Category Archives: Marketplace of ideas

Hillary and the neo-cons, sittin’ in a tree…

Has anyone else noticed that prominent neo-con or center-right syndicated pundits have gotten awfully sweet on Hillary Clinton the last few days?

First, there was Charles Krauthammer, holding her up as the measure of what’s right and true as he pounded Barack Obama in the column that could have been headlined, "Yeah! What Hillary said…."

… For Hillary Clinton, next in line at the debate, an unmissable
opportunity. She pounced: “I will not promise to meet with the leaders
of these countries during my first year.” And she then proceeded to
give the reasons any graduate student could tick off: You don’t want to
be used for their propaganda. You need to know their intentions. Such
meetings can make the situation worse.
Just to make sure no one
missed how the grizzled veteran showed up the clueless rookie, the next
day Clinton told the Quad-City Times of Davenport, Iowa, that Obama’s
comment “was irresponsible and frankly naive.”

Then there was David Brooks, whom — since he’s NYT — I can’t link to. But it was on the op-ed page of this morning’s paper. If you haven’t gotten to it yet, here’s an excerpt:

LACONIA, N.H. — The biggest story of this presidential campaign is the success of Hillary Clinton. Six months ago, many people thought she was too brittle and calculating and that voters would never really bond with her. But now she seems to offer the perfect combination of experience and change.
She’s demonstrating that it really helps to have lived in the White House. She can draw on a range of experiences unmatched by her rivals. She’s dominated most of the debates. She’s transformed her position on Iraq without a ripple. Her measured, statistic-filled speeches rarely inspire passion, but always confidence.

It’s an inexplicable phenomenon. Maybe you explic it — I mean, explain it.

Obama, the young, and the magic of Making a Difference

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By BRAD WARTHEN
EDITORIAL PAGE EDITOR
HOW’RE YOU gonna keep ’em down on the blog after they’ve heard Obama?
For an old guy, I have a lot of ways of keeping in touch with the young, idealistic and enthusiastic — my kids, my kids’ friends, my friends’ kids… and Weblogs.
But these kids today — they need to learn to stick to something. Law student Laurin Manning was really cooking with her LaurinLine, one of the foremost political blogs in the state. Then she quit to Max2_2
politick for real, rather than just writing about it.
Then there’s Max Blachman [at right],
son of my friend Moss, who started “Democrats in the South” just over a year ago and was cooking along fairly well for a while. He last posted on March 3.
Both Laurin and Max have gone to work for Barack Obama.
And they are far from alone. Thursday, I met Elizabeth Wilkins [below left], originally from New York, who’s down here as youth vote director for the Obama
campaign. What pulls Elizabeth so far away from home? “It’s not
every 23-year-old who gets to work on a campaign Wilkins for a man who might be the first black president.” True, but there’s more than that.
Poor John McCain is laying off members of the Pepsi Generation left and right, but his Senate colleague from Chicago seems to have an employment agency going for the kids. (Not that they’re all paid. Most aren’t.)
Yes, campaigns in general tend to be youth-heavy. The rest of us have family responsibilities; we seek job security more lasting than the next news cycle.
But there’s something about Obama that makes the youthfulness of his supporters seem more apt, something that reminds me of my own youth — and not just because the first time I saw him in person was when he spoke to the College Democrats of America over at the Russell House on Thursday. It was there that I heard him, among other things, reassert (to applause) that he would rush right out and have meaningful talks with the thugs who run Iran, Syria, Venezuela, Cuba, North Korea and, by logical extension, pretty much any other regime that would be tickled magenta to be handed such a great propaganda photo-op.
It’s easy for a graybeard like me, or that crusty old neocon Charles Krauthammer, or Hillary Clinton for that matter, to dismiss such promises as “irresponsible and frankly naive” — as did Sen. Clinton to anyone who would listen last week after her chief rival gave her that opportunity to sound mature, tough and sane.
But beyond the fact that young people think mean people suck, and it’s mean not to talk to people, and that we should have done more of that before going all Angry Daddy on Saddam, there’s a positive reason why Obama has a particular appeal to the young: He describes public service as something you can engage in and still feel clean.
Poor Joe Biden, who’s even older than I am, got into all sorts of trouble for calling Obama “clean,” but that’s just what he is. And for those who are focusing on details of the latest 24/7 news cycle’s scandal or whatever, it’s easy to forget how appealing “clean” can be to the fresh-faced.
It can be a compelling issue, and it belongs completely to Obama. Bill Clinton’s wife, late of the Rose Law Firm, can’t touch it. Nor can the $400 haircut who wants to be the nation’s trial lawyer. And those old guys over on the GOP side — forget it.
The 23-year-old who still gasps somewhere within me is convinced that Barack Obama is completely for real when he channels JFK via Jimmy Carter. Remember Jimmy Carter — not the old guy with the hammer who shakes his finger at us like Miz Lillian when we fail to be sweet to other nations, not the Grand Incompetent of Reagan Revolution lore, but the original, the one whose green bumper sticker I had on my orange 1972 Vega back when even I was 23?
He was never going to lie to us. He would lead us from the partisan, crooked, nasty cesspool of Watergate and the angst of Vietnam. He would help us to be the kind of country that JFK had promised we would get to be, back before Everything Went Wrong.
Well, I do. And it wasn’t about Democrat or Republican or liberal or conservative or black or white or money or any of that stuff embraced by the people who had messed things up. It was about Clean. It was about Meaning.
I first spoke to Barack Obama — very briefly, because of cell phone problems while I was traveling through mountains — a month ago. He only wanted to talk about one thing: Clean. He was unveiling his plan for “the most sweeping ethics reform in history,” — “Closing the Revolving Door,” “Increasing Public Access to Information,” and other Clean Government 101 stuff.
But with that overflow crowd of college kids providing better reception than my Treo, I realized that for this candidate, such yadda-yadda basics were more than just the talking points of that one day.
“Here’s the point,” he told them. “I wanted you to know that I’ve been where you are. I loved the world as a young man, and I wanted to make a difference. I’ve often been told that change wasn’t possible, but I’ve learned that it was. I believe that it still is. And I’m ready to join you in changing the course …”
Not just the course of war, or the wicked oil companies, or me-first politics, or meanness, but changing the lousy way that things are, period.
He invoked “an image of young people, back in the civil rights movement, straight-backed, clear-eyed, marching for justice…” and told them they could be those young people. They were those young people.
He reaches across time, across cynicism, across the sordidness of Politics As Practiced, offering to pull them in to the place where they can make a difference.
You can see how, to someone who’s 23, he’d be worth ditching the blog for.

