the other one a variation on a common theme.

1) The Biden choice

I don't believe that Joe Biden will bring many votes to the Democratic ticket. I have favored the choice since it was made, believing that Biden lends some serious foreign policy cred to the team. But this veteran pol is not going to ignite massive excitement in the electorate.

However, I believe that Obama's decision (perhaps unwittingly) was the key moment of the 2008 campaign. Here's why.

Obama had a choice between two: Hillary or not-Hillary. There were a whole lot of people pushing him to put Clinton on the ticket, arguing that he needed the army of women that would only back another female. Let's say Obama had gone with that, let's look at where McCain would have been.

Before the convention, John McCain was in a most curious position. He was a Republican without his base, abandoned by the Rush Limbaugh wing (who essentially said they wouldn't vote), but perceived as a centrist due to his "maverick" status. In other words, he had done Clinton-style triangulation without having secured the base, which left him in a good position to compete with a relatively left liberal. That's, I believe, why the polls were relatively close - McCain had the spectrum from the near-right to a good number of the center, while Obama had the rest of the center over to the far left. Had it remained that way, I think the election would have been pretty competitive.

There was another problem, though. Most of conventional wisdom says that competence is important to surprisingly few voters. Image, shared sensibilities, a beer-drinking buddy, all these are considered more important.

But there are some voters who prize execution over ideology, and they (quite obviously) tend to be found in the center. Some of these are people who believe that Washington actions are so constrained that left-right distinctions are unimportant in terms of actual programs, so the crucial thing is how well the government pulls off their goals. Normally, these people are a small enough group that the campaigns don't see it worth their while to target it.

This election, however, coming after a profoundly inept administration (which probably made the group larger than usual), and perceived as so close, made this group potentially critical to success. For many reasons, one of which is mentioned below, the McCain campaign couldn't count on much support from these voters. So other groups would need to be brought in.

Let's look at the landscape the day after Obama chooses Clinton. The base immediately embraces the best of a bad lot, and flocks to McCain (they don't like him any more than they did, but the Blonde Devil in the Pantsuit must be destroyed). The women who weren't reliably for McCain except as a reaction to the Democratic primary are gone, but John didn't really have them anyway. The fight moves to the center, including the execution people, and McCain picks a running mate who appeals to that center and has a proven track record of making things work (a Romney or another governor, probably not Lieberman). In my view, McCain has an excellent chance to win.

But Obama screwed that up by not picking Clinton. He picked Biden, no hero to the base, but not objectionable enough to get Rush to hold his nose and go with McCain. The base stays home.

And Biden is competent, with a track record of making things happen. Suddenly, two parts of the electorate are much harder to bring McCain's way. If he tacks even more rightward, hard to do with his embrace of so many of Bush's policies, he loses whatever progress he's made with the center. What to do, what to do?

It was time for the last-ditch pass, and McCain went up to Alaska to find someone to catch it. He chose Sarah Palin, hoping that she would bring in the base, and that she would bring in all the disaffected Hillary supporters. Since she was a symbolic pick, almost no vetting was needed. She was a woman, she was far right, and she's a governor, she must be competent.

And we've seen what happened. The base was energized, so McCain's picked up support and money there. But women were unimpressed, since Palin's views are quite inimical to rights that many women value (I think McCain may have seen women as more malleable than they actually are, perhaps because he grew up before the women's movement was even a glimmer). For those in the center who value competence, well, it took almost no time before Palin's record was examined (and she was asked actual questions), and her shortcomings became evident. McCain lost way more than he won in this deal, and, as a result, the election was lost.

But there was another critical factor on which Obama beat McCain badly:

2) Personnel execution

Another of the many lessons of the Bush debacle has been a recognition that it actually matters who a president chooses to have around him or her. We suspected it during the Carter years, when the late Ham Jordan was actually an important adviser. But Bush clinched it with his appointment of profoundly incompetent aides and administrators. Managing personnel is an important part of a president's duties.

Since presidential candidates are not required to pre-appoint Cabinet members, we're left to look at the way they handle their campaigns. Obama has done so expertly, McCain decidedly less so.

You may recall Samantha Power, foreign affairs adviser to the Obama campaign who stepped down after calling Hillary Clinton a monster back in March. Here's the thing: she's truly gone, we've barely heard a word from her since her departure. I've seen no articles suggesting that she slips ideas to Obama under the table, she's...just...gone.

You may recall Phil Gramm, former senator and economic adviser to the McCain campaign. Back in July, Gramm called the U.S. "a nation of whiners" (he's also likely the leading legislator behind the current financial crisis). Yet Gramm continues to be part of the McCain team, cited in TIME as a top adviser. Similarly, Carly Fiorina, failed head of HP and the "brain" behind the decline of Lucent Technologies, makes gaffe after gaffe but never quite seems to disappear.

To be fair to McCain, he may well be the ultimate team guy, a good quality in the military where loyalty and team cohesion is so important. One cannot help but be moved by stories of how servicemen always "go back for their own" as they recover their dead at great risk to themselves.

But this is not a campaign against the VC, it's a campaign for the office of president. Voters look at the people who surround the candidate, and decide whether they're acceptable. Obama has preserved an inner circle that has stayed on message, and shown a willingness to heave out those who can't. McCain hasn't done that; next thing you know, Brownie is back in charge of FEMA, and nobody thinks that's a good idea.

---

That's my take, anyway, as to why Obama is rolling to victory now.

The End Times are nigh

The Chicago Tribune has endorsed Barack Obama. This may make a great trivia question one day: What do Barack Obama, Horace Greeley, and Teddy Roosevelt have in common? They are the only non-Republicans the Trib has endorsed for president.

I wrote last week that I would be surprised if it happened, and I am. The editorial board seems to be impressed with Obama, and disappointed in McCain ("McCain put his campaign before his country") in his pick of a running mate and his incoherent back-and-forth message.

If you want to be discouraged, take a look at some of the comments (1167 as of this writing). I got through 20 or so, then turned away in disgust. At a time when this country needs to come together, we still seem mighty polarized, much of it based on scurrilous lies and pointless innuendo. I hope that some of those commenters will pull themselves together, realize that (unlike the past 8+ years) we will most likely have a president who will try to represent everyone, and pitch in with solving our problems. Perhaps that's just a dream, but I can hope...

Goal-setting

One thing that we've heard a lot about is that we need a Manhattan Project for new forms of energy, that we need to commit ourselves to a massive endeavor to find the source or sources of fuel that will replace our dependence on foreign supplies. I have a lot of qualms about this, most of which I've expressed before (the two biggest: I doubt that New Energy = a New Economy; and there is no guarantee that the U.S. will be the great discoverer, so we'll just pay those billions to a different foreign entity).

Here, though, I want to talk about the analogy to the Manhattan Project, because its philosophy is virtually unsupportable in today's political climate. Let's remember that the Project was run by the government in secret, its budget hidden in a veil of "national security." I know that private companies had their hands in it, but it was, everyone can agree, a government effort.

But we all know from Ronald Reagan (and Sarah Palin) that government cannot be trusted, and this belief is so pervasive that very few Democrats seriously question it these days (I recognize the unreality of the current financial crisis, but the key word there is "crisis" - people are not yet convinced that the energy situation is in that mode). Therefore, no one sees an Energy Project; instead, we want to "unleash" the great creative power of the American people by offering tax credits or rebates or whatever. The government won't manage anything, because it can't, but it will dole out money and wait for magic to happen.

I'm not a lunatic liberal, there are many things where I want government to take a light touch. But there are areas in which government, as a representative of this great democracy, should take the lead. (I recognize that this is one of the great issues of political philosophy, this balance, but I think we've let the balance become tipped too far in one direction.)

China has not taken the world lead in manufacturing by providing vague "incentives." They don't turn out large numbers of engineers by hoping that kids would decide to go into the field. Maybe you don't like comparing us to a totalitarian system. Fine, then look at our democratic friends, the Indians. Do we believe that they just spontaneously saw the benefits of studying computer science, or providing call center services? No, in all these cases, their government made a concerted effort to steer their society along a path.