Obama’s big applause line at USC

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Barack Obama got a warm reception at the College Democrats of America confab over at the Russell House today. The kids liked his JFK-style, rise-to-the-challenge-of-a-new-generation idealism. I liked it, too. I think it’s something that sets Obama apart, in a positive way. I might write about it in my Sunday column.

But I had to smile when this was his biggest applause line (up to that point in the speech, anyway).

Now, before you dismiss these kids as totally self-interested and selfish — he’s talking about a real problem. Whether he’s got the solution or not, I don’t know. But as the father of five kids, four of whom are in their 20s, I’ve had to deal with the painful spectacle of watching my kids work very hard trying to make it on their own, yet struggle to pay medical bills when they arise, because their jobs don’t provide them with coverage.

Our whole health care "system" is price-adjusted for those of us who have health insurance, and too expensive even for us. For young adults without that benefit, it’s a cruel joke.

Why should young people starting out in the world have to settle for a job that gives them such bennies? It really limits them to following established paths rather than going out and taking risks to innovate and move our country forward. At least, it limits them if they listen to their old man, who worries so much about them that he keeps saying, "Go for the thing with the benefits!"

Partly, I do that out of frustration. I work myself to death to take care of my family, and once they turn 19, or graduate from college, I can’t take care of them any more, no matter how hard I work. And then I see them struggle without the umbrella of health protection I’ve always had. I try to help them out with cash at times, but at such prices it’s beyond my pocketbook, much less theirs.

In any other civilized country in the world, this would not be a worry.

So yeah, I laughed at the big applause Obama got on this, but what he’s talking about isn’t really funny.

‘Plan A’ for Iraq: the perfect course of action

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This is another one of those comments that went on and on until I decided to turn it into a post. It started like this: Uncle Elmer wrote, in part…

Brad you’re completely wrong when you say "it’s not about Bush," of
course it’s about him! He’s still in charge, and still following the
same pattern of bad decision making and ignoring history that has
become his trademark. Given his absolute refusal to work with other
countries, build consensus support here in the US, or even explain
himself in any other way than beating the Al Qaeda drum what choice is
there? I think a lot of the "pull out now" crowd is really saying "I
don’t trust him and won’t trust him" and what they are hearing you say
is "trust him!"

Exactly (to that last part). And I’m trying to get them to hear the opposite, which is that Iraq has a real-world existence that is independent of what you or I or anyone else thinks of that serial bungler in the White House. What we do from this moment on is what matters. We’re stuck with Bush as president until January 2009, which is really, really bad, but it has nothing to do with whether we need to maintain our commitment in Iraq. The only issue we have before us in terms of who the president is, or what we think of the president, is the 2008 election.

Let’s say there is some "Plan A" that is the perfect thing to do with regard to Iraq. Maybe it’s go with the surge. Maybe it’s run like a scalded dog. Maybe it’s a phased pullout. Maybe it’s institute a draft and inundate the country with U.S. troops. Maybe it’s declare martial law. Maybe it’s to pull back to remote bases, or try the Biden plan of partitioning the country. Whatever.

Now mind you, even though "Plan A" is the one most perfect thing to do, it "won’t be a fairy-tale ending," as RTH said in the same string. The "perfect" plan under such circumstances (that is to say, in the real world) is merely the best result you can get. That is not, and never was, the bogus "Jeffersonian democracy" that various people who didn’t want us there to begin with seem to set as the impossible standard, short of which we should just give up. (If they’re waiting for us to have a "Jeffersonian democracy" in THIS country, I hope they’re not holding their breaths. Given that reality, we would be looking for something short of that in Iraq.) No, the standard is that things will be better. Greater peace, greater prosperity, greater stability, greater self-determination, better relations with neighbors and with the West, etc. And Plan A gets things "more better" than anything else.

Whatever "Plan A" is, it’s what we should do — at this point in time, in this situation. And let’s say we can just wave a wand and make it happen. Of course, one thing we CAN’T do, because it’s a one-wish wand, is change who the president is. We’re stuck with Bush until January 2009, just like in the real world.

That means, when you wave the wand, whatever orders have to be issued — whether the orders are to keep fighting, withdraw to neutral corners, skedaddle, whatever — will go through him, acting as the commander-in-chief. Just like in the real world.

Now you can either wave that wand and implement Plan A, or refuse to do so because it will involve that guy you don’t like. Me, I’d wave the wand. There seem to be a lot of people who would refuse to do so, because as soon as they tried to implement it, "Plan A" would seem to them like the "Bush plan," and they would feel obliged to hate it.

And what I’m saying is that that’s crazy thinking.

Now, the Petraeus Plan is not "Plan A," in my opinion, and probably not in yours, either. The difference between us is that MY idea of "Plan A" would be more like institute the draft and and blockade every crossroad in the country. But you know what? There’s no chance of my plan A being implemented. That’s because there is no magic wand. But Petraeus’ approach — that of far more targeted reinforcements applied where they will do to the most good toward creating a more secure environment in which to seek political solutions — is as close to Plan A as we’re going to get, and more likely to produce a good result than anything else we are likely to do.

So I support it, and I do all I can to get other Americans to support it, because if they don’t, then neither this nor any other plan will ever succeed in making things appreciably better.

That doesn’t work, for you? OK, how about this: "(Extremely rude four-letter word starting with an "F") Bush. Forget him. Nothing you can do about it. All we can do about Iraq is the best we can do. We get to change presidents 18 months from now. Let’s do whatever we can to make the situation there as good as it can be when that new president takes over."

What we have here is a refusal to communicate

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The nature of this discussion is changing for me. That is, the nature of what interests me in it is changing.

I find myself becoming less interested in my original question, and more interested in the phenomenal barriers to communication that human beings will erect when having a discussion of political philosophy.

I’m going to explore this further — maybe even in my Sunday column. But in the meantime, let me share this post on The Shot, which was responding to this post of mine. And then, let me share the comment I wrote on that blog:

First, to whom am I speaking. Is this Tim, or Casen? These multiple-hand blogs are confusing to us lone-gunmen types…

I’m about to do a post, when I get caught up with real work, about "The Cognitive Barrier." It’s a profound problem, and it seems to get even more in the way when we deal with broader philosophical issues such as this.

Here’s what happens — I write something. It’s bound to provoke people, but I want them to engage what I’m saying, and help me understand them better. I’m not interested in one of those tit-for-tat name-calling contests you usually see on blogs. I’m careful in how I state my position so as to make sure I’m being completely clear as to what I mean, because I’m talking to people who seem to have a very different set of assumptions from mine, so you can’t assume understanding of portions of your points. I can’t use shorthand, and I certainly can’t use slogans. I’m not going to dress up what I say to make it more palatable; I’m not selling. My one interest is in being clearly understood so that the honest response I get helps me in understanding.

And what do I get? Well, one thing I get is a lot of favorite bumper stickers and battle cries from the adherents of the philosophy I’m questioning — you know, the sort of taunts that members of a gang toss out so that the other members of the gang will be impressed, and say, "That’s tellin’ ‘im, man."

But that’s not as bad as this — having people come back at me NOT with what I said, or with what I believe, or anything I have ever even thought, but with what they would LIKE for me to have said, because they have an answer for THAT that they think works very well.

And the cause of understanding, of synthesis, of people who disagree learning to communicate so that maybe they can work together to solve something, is set back. I take a step forward, and I find us two steps back, making me have to work even harder to explain what I said before we can even get to better understanding what the OTHER guy might want to say in response.

The above is an example of that. For instance, "What you want is for a third party (government) to forcefully remove the fruits of another’s labor and give to those, who just as easily could have been making the money." Really? I didn’t know I wanted that. I didn’t say that or think that. So why are we talking about that?

And excuse me, but who the hell are you to tell me what I want, when I just told you what I want, and it wasn’t that?

"you love the idea of government controlling your retirement" — Say what? What do you base that on? What did I say like that?

Here’s what I said, and what I keep saying: What I want is to abide by a system of representative democracy. I want us to deliberate, through our elected representatives, of how to address all issues that involve us all as a community — provide for the common defense, etc. If we decide through that process that we will pool some of our income so that those who slave away all their lives at low wages won’t starve when they’re 75, then that’s what we’ll do. If we decide that everybody’s on his own, then everybody’s on his own. If we decide just to give money to people who’ve never worked a day in their lives, then that’s what we’ll do. Ditto as to whether contributions will be voluntary, involuntary, in a "lockbox" or in private accounts. All of these things are open questions to be dealt with through the political process. May the best ideas win.

Of course, if you lose the political argument, you do live under the agreement that was reached. You don’t get to opt out. Oh, you can move to Sweden, or Somalia (depending on whether you prefer civilization or a true State of Nature). You don’t have to be a part of the community. But if you live in the community, you will abide by these rules and policy decisions, whether you advocated them or not. To say you should not have to do so is stupid and childish, period. If you don’t like the outcome of the debate, and you want to live in the community, there’s always another election coming within two years. State your case.