[To pre-answer my critics, I'm not advocating a Soviet-style 5 Year Plan. That was the apotheosis of a too-heavy hand. But the examples I've provided demonstrate that it's possible for a government to set targets and formulate policies to support them without strangling their economies.]

But we refuse to do that, so caught up are we in ideological purity. If I had to summarize our problems with education simply, I'd say that we have failed to establish real goals. Even No Child Left Behind, with its metrics and numbers, is not specific enough to carry through to the world of employment. After the TV show CSI started, there were numerous stories about how large numbers of students were choosing to study forensic science. No one explained where all those people were going to find jobs, given that forensic budgets weren't increasing by three figure percentages. A rational system, one in which we recognize foreign competition and the waste of resources, wouldn't permit that.

Who is more likely to come up with the Next Big Thing in energy? Americans working in their garages, taking a tax break for the 100 square feet they're using, or the Chinese, using tax dollars to set up huge industrial workshops? Think about where you'd put your money if you had to bet.

Transparency?

A word that's been popular for a while is "transparency." Almost every one who writes an article or book on how to make business and government better cites more transparency as a goal. McCain mentioned it three times last night.

But what do we (and they) really mean by "transparency"? The Wikipedia entry is not too much help, talking a lot about openness and accountability. With government, it points out such positive steps as open meetings and freedom of information acts, and those are good things (too easily circumvented; we're still waiting to hear who "helped" Dick Cheney formulate an energy strategy in the early days of the Bush administration).

The concept gets even muddier when applied to business. Would this financial crisis have been mitigated by knowing exactly what securities were bundled into these shaky mortgage obligations? Perhaps, but how specific can you get? To understand the nature of those underlying mortgages, you would need to know not only the sales price of every house, but the financial condition of everyone who took out those mortgages.

Moreover, much of the value of a particular company comes from its "private" information, the techniques and ideas that they have developed and their competition hasn't. Should potential investors in Google, which, since they're a public company, includes everyone, be informed as to the company's exact search algorithms so they can ascertain the real value of their technology over, say, Yahoo's?

Back to government. McCain can be withering when he accuses Obama of giving away too much information: "You don't tell the enemy what your plans are." Perhaps true, but that's not exactly transparency, is it? Ultimately, everyone is in favor of more transparency for everyone else, but not for themselves. Until each person confronts and resolves that conundrum, calls for transparency seem easy and hollow.

Semi-spam?

We all know what spam is, and we've all received some. But is there a term for semi-spam, an unwanted piece of e-mail that has at least a small justification for being sent?

Back in April, I wrote a post about one of the Democratic debates in which I referred to an excerpt from a sports book. I took issue with one of the statements in the excerpt, but I was generally positive about the book based on what I had read.

So a day or two ago, I receive an e-mail from a PR firm which says (appropriately edited so as not to give any more publicity to this book):

Dear blogger--

I'd like to thank you on behalf of [the author] for helping spread the word about his book on your blog. If you find the time, we'd greatly appreciate any more words you could post for your readers to remind or encourage them to read this book.

Thanks for any and everything you can do.

All best,

This isn't exactly spam, I suppose, since I did write something about this book. It does share some characteristics with spam, in that it is unwanted, and almost certainly comes from an automated process. But semi-spam doesn't seem like a clever enough term; maybe I should put Barbara Wallraff on it.

I did respond to the flack:

Offer to send me a copy, and I'll be happy to review it on my blog.

Androcass

I'll let you know when I hear something.

After the fourth debate

Once again, my familiarity with the stances of each candidate keeps me from being particularly surprised by anything I saw. I expected to see the measured, calm demeanor of Obama, and the energetic near-powderkeg of McCain, and I saw that. I expected Obama to be able to lay out his plans in a well-reasoned fashion, and McCain to shoot for one-liners while having less command of the details, and I saw that. (In fact, Obama seemed to understand McCain's own medical plan better than McCain did.)

Not that I wasn't disappointed. Neither man had much to offer in the way of an economic crisis plan; I suspect the real answer is that there is no such plan, that the economy is going to have to work its way through this period, and Washington can only hope to mitigate, not fix, the damage. Let's not forget that the New Deal didn't magically dissipate the Great Depression, it took a world war to do that (and I half expected McCain to offer that as a possibility: "My friends, we're going to invade Iran to perk up the economy.") Neither wishes to confront the reality that their objectives will have to be put on hold as America finds itself unable to pay for their bold plans. When you consider, however, that their advisers (like Larry Summers for Obama) don't see any such deferral as necessary, I probably shouldn't be surprised.

I thought Obama did a better job of pointing out that his plans would have long-term benefits at some short-term cost, though I don't really believe that those benefits as stated will be fully realized. McCain is less coherent here, cutting taxes and freezing spending while adding programs to do certain things. He also seemed to feel that vouchers are a magic bullet for transforming education, citing Washington D.C. as an example, and the schools remain terrible in our capital.

Some of the post-debate pundits said that they thought McCain's performance would energize the base, but that's not what McCain needs right now. With 19 days to go, he's going to have to chop about a half a percentage point per day off Obama's lead; even if he somehow achieved that last night, if only through increased turnout, that momentum is unlikely to be maintained. Unless he can come up with a new financial program that Americans will embrace as the solution to their problems, or find a way to cast doubt on Obama's fitness, it would appear that the race is over. It will be interesting to see which approach he'll take - I fear the latter.

Pay just one easy monthly bill...

I don't know about you, but I'm finding the series of bailouts, real and proposed, somewhat bewildering at this point. It appears the trough is open, and the hogs are coming to partake, and there is no limit. We hear about the auto companies and the airlines sneaking in to scoop up some public money while the vault is ripe for the plunder.

It all has the feel of those ads we hear for debt consolidation companies, the places that promise to help you work out your debt and let you make just one easy payment. The government seems to be trying to take all the bad debt out of the system, but not in a way where anyone actually loses anything. Took out a mortgage that you can only afford if you win the lottery? Don't worry about it, Uncle Sam is here to shoulder that burden for you. Invested in mortgage-backed securities that won't pay off for a while, if ever? Let Hank Paulson take them off your hands.

But here's the kicker, if you listen to the learned people and the politicians telling us what we need. Not only are they promising to help us work out our debt, they're vowing that we will have extra money in our pockets (as that's needed to "stimulate" the economy).

And it goes still further. Not only will we only have one low monthly payment, but, in a John McCain world, it will be even lower than it is today, because we need tax cuts. And we'll get that extra stimulus money. And we're going to rebuild our infrastructure, and create new forms of energy, and fix health care.

Whew! Not even the most aggressive debt consolidator promises to combine our debt, give us more spending money, and come over to fix our deck and gas up our cars and give us an aspirin, but that's what we're hearing from Washington.

Look, I understand the Keynesian idea that governments should run deficits in a falling economy to maintain things while we wait for the underlying growth to emerge. But I don't think Keynesian stimulus applies at the levels we're currently talking about, and I doubt that we will be able to sustain our post-downturn growth at a level that will pay this back. I could certainly be wrong, but I wonder what kind of legacy we're handing to future generations.

Before the fourth debate

Not a lot to say, though I will be catching the final McCain-Obama contest. I don't think it will represent anything of a game changer, unless Barack brings Bill Ayres and Reverend Wright up on the stage and announces his intention to make them chief of staff and Secretary of Islam.

Obama's probably too careful to make any such major mistake, so McCain shouldn't hold out too much hope that this will propel him into the role of favorite. McCain could still win, though the polls make this less likely all the time, but it's going to have to be the result of convincing Americans that he really is the safer choice.

As they say in basketball, there's no such thing as an eight-pointer, so if you're down, you have to play good ball and come back over a period of time. McCain certainly has to avoid mistakes himself - he doesn't want to give people an excuse to jump - but his campaign cannot count on tonight to put him back in the game. We'll see what happens.

How times change

For whatever reason, my wife is on the mailing list for the Republicans, which we could live without (that's not an overtly political statement; we're capable of making up our own minds without the mailings, and would rather neither party waste their money on pointless literature).

Here's the tagline on this solicitation for funds (marked EMERGENCY NOTICE):

Dear John, I realize that it is absolutely essential to our Party's success for us to raise at least $30 million in the next 15 days to battle back against the Democrats' massive and limitless fundraising machine.