But the question raised by my post wasn’t about any of that, so all of the words I just wrote were simply extra work to try to get us back to the starting place:

Never mind what kind of governmental system we should have. It’s established that it really bothers you for anyone — other than someone you have personally approved — to enjoy any fruits of your labor. No, let me define that more clearly — Doug Ross said that. He said any system that does NOT expect him to contribute toward anyone else’s retirement.

Let’s say he’s right, or let’s say he’s wrong. Never mind that. What I want to know is, WHY does he feel that way? WHERE does that powerful "don’t touch it; it’s MINE" impulse come from?

Everybody has it to some extent. If you’re hungry, and here are the nuts and berries you gathered, you don’t want somebody taking them all away — at least, not before you’ve had your fill. But what Doug says, and what libertarians espouse, goes so far beyond that fundamental survival instinct. He seems to say — and I stand here fully ready to be corrected on this if I’m misstating it; I’m TRYING to understand it — that he doesn’t want ANY of what he’s gathered to go to ANYBODY unless he specifically decides himself whether that person should have any.

He can have it that way if he wins the political argument. All I’m asking is WHY does he want that? It’s a powerful impulse that goes far beyond anything I have ever felt. So help me understand it.

There is no table. Or is there?

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We’re having a lot of trouble communicating here. I knew that we would when I started this, but I’m a glutton for punishment. I continue to believe, in spite of years of frustration, that it is possible to reason with people. But that assumes a common language, common terms, and at least the rudiments of agreement upon basic reality.

It’s hard to get much done in a round table discussion if the participants don’t agree that the thing between them is a table, or that it is round. (This is worse than the Paris Peace Talks. If I remember correctly, the argument there was over the shape that the table should be, not whether there were such a thing as a table, or whether it was really a chair, or…)

The problem is dramatized by Doug, who inspired the thread to start with (you’ll have to scroll down after you follow the link):

Your fawning over our system of government is remarkable. You admire
politicians like some people admire athletes or actors… ascribing all
sorts of heroic attributes to a group of people who are mainly
interested in power and personal gain. You act as if these people are
altruistic financial wizards working solely for the will of the people.
Fat chance. I have to ask — what color is the sky in your world????

OK, let’s address that paragraph. "Fawning over our system of government." Yes, I believe in the system of representative democracy embraced by the Founders, and institutionalized in the Constitution. I have a lot of problems with the system we have in South Carolina, which was built to be inefficient, extremely resistant to change, unaccountable to the people, and protective of the status quo for the benefit of an established aristocracy (thanks again, John Locke). But the American system? I will not reject "fawning," with all its contemptuous connotations, because almost any word that suggests admiration, respect, even reverence will do. As for contempt — well, I confess that I harbor contempt for those who regard the American system of government in contempt. That would apply to the "Blame America" set on the left, and the "despise government" folk who tend these days to congregate with the right. But I am trying to hold my contempt in check for the sake of a civil, good-faith discussion. That’s a little hard to do when an interlocutor boasts of humiliating his parents by showing them that he and his employer were funding most of their Social Security payments. I’m a much more conservative, "honor thy father and thy mother" kind of guy. So let’s move on.

"You admire politicians…?" Let me try really hard to give that statement some credence, and say that I suppose it depends on the politician. There aren’t many I would say I "admire, in the sense that most people would use the word. John McCain is one. Joe Lieberman is another. My admiration for Lindsay Graham has been growing steadily. I have long admired Joe Riley and Tony Blair. When I look at the entire category — well, I would be hard-pressed to say that I admire our governor specifically, or the governor before him, or the one before him… I don’t think anyone who reads what I write would say that, either. As for most of the Legislature — well, as a body, they are hardly worthy of praise. I’d say "disgust" is a more frequently felt sentiment than admiration. But if you’re speaking in generic terms, do I consider public service (whether elective or appointive, a momentary thing or "career") a higher calling than those of, say, "athletes and actors?" Of course. I’m sure many athletes and actors also do admirable things, but there is nothing inherently admirable in being able to run fast or look good on camera (and I realize Doug wasn’t saying I should admire actors and athletes, but since that’s the comparison he made, I’m exploring that). There is something admirable in wanting to serve others, whether by working in government service — military or civilian (yes, even "bureaucrats") — or running for office to represent one’s fellow citizens in our republican system. Just stepping out to offer your services, you know that millions will immediately sneer at you for being a "politician," and that’s just the beginning. Your opponents will slander you, insult you, lie about you, do anything they can short of sticks and stones to hurt you. I suppose in some people, the willingness to put up with that is pathological. In others, it is indeed admirable.

"ascribing all sorts of heroic attributes…" when did I do that? Just now was the closest I’ve come to that, and I only did so because I was reaching as far as I could to meet you in this discussion — going as far out on the "admiration" limb as I could scoot. But heroic? When did I, in this discussion and before Doug said that, speak of anything heroic?