There is no greater measure of how things have changed. Bush, under the tutelage of Karl Rove, raised fantastic amounts of money in 2000 and 2004, while the Democrats struggled. Now it's the Democrats who have the "massive and limitless fundraising machine."

If Republicans want to look for someone to blame for this turn of events (and they do), they shouldn't waste time excoriating Obama or Howard Dean. Look right into the big white building at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, Washington D.C.

The punditocracy

One of the most enduring myths of America is that it is a meritocracy, that great people achieve great people, that rich people are rich because they have earned it. It requires huge contortions of logic to believe that at times; Britney Spears is worth $100 million because she has tapped into the zeitgeist of early 21st century civilization, or some such twaddle. We ignore that she is actually a broken-down brand, a sad young woman who has served as a receptacle for a series of music producers and video directors, and convince ourselves that she somehow "deserves" to be immensely wealthy.

Luck has no place in this formulation, as it's seen as excuse-making for the untalented to claim that bad fortune has had a hand in their lives. And the successful folks fear that an acknowledgment of their good luck will somehow undercut their obvious merit. I could cite example after example as to the role chance has played in the establishment of many in the world of business or politics, but that really isn't the point of this post (ask yourself, though: are the "leaders" of the Fortune 500 really the 500 best managers in America, or are the members of the Senate really the 100 men and women who are best qualified to make our laws?).

What has me writing about this today is some recent occurrences with the learned people who write for publications like the New York Times (NYT) and the Wall Street Journal (WSJ). These are, USA Today notwithstanding, our true national newspapers of record, and anyone who works for them are automatically anointed as the best and the brightest in the field of journalism. Those who have ascended to the rarefied air of columnists for these august publications become the opinion makers for our times, the people to whom everyone else must react. If you look at the number of blog references to what these people write, you see the truth of that - a Krugman or a Friedman writes a column, and bloggers and other columnists immediately leap to respond, to weigh, to consider their points.

---

William Kristol, son of the father of neoconservatism, writes a column for the NYT. He has accomplished many things in his life in editing and teaching, but the last several years have not been kind to Bill. His recent fame comes from his remarkable wrongness on every aspect of the war in Iraq, yet he was given a column in TIME last year, and now has a column in the Great American Newspaper.

So the less-prominent pundits have to comment on what he writes, no matter how hilarious. The perceptive Ta-Nehisi Coates writes:

Let's get this straight. Two weeks ago, Kristol argued that McCain's campaign suspension was a great move. Last week. Kristol endorsed Sarah Palin and the McCain people's strategy of taking the gloves off. After it failed miserably, Kristol concludes that McCain "should fire his campaign."

(This came from Andrew Sullivan, who adds: And all this incoherent, unaccountable, intellectually vacuous drivel was published in the New York Times.)

---

David Brooks also writes for the NYT. I wrote something about him a couple of weeks ago, and I will deliberately commit the faux pas of quoting myself:

Having seen a lot of Brooks this campaign, I see him as far more interested in being clever than being insightful, far more concerned with how the race can demonstrate that he, David Brooks, is a really smart guy who really understands the rubes in the electorate. What good points he makes, and there are some, are buried under a wave of smugness and superciliousness that make him, for me, barely watchable or readable.

It appears the rest of the commentary firmament is getting around to an examination of Mr. Brooks. Via Sullivan again, Jim Sleeper at TPM Cafe writes about how consistency has become an elusive quality for Brooks:

In one column, Brooks would stroke his chin like a sober savant, purveying credible analysis; in the next, he'd gyrate shamelessly for ideologues and Bush operatives such as Scooter Libby and Karl Rove.

He pirouettes like this constantly to maintain some intellectual self-respect, on the one hand, and to hold onto his market niche as a conservative Republican apologist, on the other. He has tried to square this circle with forced geniality throughout Republicans' Iraq War lying, torture and warrantless surveillance, borrow-and-borrow, spend-and-spend fiscal policy, bottomless corruption, and, lately, national socialism.

What seemed to tear it for people was Brooks' saying in one breath that Sarah Palin was a major problem for Republicans in the election, then writing that Palin's debate performance was "vibrant and tactically clever."

This inconsistency bothers some people, like Sleeper above ("The problem facing Brooks is that everything in his record pushes him to guide his readers as gently and cleverly as he can into the McCain camp, even though that camp now worries and even scares him.") or Steve Benen at Washington Monthly writing about Brooks' focus on Palin's style:

You know who else flashed a bemused smile, accompanied by a never-ending flow of words, like a fearless neighbor who had no use for the idiocies of Washington? George W. Bush, circa 2000. Don't worry about qualifications, issues, or readiness -- vote for the charm. That turned out great, didn't it? I suspect there are probably more than a few Americans who believe we could do a lot worse than "seriousness" right now.

Some people are not so bothered by the whiplash we get as we follow the mind of Brooks. Jeffrey Goldberg:

At least one critic accuses him of dishonesty. It's quite the opposite, I think. David is one of the rare columnists today who wrestles with himself constantly, and who lets the public watch him change his mind. This makes him vulnerable, of course, to accusations that he is his own man. This, apparently, is a bad thing in Washington. So be it.

What it comes down to, I think, is that his critics value consistency more than Brooks does. I've already quoted myself as to why; Brooks is more interested in attracting attention than in presenting a coherent world view. I disagree with Goldberg, I don't think Brooks wrestles with himself at all - the pleasure he gets (as expressed in his oft-seen grin) at whipping out another bon mot overrides any desire he might have to actually believe something.

---

Peggy Noonan writes a column for the WSJ. One of her salient characteristics is the way that she, like Brooks, tries to explain America to itself. You can always tell in her frequent television appearances when one of these insights is coming. She cants her head, her voice gets even more whispery, and she gravely intones some fantastic "truth."

She writes this way as well. She had the good fortune of getting her new book hawked by Tom Brokaw on Meet the Press a week ago Sunday, and Brokaw even read a passage:

I think there is an unspoken subtext in our national political culture right now. ... I think a lot of people are carrying around in their heads ... a sense that the wheels may be coming off the trolley and the trolley off the tracks, that in some deep and fundamental way things have broken down and can’t be fixed, or won’t be fixed anytime soon. That our pollsters are preoccupied with ‘right track’ and ‘wrong track’ but missing the number of people who think the answer to ‘How are things going in America?’ is ‘Off the tracks and hurtling toward an unknown destination.’

There is enough truth here to be interesting, but I'm fascinated by the "unspoken subtext" part. Noonan wishes to believe that there is some collective unconscious operating in the American people right now, because she's smart enough to find this revealed truth, she's the one who's smart enough to detect that and parrot it back to her fellow pundits.

What she could do, of course, is talk to real people or, if that's too difficult, deign to read a few blogs. The text is neither "sub" nor "unspoken"; there are plenty of us setting out in sharp detail what we feel is wrong with this country, and Noonan need only dip her hand in the pool to find that out. But that would take some effort beyond sitting back in the chair and opining.

---

In each of these cases, we see people who have been fortunate enough to be hired by journalistic institutions, who are near the top of the bookers' lists for talk shows, who demonstrate that they don't know what they're talking about. Kristol and Brooks cannot hold an opinion for a week, and Brooks and Noonan "know" the American people without actually interacting with any of them.

Nevertheless, these are the folks who are the opinion-makers, the talking heads who fill up chairs on Sunday mornings while providing very little actual insight. And they are so big by dint of their fortuitous positions that far more perceptive writers feel the need to react, if only to counteract some of their uninformed "commentary." It seems a waste, somehow (as is this post, come to think of it).

Crisis of confidence??

There are a number of commentators, some intelligent, some not so much, who persist in calling our current financial situation a "crisis of trust." George Will likens the bailout programs to national psychotherapy. Robert Reich and Larry Summers, two very respected economists, seem to boil this down to a lack of confidence, and if government can just wave its magic wand of money, everything will be OK again.