Once again, we’re getting into the realm of impulse — of powerful feelings. The contempt that Doug holds for those in public service is quite palpable, and seems akin to his resentment of his labor going to the benefit of others — except, of course, under circumstances and conditions that he entirely controls. It’s another thing that puzzles me. Where does that come from? Did a city councilman or a policeman beat him up when he was young? There is often, in libertarian rhetoric, something that sounds a good bit like fear, or a sense of one’s own smallness or vulnerability in the face of something of overweening power. I don’t recall having felt that way in my time in this country. I can see how a Saudi might feel that way, but not an American.

Don’t you think "people who are mainly
interested in power and personal gain" would be wiser to stay in the private sector? When it comes to power, what politician in this country will ever have the monarchical power of a CEO — even one with an outspoken board? Look at what politicians actually encounter when they try to accomplish something — unrelenting opposition, usually to the point of completely frustrating the intended action. To be able to make a decision and have it stick at your own company — that’s power. "Personal gain?" Oh, come on. Government service is definitely the wrong place.

"Altruistic financial wizards?" When did I ever suggest such a thing? Do you ever read what we write about the Legislature’s budgetary priorities and decisions? That’s so far from easily verifiable reality, I don’t know why you would level such a charge.

This is discouraging — this cognitive disconnect over our respective statements. I’m not even getting off on any of the comments I’ve read from others in this discussion that indicate that they perceive reality in ways that seem very, very strange to me — such as John saying that someone else’s hyperbolic description of creating a permanent underclass is "EXACTLY WHAT WE HAVE TODAY," or Weldon "breaking" it to me that the government doesn’t own the property (what I said was that NO ONE owns property without a system of laws that set out, support and maintain the purely theoretical concept of property rights; this is a very difficult concept for libertarians to grasp, so I can hardly blame him I guess), or Eric’s very overwrought cry of "Should one not vote for or choose a collectivism justified by majority
rule they are still forced to comply with the charity of the state via
gunpoint," (oh, lighten up; why do you people feel so extremely and dramatically put upon when you lose a political argument? That’s life.), or Lee’s "definition" of "communitarianism." (You see why I hesitate to use the term? It’s sufficiently esoteric that he felt free to just make up his own definition to advance his argument. He managed to use "communistic," but I guess he couldn’t figure away to work any other epithets in. One thing I won’t let him get away with, though, is "feelings without any attempt at intellectual justification." I’m not much of a feelings guy, and communitarianism is so over-intellectualized that it never seems to make it into popular conversation.)

What am I supposed to do to facilitate a constructive discussion here? How can I do so, when even my most carefully explained thoughts come back to me in such a bizarrely distorted form? How do we settle on the fact that there is or is not a table before us, so that we can reach more substantive agreements?

To recap my view: "Government" is neither God nor the Devil. In this country, it is just a set of arrangements that a free people came up with for carrying out their common affairs. I believe that most people who are past adolescence should understand that the world is not about them and their almighty, individual will. They must somehow live their lives with some accommodation for the fact that they will live in a community of some kind, and that community will order things in ways that will often differ from the individual’s preferences. In applying that set of arrangements, government (in our system) is no more or less coercive than we, as a community, decide that it will be. If we want to enforce speed limits, we will (in South Carolina, we have decided not to). If we want to let people get away with tax evasion, we will. Plenty of people do. I suppose tax evaders are neither as respectful of government as I am, nor as afraid of it as some of my interlocutors here seem to be.

Anyway, back to the discussion: What is the root of this passionate, angry rejection of having obligations placed on one by the community at large?

Help me understand the libertarian impulse

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Folks, one of our regulars said something in a comment in the last day or so that prompted me to ask a question that I would really like to have answered. I think it’s important to understanding a lot of conversations we have here. Anway, Doug Ross was responding to something another commenter said about retirement systems, and he said:

I would agree with you on portable pensions as long as that means I own
every penny of what my employer and I contribute and I am not
responsible for paying the retirement for somebody else.

That prompted this question from me, which I would now like to offer more prominently, in the hope of increasing the chances I can get an answer I understand:

Doug, why do you feel that way — about wanting to make sure that you’re not expected to help anyone else in retirement?

That might sound facetious, or provocative, but I’m sincere about wanting to know. The concern you express seems to be at the heart of the whole libertarian impulse, which I find it so impossible to connect with. And one thing I keep wondering is, how do people develop an attitude of "this is mine; it’s just for me; don’t anybody expect me to share it?"

It might be that it’s a perfectly natural impulse, as many would maintain, and that some of us just have it conditioned out of us — or, we become conditioned to be embarrassed to express such a thought, whether we have the impulse or not. Our mother tells us when we’re young that it’s mean not to share. Or we hear the Bible story in which Cain acts like the Lord is out of line by suggesting that he should in any way be his brother’s keeper.

But I’m not sure I feel that impulse at all. I mean, if somebody came and took all I had so that I was hungry and cast into the cold, I’m pretty sure I’d feel like saying, "Hey, that was mine! You can’t do that." But when I’m able to get by, however hard it might be paying bills from month to month, I just don’t even feel a murmur of protest at the idea of paying into a system that makes sure nobody else starves in old age, or into a system that makes sure no one will be turned away when they need medical care.