I hold these gentlemen (well, not George Will) in sufficient esteem that I have tried to make sense of what they're saying, because I'm not seeing this crisis as a matter of irrational fear. When Reich writes:

The central fact is this: consumers in the real economy are coming to the end of their capacities to keep spending. They can't take on any more debt. And with the costs of energy, food, and health insurance all soaring, they're doing the only thing they can. They're pulling in their belts. They're leaving the malls. They're not buying a new car or TV or anything else they can do without.

For years, regardless of the business cycle, American consumers were the Energizer Bunnies of the world economy. Their spending kept it going. But now the Energizer Bunnies have turned into scared rabbits, and they're going back into their holes.

it's easy to believe that he thinks that there is some pathology going on here. But then the same man writes:

All economic indicators are now pointing toward a deepening recession. Unemployment is already high, and the trend is not encouraging. Factory orders are down. Worried about their jobs and rising costs of fuel, food and health insurance, middle-class Americans are unable or unwilling to spend on much other than necessities.

And I have to confess to some cognitive dissonance, especially as other people, less knowledgeable and respected, pick up on things like the former comment and pass it around as gospel, claiming that injecting "confidence" into the market will fix what ails us.

What I've figured out is that these learned economists are not using "trust" as we use it, not defining it as a personal quality but as a market condition. It's not trust in the sense that we are looking at other people with suspicion, but simply a lack of belief that someone will be able to pay back a loan. It's as if you hire a real estate appraiser to look at a house you want to buy for $200,000, and he writes in his report that he doesn't "trust" that the property is worth that much.

But this causes problems for people who haven't figured this out, which includes a goodly number of the talking heads we hear talking about this situation. Most people do see "trust" and "confidence" as personal attributes, and, when former Cabinet members throw these words around as causes for the current crisis, they see the solution as one of just bucking up and feeling better, a kind of Oprah-fication of real money troubles ("just draw a bubble bath, then put your money in a failing bank, and everything will be all right if you just believe").

[Paul Krugman, new Nobel Laureate, understands this, as witness his retort to George Will on Sunday's ABC This Week, when he pointed out that our problems are not just psychological.]

So I wish Reich and Summers would sharpen their message, talk about what this crisis really represents to actual people. (Of course, I'm out of step with both men and Brad DeLong; as I wrote a couple of weeks ago, I see no way that the national agenda cannot be altered by current events, and all three of these estimable gentlemen disagree with that. They believe that our current deficit, plus the bailout, plus a necessary fiscal stimulus can all be supported, and I think that's pretty much crazy.)

Every single facet of our American society has incurred debts that it cannot pay. People have gone under water on their mortgages and credit cards, businesses can't pay their employees without drawing on their line of credit or bellying up to the commercial paper market, governments show no fiscal restraint, counting on the bottomless wallets of the taxpayers. And the financial institutions that have been shoveling out the funny money to support all this are now in trouble, and I fail to see how the already-strapped federal government can become the Great Enabler for this addiction.

This is not simply fear at work. This is not a 4-year-old who is unable to sleep because there's a monster under the bed. This is a bank looking at a 25-year-old couple who are making $40,000 a year and thinking, "hey, they probably can't afford a $250,000 house, even though we thought so two years ago." This is an employee realizing that her company doesn't have cash to pay Friday's payroll, and no one will come up with a loan to cover it. This is a family having to make a choice between staying in their beloved home or putting little Frank and Mary Lou through college. If this is fear, it's realistic fear, not irrational terror. It's real people undergoing real hardships because they counted on "the system" to go on in its same stupid way.

We don't have a crisis of confidence. We have a reaction to the remarkable overconfidence that we've had for years. We all believed that we could charge purchase after purchase because there would always be another raise, another promotion. We could swing that big flat-screen TV because we could always pull more fake equity out of our homes. We could build another plant because there will always be someone to lend us the money for it. We could put diving pools in our high schools because taxpayers will always pass the next referendum to support "educational purposes."

And now the bill is due. We've bought things we don't need, built things we don't need, committed to things we don't need. And there those things sit, not convertible to other things we do need, and we wonder what we're going to do. If the only two answers are, "Get positive," or "Get the government to prop it up," I'll wager that we're going to be real disappointed.

Inane comments

When I started this blog, I told myself that I would try to do a good job of responding to people's comments, however many there were. I've never liked the blogs that, in effect, invite people in but never speak to them again. To throw a hypothesis out into the public ether, then to say nothing while others come to comment on it struck me as somehow rude.

So I have tried to comment on comments, and I've bent over backwards to be polite, to try my best to see the positive side of whatever is said, not to leap to taking offense. For my trouble, I have been called names, I've had comments that betrayed no sense of what I was saying; in effect, I have invited people into my online home and endured their rudeness and offensiveness and obtuseness.

Within the past couple of weeks, it occurred to me that this was a quixotic endeavor indeed. There are people out there who just don't get it. Sometimes they're stupid, even illiterate; other times they are likely baiting me to get jollies out of my reaction. Frankly, I'm tired of it, I'm tired of putting comment response as a particularly high priority when I have other things to do. If it's a choice between taking the time to craft a response to a moronic comment or sharpening up my own blog post, I really should stick to my own knitting.

Yet there are times when a comment deserves to be called out, even if there's a chance I'm giving the commenter the attention he/she craves, and I received such a comment on my Saturday post. This post discussed the upcoming presidential endorsement by the Chicago Tribune, and expressed, if somewhat unremarkably, my interest in whether they will buck long tradition by endorsing Obama, or how they will justify endorsing McCain. I said nothing in this post about my own sensibilities, though I have been upfront and consistent in saying that I am an Obama supporter this time around.

And here is a comment I received from Anonymous:

See - afterall you are a white racist guy who put the independent sham up for the show. At the final moment, you are still endorsing or rooting for McCain who is even more reckless than George W.

If you look at the Governor record of George W, he is a likable guy with good intentions on many social reforms, like education (i.e. the top 10% of the students from each texas school district should be guaranteed a placement at UT, Austin or Texas A&M - the top two most competitive public universities, health care clinics for low income group, and sales tax exemption once a year to provide relief to low income families to prepare for back to school). He is misguided by the right wing or thieves of his own administration. Does he have a conviction or want to do good for the country? Indeed, I truly believe that he is a good natured and happy-go-lucky type of guy.

However, McCain has a long history of being a political hack that he will go against everyone even himself if an opportunity presents. Do you want a President who is so selfish that he would sink the boat and let everyone one die in order to survive?

Now I could let this go, and probably should, but, you know, if you wandered into my house and called me names with no justification, I would ask you to leave. The only exception to that might be if you were mentally impaired and did not know what you were saying.

And that's certainly possible, given the incoherence of this comment. The commenter calls the current president reckless, then describes him, in tortured English, as an amiable dunce. But the idea that a post where I suggest the possibility that the Tribune will somehow endorse McCain can somehow be construed as some kind of personal support for McCain is plain dumb.

But I'm not going to try to parse this statement fully, life is way too short. Just as I don't have the time to define words for my simpler readers (I have one commenter who is apparently offended because I've called his outlook on life "idiosyncratic," and he believes that I'm calling him an idiot - get a dictionary), neither is it worth my while to pull apart this foolishness.

But when you walk into my domain and call me a "racist," based on nothing but your own warped view of the world and your inability to read English, then I ask you to leave. Get out! Don't come here again, keep your asininity to yourself, because you are rude, and unpleasant, and repellent.

Internet radio

I've been getting my radio music from the Internet for a few months now. I've been going to iHeartMusic.com, though I gather there are other sites. There's nothing earth-shaking about it, I live near enough to Chicago that I have no problem finding as many stations with different formats as I want. But there is a convenience in having it right on the computer instead of having to go in the other room and find a new station when I tire of the one I'm on (or when a Katy Perry song comes on).

Even within formats, there seem to be slight regional differences in the playlists between, say, Austin and Anchorage, but I haven't chronicled exactly how. But the major difference to me comes between songs. If I'm listening to a Chicago station, and a weather or traffic report comes on, I tend to pay attention. Even if I'm not going out in the near future, I still listen. If I hear about an accident on 294, I have a slightly higher level of concern, because I know where it happened.

But I can blow by all that when listening to Akron. The weather means nothing to me, traffic tie-ups exist on roads I've never heard of. Commercials are played for stores I'll never visit on streets I'll never drive, and, somehow, that's all strangely relaxing. I can just let the noise wash over me and concentrate on what I'm doing in a way that's hard to do when I'm getting local information. Not the most profound thought for a Sunday, just a personal experience.

Could it be? Not really

One of the most predictable moments of every presidential campaign occurs when the Chicago Tribune makes its endorsement for president. While there is some question as to the last time they didn't endorse the Republican, it's been at least 96 years (apparently they endorsed Teddy Roosevelt, a Republican in all but official name, in 1912). This has involved considerable contortions at times, most notably in 2004 when they endorsed George W. Bush for reelection.

Despite the occasional comment in the letters section about how the Trib is utterly devoted to Obama and critical of Bush, a close reading of editorials over the past four years demonstrates that the paper is still very much in slavish-Bush mode. What criticisms there have been have focused on "the Bush administration," but have shied away from any attacks at the man himself. For those of us appalled at what has happened over these two terms, this reluctance to assign any blame to the man itself has hurt the reputation of the editorial staff. (In fact, I have also seen the progressive dumbing-down of the editorials; the level at which they are written has dropped considerably.)

The only question every four years is not, "Who will they endorse?," but, "How will they justify their endorsement of whichever bozo the Republicans trot out?"

But there are signs that, just maybe, the Trib may be changing its stance this time. On Tuesday, continuing their new frenzy of Web 2.0, faux-interact-with-the-readers activities, they asked readers:

The choice. The editorial board is debating its endorsement for president of the United States. As we think about that choice, we want to hear from you. Do you support Barack Obama? Do you support John McCain? Do you support a third-party candidate? Give us your reasons. If you were writing an endorsement, what would you say?

If they're polling readers, they must be prepared to go either way, right? Michael Miner of the Chicago Reader goes through a fairly tortured exegesis of this here; his point seems to be that they may be willing to go for Obama because he's admirable, from Illinois, and more conservative in many ways than McCain. On the other hand, they would be more true to their tradition if they selected McCain, and that would be a good thing. On the third hand, given the current climate for journalism, if the choice of Obama would provide some advantage, they'll probably go that way. Or something like that.

I doubt that endorsements are as important as they may have been before, particularly in this election. But I have to say I kind of hope the Trib endorses McCain, if only to see how they justify the choice.

Happy Double Ten Day

To any readers I might have in the Republic of China (and I recognize that the time difference makes this post too late - sorry), Happy Double Ten Day.

Journalism at its best

There's an election in 25 days, one which is potentially as important as any in my lifetime. The new president will have to shovel this country out of the piles of manure deposited by the current administration, try to restore our place in the world despite our every attempt to tear it down, try to deal with a financial crisis that threatens the well-being of millions of people. Many of us think that the long decline has begun, and we fear that no one will take the place of the United States in the good things we've tried to do.

There's a two-front war that we're not sure how to handle, but no solution seems to offer the golden age of democracy in the Middle East that we were promised. We have no response except supine submissiveness to the rise of China and India, indeed we grant them increasing amounts of leverage over our future.

No one except the fanatical doubts that we're headed for a recession; the discussion is whether it could broaden into a world-wide depression, one that could seriously crush the expectations of Americans (particularly those approaching retirement) and lead to global political realignment.

One of the candidates for the most powerful job in the world has run a dishonest, pathetic campaign in which his last-ditch desperation to get the job he feels he deserves is driving him to work his supporters into a racist frenzy. His choice for his successor is a frightening liar who substitutes demagoguery for knowledge.

With all this going on, one would expect the flagship news magazine on one of the major American television networks to focus its resources and its intensity on one or more of these problems. If you want to see a global news organization in action, tune in 20/20 tonight...

and you'll get to enjoy Barbara Walters' (and keep in mind that Walters is one of the pioneers in broadcast journalism) interview with the husband of a has-been model who cheated on her, and you'll be the first person to see the new video by Britney Spears, another washed-up musical "star."

Good work, ABC, way to keep your eye on the prize. Peabodys all around!

Another cost of globalization

I have had disagreements with people, some through this blog, some not, who contend that I am anti-globalization, that I fall in with the blood-throwing wild-eyed anti-WTO nuts. I am lumped in with those who believe in protectionism, I guess because I don't genuflect to a copy of The World Is Flat, Tom Friedman's tribute to the wonders of globalization, reporting he did based on talking to a series of people who are profiting from, well, globalization.

It is a measure of our increasing need to polarize our opinions that you're either for unbridled globalization, or you're in favor of building high walls around the nation and keeping out all foreign influences. Yet, if there's one thing history teaches us, especially recent history, it is that extremism is almost never desirable, that a vast array of society needs to fall somewhere between the two poles.

One way this mediation happens is through government policy; when mediation fails, we see it as some groups profiting at the expense of others. Take globalization's employment component, the offshoring of jobs. We see companies and their executives making large sums of money from the destruction of towns and careers, and it's clear that they're not paying anything to compensate the nation for that destruction. In fact, tax policy actually makes offshoring that much more attractive.

Now I'm not saying, and never have, that government fiat should ban offshoring, that jobs should be forcibly maintained in a high-cost country like the United States. Even if it were possible to craft legislation that would accomplish job retention, it probably wouldn't work, not without massive dislocations (and, of course, certain industries would find ways to get around restrictions, mainly through lobbying).

But offshoring has massive costs that are not being borne, even in part, by the entities that are profiting from it. Those costs are being endured by the people who can least afford it, those folks who have lost their careers (and I do wish we would stop talking about job loss; career loss is a far more accurate term for a lot of people) and the communities that depend on those people. The multinationals march into the future of infinitely large Chinese and Indian middle classes, leaving behind citizens of the country that financed their growth in the first place.

The point is, if retraining and longer unemployment benefits are the best answer we can come up with to deal with job dislocation (and they are decidedly imperfect), then it is not wrong to expect corporations or their executives to pay for those things. Vague hand-waving about how society is made better through globalization does nothing to ease our transition through this great experiment.

Now maybe you don't believe what I'm saying about offshoring. Perhaps you believe that the labor market is one big crapshoot, that you take your chances when you choose a profession - if it turns out that Indians can do your job more cheaply, that's just the way it goes, too bad. And while I believe that belief comes from a horrendous misreading of the American Dream, it's your right to feel that way.

But then you see what's happening to world financial markets. As globalization has increased, finance has become increasingly interlinked, and a crisis in one economy can bounce around the world and back as fast as the bits can be transmitted. There's a cost here in increased risk, and there's a sense that no one has paid for the assumption of that risk.

However, the cost always has to be paid, and a cost that comes out of necessity is almost always greater than one that is planned. And that's what we're seeing now, as our government is planning to shovel out a seemingly endless supply of money to fix problems. Much of that money is going to companies that, while nominally based in the U.S., actually see themselves as transcending national borders.

When we all pay to stabilize a financial institution that has significant business overseas, we're engaged in a kind of foreign aid. I've argued before that we have missed the reality that offshoring is a variety of foreign aid, in which manufacturing workers in Ohio are paying their careers to people in developing nations. Now we're all doing it, and there's very little assurance that we'll get anything back that is close to what we've paid.

Fareed Zakaria has a Newsweek essay which is pretty close to the mark. He sees the current crisis as "deep, wrenching," but likely less severe than the ones we used to have in the 19th century. Recessions are shorter and less frequent, and it's due to the balance we've struck between the prosperity-creating free market and the regulations we've enacted to curb some of its excesses:

Capitalism is now a global phenomenon, powered by the actions of companies and governments all over the world. Countries will continue to rely on free markets and free trade to get growth and rising standards of living. Over the last three decades countries have liberalized their markets not because people like Bob Rubin or Hank Paulson forced them to do so, but because they could see the benefits of moving in that direction (and the costs of not doing so).

To Zakaria, the true change from this crisis will come in the world's opinion of the United States.

The real fallout of the financial crisis will be the delegitimization of American power. People around the world once saw the United States as the most modern, sophisticated and productive economy in the world. Now they wonder, was this all a house of cards? They listened to American policymakers with respect, even awe. Today, they wonder if these officials know what they are doing. This loss of credibility will have hard consequences. The scholar and analyst Zachary Karabell said on CNN two weeks ago, "We will look back on this as the moment that the global capital base moved outside America." For decades, the United States has attracted massive amounts of capital—80 percent of the surplus savings of the world—which has allowed it to live beyond its means. That era is drawing to a close. America will have to fight to attract capital and investment like every other nation.