It would be one thing to say, "I don’t think the plan would work," or "there are better ways to build a Safety Net," or whatever. But when you say that WHATEVER the system, you want to make sure you’re not paying in to help somebody else — that it’s the INTENT of doing that that bothers you — you leave me bewildered.

So why do you think that way?

Here’s how we fail to understand each other

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I got a very nice e-mail from a very nice person who was complimentary of my column Sunday, but then it went on to say something that seemed to perfectly illustrate the point of the column. Here’s the message:

Dear Brad,

I very much enjoyed and agree with your editorial
"Policy isn’t about personalities". However, is
this not the reason why The State (and the media
in general) ignores the FairTax? This plan will
unburden American citizens and businesses and
create economic prosperity by making US-made
products globally competitive. The benefits to our
country are enormous, so I must ask, is it the
proposal itself or is it because Neal Boortz
co-wrote the FairTax book and the legislation is
sponsored by a Republican? (This is what I have
been led to believe). As your column suggests,
ideas should not be judged based on who supports
them.

I welcome your comments.

And here was my response:

No and not. And now I have to ask you:
— Who is Neal Bortz? I’ve never heard of him.
— Why on Earth would you or anyone else have the impression that we would ignore something "because … the legislation is sponsored by a Republican." That’s bizarre.
With all due respect, I think your note is another illustration of my point. Only someone who thinks very differently from the way I do could think my interest in something could be turned on or off by an individual or the party associated with it. Those are alien concepts to me.
As far as the "Fair Tax" is concerned, is that the thing Jim DeMint was pushing back when he ran for the Senate? If so, we examined it pretty carefully at the time, and weren’t too crazy about it. No one has brought it up to me since then. I’ve been vaguely aware there was an effort out there to revive the idea — I think there was a meeting or something at the same time that everybody was busy with the GOP debate, and I saw a banner about it at the luncheon that Fred Thompson spoke at. That’s about all I know.

— Brad Warthen

So now I guess I’ll have to look up this Fair Tax thing at some point, and this Neal Bortz guy too (I mean "Boortz," Google corrected me, sorry for not reading the message more carefully), and I have no idea that I will find either particularly interesting. But I’ll look, when I get time. Right now, I’m processing e-mail. I provide the links so you can look, in case you have time today.

(Tomorrow Mike comes back, and I go back to being only a couple of people, instead of three or four.)

Policy isn’t about personalities. Or at least, it shouldn’t be

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By BRAD WARTHEN
EDITORIAL PAGE EDITOR
LAST WEEK, I saw a clip from Martin Scorcese’s 2004 film about Howard Hughes, “The Aviator.” I had seen it before. But this time, I had a different reaction when Leonardo DiCaprio, as gazillionaire Hughes, went into a compulsive fit, helplessly repeating:
“Show me all the blueprints. Show me all the blueprints. Show me all the blueprints. SHOW ME ALL THE BLUEPRINTS….”
The first time, I thought, Whoa, that’s messed up. This time, I thought, I can identify….
Over the past weeks I’ve found myself saying something over and over — sounding just like Howard Hughes, only without the money:
“How we should proceed with regard to Iraq should not be determined by our opinion of President Bush. The best course in Iraq is not dependent upon personal regard for the president. Success in Iraq isn’t about Bush. Iraq isn’t about Bush. Iraq’s not about Bush. It’s not about Bush!”
Whether we should give Gen. David Petraeus more time to pursue his strategy that actually seems to be starting to work — whether a cause that Americans have fought and died for for more than four years will lead to a good result — is far more important than what we think or feel toward the guy in the White House.
Compared to this profoundly important strategic decision, it simply doesn’t matter whether you think Mr. Bush lied to you before the invasion (he didn’t) or whether he applied grossly inadequate policies and strategies over the next three years (he did).
Nor is it relevant that you think Dick Cheney must be what Darth Vader looks like without his helmet on (I’m not arguing with you there).
But listen to how every development of the “decision-making” (most of the participants decided a long time ago, of course) process in Washington is expressed. It’s always about Bush.
Democrats are said to be trying to deliver a setback to the president. John McCain is said to be steadfastly loyal to the president’s strategy (despite the fact that the “surge” was closer to his idea all along than to the Bush/Rumsfeld “do it cheap” approach). Dick Lugar is described as breaking with the president.
Folks, the president isn’t the one fighting and sacrificing and bleeding and dying for this cause. It’s some of the bravest young people this nation has ever produced. It’s also a few million ordinary Iraqis who, brave or not, don’t have anyplace else to go.
And as what I said a moment ago about the vice president suggests, not even this “not about Bush” rant I’m on is about Bush. It’s not even about Iraq. It’s more about whether a free people can govern themselves through a system of representative democracy. Not just in Iraq, but right here.
We’re personality-mad, from the people on the tabloids who are famous just for being famous (what is it that Paris Hilton does again?) to deciding which course history will take depending upon who suggested the direction.
Consider one of the most devastating arguments leveled against the late immigration bill — I mean, when critics got tired of saying “Grahamnesty” — Ted Kennedy’s for it. Whoa. OK. Case closed.
(Yes, I realize that, just as with Iraq, many people who rose up against the immigration bill have detailed, point-by-point arguments based on a careful, critical reading of all the available facts. But you know and I know that for some folks, “Teddy” was enough. That’s why we heard it so often.)
Sometimes, of course, a person is the issue. But even then, what’s most important to our society is what that person in the news represents in a larger sense. Thomas Ravenel’s drug problem, as described by his father, is a personal and family tragedy — and none of your or my business. But the indictment of the state treasurer, about whom the voters knew little beyond the fact that he photographed well, points to the serious flaw in our system for determining who’s going to hold our money for us.
It’s up to Tommy Moore whether he wants to be a state senator or work for the payday lending industry. Forget him. What the rest of us should think about is how much longer we’re going to tolerate our Legislature rolling over for special interests instead of acting in behalf of the greater good.
Finally, it’s not about Mark Sanford. Yes, he’s a pain with his ideology-over-reality shtick, up to the point that we endorsed Tommy Moore over him — even though our opinion of then-Sen. Moore was such that none of us was terribly shocked last week.
But when he says we should restructure government to make it accountable, he’s right. When he says you shouldn’t dictate local laws from the state level, he’s right. He’s right about a lot of stuff. But lawmakers take a particular delight in sticking it to Mark Sanford personally. Sure, he gives them cause, but that’s not what they’re there for.
South Carolina isn’t just about Mark Sanford.
I could go on and on about the problems with making political judgments personal, but let’s face a critical fact: Either you get my point by now, or you stopped reading about 20 inches ago because you don’t trust that stupid Brad Warthen anyway. In which case you just proved my point.