He argues that the solution will come from "smart government," from effective policy-making instead of rote citing of "ideological mantras." But we're a long way from that:

Policies are designed to pay off powerful constituents rather than generate long-term growth. We have the most expensive and inefficient health-care system in the industrialized world, the most wasteful energy usage, the lowest savings rate, the worst maintained infrastructure, a complex and corrupt tax code. We've gotten by despite all these problems because the overall system has been dynamic and the world looked to America as the place to put its savings and its faith. But the free ride is coming to an end. It's time to get serious.

Of course, Zakaria offers no way to get to that seriousness, no one does, because our system is so entrenched in its beliefs that we can't look beyond them. Our more progressive presidential candidate isn't talking about anything so radical as fixing these things, offering only hazy "change," so caught up is this country in its worship of the free market.

And now we have a bailout, and another one, and another one, and we throw money we don't have at our problems, and we take it upon ourselves to fix a global system. We don't fix health care, because we need to cut in all the wasteful third parties that are a part of the problem now. We don't turn off our minivans when we wait for little Billy to finish soccer practice, because we want to use gasoline as an inefficient source of heat. We don't want to save money, to defer gratification; after all, we "deserve" our little luxuries.

And we see our status in the world decline, we watch the ideals that once defined America become tarnished through greed and fear, and we tell ourselves, everything's going to be all right, because it always has been before. And we slide, not all that slowly, into the abyss.

Corporate arrogance

AIG, you know, the huge insurance company that received $85 billion of our money to stay open (that's right, $278 from each and every man, woman, and child in the United States), is now defending itself for a corporate event in which they spent $440,000 at a "posh California retreat." Included was $200,000 for hotel rooms and $23,000 for spa services. Their defense is that the event was for independent life insurance agents, and "no AIG executives from headquarters attended."

Here's what AIG fails to realize: instead of being accountable to 14 directors, or some large number of shareholders, they are now responsible to 300 million owners, each of whom has some stake in the decisions their executives choose to make. And these aren't directors, who roll over and play dead when the CEO walks in the room, or shareholders who are given few real options in governing the operations of the company, these are 300 million ticked-off people who have seen billions of their dollars committed to propping up a corrupt system, and are really unhappy about it. AIG, and other companies who are being "helped" through this current crisis, may want to think about that before cutting a check for spa services.

More importantly, I would like to think this would put the conservative argument about privatization to rest once and for all, but it probably won't. We've been told for decades now that moving vital services to private industry is a good thing, because the profit motive provides incentives for efficiency that just don't exist in the public sector.

But here's the deal. Whether someone is an Assistant to the Associate Secretary of Defense in charge of procurement, or a corporate special events coordinator, it's all OPM (Other People's Money). As long as there is no direct connection between payout and paycheck, there's an incentive to spend with minimal justification. It's true in any government agency, it's true in any real business. (I had a lot more to say on this subject about three months ago.)

Will we see more accountability from the companies being helped? I don't know, but I'm guessing that specific cases will arise that will attract attention. If I were AIG, or a major financial institution, I would be seriously rethinking my "charitable and community" contributions and sponsorships. Should Bank of America really be spending thousands of dollars on this Sunday's Chicago Marathon? Maybe, maybe not, but all of these companies need to start thinking about how they might justify these expenses to their newest shareholders, the American people.

Before the third debate

Unfortunately, I have plans for this evening which will prevent me from watching the Obama-McCain contest live (no, it's not the Cubs game, boo, hoo). I will tape it and try to catch a look at it in the next day or two, but everyone else will have a chance to weigh in before I will.

1) What will be interesting tonight is to see if McCain continues to let his TV ads and his running mate carry his water, while he does his fake cordiality thing. Personally, I wouldn't mind if he'd just let it fly, call Obama a terrorist and a Muslim, at least by implication, and let voters see just what he's turned himself into. I think Americans have the right to see just how down and dirty the principled maverick, the war hero, can get.

2) One thing I admit I enjoy is seeing prominent commentators come around to something that I, and I'm guessing most thinking people, understood some time ago. There may be a bit of envy mixed with the triumph on my part; seeing, for example, a Matt Yglesias, well-read blogger, book author, accepted authority, wake up and see something clearly months after people of discernment (namely, me) saw it fills me with an admixture of joy and frustration.

For instance, it occurs to Matt today that tonight's debate format "is basically a farce." The questions will come from people in the audience and from the Internet, at which point Tom Brokaw and his people will comb through them and select the few that will be asked. (There won't be any followup or comments from the asker or from Brokaw. Matt is upset:

In essence, Tom Brokaw and his staff will be asking the questions. They’re sifting through a big group of people, and their pre-set questions, and picking the questions they like. Meanwhile, though, Brokaw and co. get to evade responsibility for the questions if people don’t like them — it was real people asking! And no followups, so if John McCain gets a question about his plan to cut Medicare and wants to give an answer about Bill Ayers, nobody can stop him.

And this only occurs to Yglesias now? We've seen this format before. Unless there is a magic arrow roving randomly across the audience to select the next questioner, of course there is screening going on. Does anyone really think that the questions won't end up being pretty much the same as Brokaw would have asked anyway?

This is simply more pandering to the ersatz Web 2.0 style which says that allowing people to create their own reality is somehow preferable to framing things through experience and intelligence, even when the reality itself is being framed. It's a lie, and people should stop falling into the trap of believing that this somehow brings "authenticity" to a situation.

Review - Scavenger

David Morrell, the creator of Rambo, has offered us his newest book, Scavenger. He's written more than 20 thrillers, and my past experience with them has been mostly favorable. Morrell is a plot kind of guy, generally propelling the action along at high speed - at such speed that it's easy to forget that there is very little else to many of the books. However, his earlier efforts have tended to show considerable research into things like survival in the wild. For me, a wealth of detail and dense plotting have made Morrell's books worthwhile.

Scavenger, unfortunately, is one of the weaker Morrell books I have read (I probably haven't read more than five or six, and it's been a while, but I remember them as good solid reads). It's no surprise that the characters are made of cardboard, but the plot really isn't up to standard. Morrell takes two topics of some interest, time capsules and video games, and does very little with them. There are a few interesting anecdotes, mostly about missing time capsules, but we don't end up as fascinated by them as Morrell apparently is.

I don't want to be entirely negative here; there is also a lot to recommend here. The plot is typical Morrell, fast-moving and exciting. A lot happens here, and it's fun to watch. This 349-page book unfolds in a hurry, so much so that I'd recommend taking an additional book on your cross-country flight - you'll be done with this one quickly. There is a visceral pleasure in a book that tells pretty much its whole story in a 40-hour span.

Scavenger picks up its main characters from an earlier book, Creepers, that I have not read, so I will leave it to others to judge whether Frank and Amanda have been well served by this sequel. But this book is pretty insubstantial. Read it if you're in the mood for pure action, don't expect to come away with any memory of it.

[By the way, I normally barely look at jacket blurbs, they're usually almost completely unrelated to the actual book. However, did the AP really review this as "the Psycho of the Computer Age"? There is not a moment of this book that compares in creepy atmospherics.]

RIP, 2008 Chicago Cubs

I have been a Cub fan for more than 40 years. My friend Paul and I would travel the mile and a half up Clark Street to attend games (by the way, is there any better measure of how times have changed, that our parents, certainly not neglectful in any way, would let young boys go to games by themselves?), and I got to see the beginning of the resurgence under Leo Durocher. Sadly, or perhaps happily, my family had taken our four-year Michigan residency at such a time that I missed the first magical, then tragical 1969 season.

No, we returned in 1972, the beginning of the end for the great Cubs teams; Ernie Banks had retired, Randy Hundley was pretty much done, and the second-place finish in the division only concealed some very real problems. The following season brought some decent individual stats, but the team never came together, and subsequent seasons brought teams that were almost laughable (not all games were as bad as a 22-0 pasting by the Pirates, but many of them felt that way).

There was a flurry of early-season excitement in a couple of seasons in the late '70s, but nothing really tangible until the 1984 division crown - the first postseason appearance since 1945, the Cubs won the first two games...then lost three in a row.

Four bad years, another division crown, eight more bad years, a wild card berth, four more bad years. The Cubs had their good years, but couldn't seem to build a consistent team, certainly not a consistent organization that could produce solid major leaguers that could put them in contention year after year.

And what was oddest was that nobody really seemed to care all that much. Due to a series of decisions made in the executive suite, Wrigley Field became a party site rather than a place to play baseball. And parties always attract more people than competitions. The deification of Harry Caray, a man with no Chicago connection, but an unshakable belief that the ballpark was about beer and babes and fun, a deification which continues now, more than 10 years after his death, was just a part of that. (By the way, I have it on good authority from a fellow who worked in a tavern at the time that Harry's pre-game fortification ritual involved stronger stuff than Budweiser.)

There became a perverse sense that the Cubs were "lovable losers," that we should all be content to enjoy the greatest ballpark in the world and the occasional victory, but keep expectations low on the field. The fan-unfriendly decisions continued: the extension of the bleachers, making it much less likely that fans could catch balls on the streets behind the stadium; the amazing rise in ticket prices, making it much harder for fans to go to games (unless they could wangle tax-subsidized corporate season tickets); the "authorized ticket reseller" that a court decided wasn't scalping; the movement in just a few years from 90% of the games telecast over free TV to fewer than 40%. (An extra note on this last point: spokespeople can get cavalier over these things, saying that only 15% of fans don't have cable, and the revenue model doesn't allow for old practices. But this excludes a lot of people who have been fans for years, older people living on a fixed income, or in nursing homes; it would be nice to see a bit more honest concern, and maybe some action.)

But then the company seemed to start spending money on the team. They won the division on 2003, were quite competitive in 2004, fell off a bit in 2005, had an injury-plagued awful season in 2006, but won the division in 2007 and 2008. Fans could forgive a lot of the infelicities if the team was actually winning, and everything seemed to point in the right direction.

But there is the regular season, and there is the postseason. In the 24 seasons from 1984 to 2007, the Cubs made the postseason 5 times, won only one series, had a 9-19 record (six of those victories coming in 2003). They were swept in 2007 by a good, not great, Arizona team.

2008, though, seemed to be the perfect year. The team had matured, added some good players, and many people felt that there was a beautiful symmetry in that it had been exactly 100 years since the Cubs last won the World Series (of course, if the God of Baseball has six fingers on each hand, fans shouldn't get excited until 2052...). And the team was strong, owning the best record in the league.

If you care enough to have read this far, you already know the result: A first round, three-game sweep by the (on paper) far weaker Los Angeles Dodgers. But it's not just that they lost, that happens, it's the abjectness with which they lost. Bad in every single aspect of the game, the Cubs were embarrassing.

I don't really have anything more to say right now. I'm not crushed, only a child feels crushed by the failure of paid mercenaries to perform as he would wish them to. But, in these tough times, it would have been nice to have something to cling to (I don't own guns, and I'm not particularly religious). Instead, it's just the usual sense of something lost, of excitement dampened, of hopes quelled.

My last word on Biden-Palin? Probably not...

Simple question: Can you picture Barack Obama giving Joe Biden a call, or inviting him into the Oval Office and asking his advice on something that is happening in the world? Of course you can.

Sarah Palin had to be "prepared" for her debate by John McCain's people. This preparation, apparently, was not simply an emphasis on talking points, but a primer on issues. Can you seriously picture John McCain calling Sarah Palin and asking her advice on anything other than the proper gear to wear on a moose hunt? I can't either.

Ayres, again? Really?

The Republican brain-trust has apparently decided to, in the last month of this campaign, attack the character of Barack Obama. The first salvo of many came from Sarah Palin yesterday, as she launched a broadside at Obama's supposed connection to former radical William Ayres.

Not that I want to repeat or quote myself, but five months ago, when his fellow Democrats (well, Hillary Clinton) were attacking Obama for this loose association, I wrote what is pretty much my last word on the subject. It came from a knowledge of Chicago and Illinois politics that isn't shared by many on the national scene, apparently.

To summarize what I wrote, everything political in this state goes through Mayor Daley of Chicago. There may be things he doesn't care about, and he doesn't involve himself with them, but, if Da Mare doesn't like something, it doesn't happen. Obama has tried to portray himself as separate from the political machine, and, as much as anybody, he has been, but make no mistake, had he at any time offended the Daley machinery, his political life would have been dead in the water.

Bill Ayres, unrepentant domestic terrorist, has somehow (likely through his father, big player in Chicago circles as head of the electric company) gotten an in with Daley. You can question that (very quietly), but it is a fact. Put these things together, and you can see that anyone who wants a political future in Illinois is going to have to cozy up to folks like Ayres. The trick is to shake hands with, but not embrace, these questionable figures.

And Obama has, by all accounts, done that admirably.

Every politician makes these sorts of accommodations. John McCain was one of the Keating Five, something I don't find directly relevant to his qualifications for the presidency. (His willingness to continue to surround himself with lobbyists, while insisting he has no such ties, is hypocrisy that does have a bearing on his fitness for the job.) If you start going through the links, and links to links, that any public figure has, you're going to find something. But...is William Ayres an advisor to the Obama campaign? Is there a shred of evidence that there has been any connection in the past 10 years? No? Then keep quiet.

Dennis Miller

It's my impression that Dennis Miller was scared to death by 9/11. I don't know the details, but that event seems to have been the catalyst for his conversion to conservatism (though he terms himself a libertarian, as if blowing up Iraqi civilians meshes with a live-and-let-live philosophy). I have the feeling that Dennis wears shoes on his hands when he goes to the airport so he can prove his patriotism by putting two pairs into the tray.

Now I don't really have a problem with that; if someone wants to turn himself into a poster child for Rove-ian style politics ("scare 'em enough and they'll keep voting for you"), that's their business. If you want to go on shows, including your own, and argue that George W. Bush is the only person who could have kept us safe these past seven years, most people will see that as the wrong-headed thinking it is.

But Dennis was on with Jay Leno Thursday night, and he said something that probably reflects what a lot of people believe (I'm paraphrasing, because I couldn't find the exact quote): John McCain gave us five-and-a-half years, we certainly should be willing to give him four.

It casts no aspersions on John McCain's heroism and bravery to point out that this reasoning is just plain stupid. Does that mean that, if McCain were running against an opponent who had spent seven years in captivity, that the other guy should be handed the job? Maybe Miller was just being offhand, finding a shorthand way to express his deeply-felt beliefs about McCain being the better candidate, but surviving a prison camp is not necessarily proper preparation for the presidency. If Miller has a case to make, maybe he should try some other idea.

After the second debate

I'll confess, I didn't watch the whole thing, I flipped back and forth (a lot more after the Cubs embarrassed themselves). I have been reading some of the takeaway quotes and some of the analysis, and it would appear that my opinion is pretty much floating in the mainstream. Palin wasn't as bad as she was in her various interviews over the last couple of weeks, which might seem to embolden the base, but it was not enough to turn around anyone who finds her rankly unqualified.

Her curious habit of smiling through even the most serious issues was disquieting to me; I believe it's her version of the Bush smirk, and I've seen quite enough of that. If you look at substance, she did a reasonably good job of parroting the usual McCain talking points.

But, as I pointed out yesterday, debates are decided on style and gaffes. There were no real gaffes from either Palin or Biden. As for style, to me, Biden appeared potentially presidential, Palin more lie a chirpy tour guide ("now we see the Empire State Building out the left side of the bus, now we cut taxes to create jobs, now John McCain is a maverick"), but I admit that I was already oriented in that direction, so you can't take my word for it (the early polls indicate that Biden won rather decisively).

So my conclusion is pretty much the same as for the first debate. Nothing happened to turn anyone around, there are probably not too many undecided voters who will make up their minds based on this - we'll just have to wait for the last two debates between Obama and McCain.