Katon Dawson vs. poverty

More views on whether voters are idiots

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Seems that folks over on this side of the pond are a bit slower than the Brits in perusing Mr. Caplan’s treatise on what idiots voters are.

And they are less charmed.

In today’s editions of both The Wall Street Journal and The New Yorker, we find somewhat bemused ponderings over what the reviewers seem to regard as Mr. Caplan’s earnest wish that the world be run by economists rather than voters.

Both give Mr. Caplan (The Economist and WSJ keep referring to him as "Mr.," but I wonder whether, in his world, he is known as "Dr."?) his due, as far as it goes. From The New Yorker:

The political knowledge of the average voter has been tested repeatedly, and the scores are impressively low. In polls taken since 1945, a majority of Americans have been unable to name a single branch of government, define the terms “liberal” and “conservative,” and explain what the Bill of Rights is. More than two-thirds have reported that they do not know the substance of Roe v. Wade and what the Food and Drug Administration does. Nearly half do not know that states have two senators and three-quarters do not know the length of a Senate term. More than fifty per cent of Americans cannot name their congressman; forty per cent cannot name either of their senators. Voters’ notions of government spending are wildly distorted: the public believes that foreign aid consumes twenty-four per cent of the federal budget, for example, though it actually consumes about one per cent.

But they are less kind about his conclusions, and The New Yorker is drily dismissive of his "solutions:"

He offers some suggestions for fixing the evils of universal democratic participation (though he does not spend much time elaborating on them, for reasons that may suggest themselves to you when you read them): require voters to pass a test for economic competence; give extra votes to people with greater economic literacy; reduce or eliminate efforts to increase voter turnout; require more economics courses in school, even if this means eliminating courses in other subjects, such as classics; teach people introductory economics without making the usual qualifications about the limits of market solutions. His general feeling is that if the country were run according to the beliefs of professional economists everyone would be better off. Short of that consummation, he favors whatever means are necessary to get everyone who votes to think like a professional economist. He wants to raise the price of voting.

I’m into civility and all that, but I did rather enjoy that parenthetical. The WSJ was, if less sarcastic, equally critical. It was cruel enough to throw some inconvenient facts at the author:

As an analysis of how far voters are out of step with settled economic thinking, Mr. Caplan’s argument seems irrefutable. Yet as a work of political theory it is pretty dismal. Survey data do indeed show that Americans hold some irrational views. But nowhere in "The Myth of the Rational Voter" does Mr. Caplan demonstrate that dumb voter bias triggers bad public policy.

Take free trade. Mr. Caplan reports that support for free trade hit bottom in 1977, when only 18% of Americans favored eliminating tariffs. Yet three years later, Ronald Reagan campaigned on a platform of free trade and proceeded to sign historic free-trade agreements with Canada and laid the groundwork for free trade with Mexico. Later administrations have fought to grant China most-favored nation trading status. True, there has been a lot of populist noise against free trade, but for decades not a single presidential nominee from either party has run for office while waving the protectionist flag.

Personally, I suspect the thing that keeps the country ticking is that, contrary to public whim, our Founders were bright enough to opt for a republic rather than a democracy. We’ve been pulling hard in the opposite direction for more than two centuries now, but occasionally elected officials still do the right thing. But on the rare occasions when I can’t escape hearing the partisan nonsense over the Controversy Of The Day on 24/7 TV "news," I wonder how much longer the vestiges of that can last.

I just blew my chance to be on the Lehrer show

Are voters idiots?

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No, seriously. Hold off with the glib, partisan comebacks and think about it. It’s kind of important.

Cleaning up my desk, I glanced through a copy of The Economist and saw a "Lexington" column from June 14 headlined, "Vote for me, dimwit."