Note: I would be remiss if I didn't mention this item from Rich Lowry at National Review. I would love to credit someone for putting me on to this, but I've seen this referenced quite a few times today. Lowry:

I'm sure I'm not the only male in America who, when Palin dropped her first wink, sat up a little straighter on the couch and said, "Hey, I think she just winked at me." And her smile. By the end, when she clearly knew she was doing well, it was so sparkling it was almost mesmerizing. It sent little starbursts through the screen and ricocheting around the living rooms of America. This is a quality that can't be learned; it's either something you have or you don't, and man, she's got it.

Maybe Rich can take that Farrah Fawcett poster off his wall now.

Before the second debate

I've been watching presidential debates, and the press coverage of them, for quite a few campaigns now, and I despair of the talking heads ever getting it right. There really are only two things that attract attention at this point, style and gaffes, and pretty much every mainstream commentator will focus on just those two points.

Style is seen as unflappability, graciousness, and smoothness, the ability to answer questions without flinching. It's something that every decent college debater has mastered, but that doesn't prevent the press from being amazed at a candidate's handling of "tough" questions (that they've been preparing for over a period of days or weeks).

Gaffes are more interesting. If something is seen as a core belief, no matter how painfully wrong, expression of it will not be seen as a gaffe. Sarah Palin can stand up tonight and tell us that the world was created in 4004 B.C., and that will be discussed by the pundit class as a legitimate exposure of her beliefs. On the other hand, let Joe Biden say that Kirkuk is in Afghanistan, and, even if he quickly corrects himself, that will be pounced on as evidence of unfitness for office.

I'm not exactly sure who gets to decide what things are gaffes and which are not. More importantly, if the press corps is going to weigh in with their "analysis" of who did well and who didn't, they should be required to deal with the substance of the answers that are given.

But they won't. There might be a very brief segment on "fact-checking," but that will come and go with the wind, and we'll get back to hearing about Biden's tie, and Palin's smile, and who exceeded expectations, and so forth.

The press would defend themselves by saying that surveys "prove" that style and gaffes are what voters care about, that it's those things viewers remember. Whether or not that's true, the press might want to see itself as elevating the discussion, rather than pandering to the basest instincts of their audience. (On the other hand, my local newspaper has just turned itself into a snarky, list-based, color-filled replica of USA Today, so I gather that elevation is no longer the first priority of the working press.)

The great unraveling (maybe) - Part 2

I wrote yesterday about the big financial crisis, addressing one of the longer-term questions that I have, namely, what will we be able to accomplish following this bailout. Unlike Brad DeLong and Larry Summers, I have serious doubts that anything on the candidates' agendas will be attainable once we plunge our nation into further debt. Summers believes that, despite the current debt and baby-boomer fueled rise in entitlements, adding this bailout and fiscal stimulus to deal with a major recession will somehow be made up through eventual growth. I have my doubts.

But, today, I want to take up the second big question I have, and I'll meander around to it in my usual way. Let me ask you, the reader, a question: Why do things cost what they do? Why do we look at a certain house and know that it's $200,000 (or whatever number we can ascribe to it in this market), or know that a secretary makes about $35,000 a year, and so forth?

I'm not asking about relative prices; I understand why some jobs pay more than others, I understand why that house is about six times the secretary's annual pay. That's supply and demand, which explains (loosely) why that same house costs more if plunked down in Malibu, less if placed in Minot. I'm talking about the absolute level, the nominal price of something.

This question is not relevant in a closed system. If there's nothing to which to compare these prices, the numbers themselves are pretty much arbitrary. Let's say every financial figure in a closed economy were changed by the same factor overnight, everyone would adjust and move on. The $200,000 house would now cost $20,000, but the secretary would make $3,500, and so on, and everything would be fine (but I'm saying every financial figure, even contractual ones and the value of cash - otherwise, we're creating winners and losers and that's not my point here).

Let's do another thought experiment. Let's say we have two towns, A and B, with pretty much the same natural resources and population, but they have no contact with each other. There is no trade, no movement between them. Let each grow for, say, 50 years; would you expect their prices for similar goods to be the same, their wages for the same jobs to be the same?

Some people would say yes, believing that there is a "natural" amount we pay for a bag of nuts or for an accountant, but I disagree. I'd be very surprised to see even relative prices be the same, given the number of random things that can occur over such a period of time.

My point is that pricing structures are arbitrary, that they rely on beliefs and prejudices and historical accidents and just plain random events, that there is no "natural" price of anything. We see evidence of that in the real world all the time. Why can Canada sell prescription drugs at a lower price than that at which they're sold in the U.S.? We know that's due to Canadian price controls, but controls are part of a pricing structure. Why can the same job be done more cheaply in China or India than in the United States? We say it's because their workers are willing to accept a lower standard of living, but what does that mean?

The simple reality is that prices and wages are so high in the United States, relative to other countries, because we can afford for them to be. But that's circular logic, and not very helpful. Other people have tried to explain this by arguing for an American premium, that our "higher" economy is supportable because of our social structures, our legal protections, our stable financial system, our government. We pay more, have a higher price structure, because there's more built in to the price of every item. We earn more because our investment in education has created a class of workers who are more valuable.

So here's the nub of my second question: What if this crisis has demonstrated that the value of the American premium is less than we had supposed, and that our pricing structure is insupportably high?

What I am saying here is that our inability to insulate ourselves from foreign pricing structures (not that that's possible or desirable, just that it's historically true) is creating a revaluation of American pricing. The condo for which you'd pay $1,000,000 in Manhattan will cost somewhat less in Shanghai (I don't know, let's say $250,000), and maybe that multiplier of 4 is no longer valid; maybe it should be 2 (I still want to believe there is some American premium, because I still think this is the best country in the world). If that's true, then the "real" price of that condo is closer to $500,000; good if you're buying, not if you're selling.

If this were happening across the board, and we had a closed economy, this would be no problem, as I pointed out above. We would make less, but things would cost less, and our purchasing power would be the same. But neither of those assumptions is true.

And this is why people are not so sanguine about our financial situation, and this was true even before the current banking crisis erupted. If, say, a computer programmer job is no longer worth $40,000, but $30,000, it may make less sense to pay $20,000 or more for each year at college. And it takes a lot longer to push tuition down than to push down salaries.

There may well be benefits to bringing our price structure more in line with that of other nations. It could be a boon to the developing world. But it will create a lot of losers, many of whom will be Americans, and no amount of blathering about how we can just adjust to the new world will help actual people; if you depend on the American premium for the value of your retirement savings, and that premium drops, telling 75-year-olds to adapt, to be nimble, will be of little help.

Other people are seeing the extent to which our arbitrary valuations are starting to be seen as empty. The value we used to add to real products is being replaced by false, Ponzi-scheme value, and is the basis for much of our economy. To quote Hank Williams:

The truth is our economy has been in trouble for a long time. It is the “too smart for the room” guys that, at some point in, I would imagine the 90’s, figured out how to make money without actually creating any value.

The boom in the financial community economy was always a sham because it produced absolutely nothing. The boom in the real estate market was a sham because it was based on nothing.

There is no reason that moving money from column A to column B should be so disproportionately valuable.

And it's not valuable, not at all.

There are those who believe that housing prices won't naturally rebound, that they are artificially high; if that's true, then we will not see massive profits from the government bailout. Those questionable assets that we will own will not ever come back to current levels, and we will see a big loss (contra Larry Summers). Via Andrew Sullivan, an article by Harvard economist Edward Glaeser:

If this reasoning is right, then prices have plenty of room to continue falling. That’s good news for ordinary Americans looking for cheaper housing. It’s bad news, however, for the financial markets — and possibly also for the return the government can expect to receive on the taxpayer-financed purchase of Wall Street’s troubled assets.

There's a lot of talk about rebuilding the infrastructure, our bridges and roads. Some people throw our educational system into the mix. But our infrastructure is everything included in the American premium, and it includes our regulatory system and our financial system, and we have had almost 30 years in which those things have been dismantled. Political orthodoxy has trumped the maintenance of the American system, and the financial meltdown is only a symptom of the whole problem. And it is very possible that we no longer have the spare cash lying around to fix these things - we have likely waited too long, and we may have to suffer the consequences.