It was about a book called The Myth of the Rational Voter by Bryan Caplan, an economics professor at George Mason University. An excerpt from the column:

The world is a complex place. Most people are inevitably ignorant about most things, which is why shows like “Are You Smarter than a 5th Grader?” are funny. Politics is no exception. Only 15% of Americans know who Harry Reid (the Senate majority leader) is, for example. True, more than 90% can identify Arnold Schwarzenegger. But that has a lot to do with the governor of California’s previous job pretending to be a killer robot.

Many political scientists think this does not matter because of a phenomenon called the “miracle of aggregation” or, more poetically, the “wisdom of crowds”. If ignorant voters vote randomly, the candidate who wins a majority of well-informed voters will win. The principle yields good results in other fields. On “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?”, another quiz show, the answer most popular with the studio audience is correct 91% of the time. Financial markets, too, show how a huge number of guesses, aggregated, can value a stock or bond more accurately than any individual expert could. But Mr Caplan says that politics is different because ignorant voters do not vote randomly.

It turns out that Mr. Caplan is of a libertarian mindset — he thinks the answer to the problem that voters want stupid governmental policies is to leave less up to the government. This, of course, is ironic, since most libertarians believe individuals always act rationally, so their voting should be rational, but as you see above, Mr. Caplan says politics is different. (Now if more "the market is God" types would realize people don’t act as rational consumers with regard to health care, either, we might get somewhere as a nation with THAT problem.)

But as "Lexington" says about Mr. Caplan, he’s "better at diagnosis than prescription." So back to his diagnosis — do voters vote rationally? Judging by how many politicians who seem like smart people choose to act like dumb people to get elected, one might doubt it.

Or, to refute the Ibsen reference Karen McLeod brought up on another thread, is the majority always right? I give up. What does the audience think?

If only Haig WERE in control…

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Everybody makes fun of poor ol’ Al "I’m in control" Haig, but the general has a lot of sense, and we could do worse — and would probably be much better off — if he were in charge now.

Admittedly, I’m just basing that on this short op-ed piece in The Wall Street Journal today, but common sense seems in such short supply these days, I get all worked up when I run across it. An excerpt:

John Quincy Adams warned us against going abroad "in search of monsters to destroy," and some argue that the war on terror is just such a case. I disagree. On 9/11, the monster found us asleep at home and will continue to find us inadequately prepared unless we muster more strength and more wisdom. Unless we break with illusionary democracy mongering, inept handling of our military resources and self-defeating domestic political debates, we are in danger of becoming our own worst enemy.

Actually, that was a tough piece to excerpt in a truly representative manner. I recommend you go read it. It won’t take long.

Unintentional terror target

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Whenever any kind of bomb goes off, there is likely to be collateral damage. At least, that’s the case with our bombs, since we’re not trying to hurt the innocent when we drop them.

With terrorists, it’s sort of different. The randomness of the victim’s identities is sort of the point. The more random, the more a bomb is likely to spread terror.

But at least in the case of these intended bombings, it seems highly unlikely that the whackos intentionally tried to damage Paul DeMarco’s campaign for single-payer health care.

And yet, what are we to think when the British National Health Service intentionally recruits foreign doctors, and they turn out to be terror-minded?

Well, I’ll tell you what I think: Keeping our current system is no way to avoid that problem. If you don’t think we’re drawing a lot of foreign medicos to this country, you haven’t been to a major hospital or to a local doc-in-the-box lately.

This is not to cast aspersions upon physicians with accents. It is to say that as long as we remain the kind of country that attracts the educated and ambitious from abroad (we can agree on that, can’t we, even though a lot of y’all out there don’t want to attract folks to come pick our strawberries?), we will be vulnerable — unless those societies over there change.

Hence my preference for offense over defense in the war on terror. And in baseball, for that matter — I certainly prefer batting to standing in the outfield. Don’t you? Sure, we have to play some tenacious D, but it’s crazy to let the bad guys be the ones batting all the time.

I want us to remain a free and open land of opportunity. That means encouraging other countries to be the same.

Claudia weighs in

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Poor Claudia. I told her via e-mail that her name had come up in this thread, and she tried to weigh in on the discussion, but came in as I was changing my comments policy — twice.

So she sent me what she wanted to say by e-mail. Here it is:

Hello Brad, Herb… thank you for thinking of me… I’m flattered! I just read the email you sent, Brad, so I’m late joining this particular fray. As to the "subject at hand", are we discussing the banning of LexWolf, Brad’s mendaciousness or the management of blogs in general?? To comment on all three, well, I won’t miss Lex. Sorry, Lex, but you come off like the guy at the party everyone tries to avoid. Know-it-alls are annoying, but tolerable. Slatheringly aggressive know-it-alls don’t make many friends and, truth be known, I had taken to simply ignoring your posts because any value they contained was buried beneath so much hissing vitriol that it simply was no longer worth my time to read them. Secondly, is Brad a liar? Oh come on guys, really! Brad has opinions and philosophies just like all of us who post on this blog. Mostly he defends them with a clarity and articulateness that I envy… sometimes not so much! But, hey, this is a discussion, not an academic treatise, and it’s more like an oral argument than anything else. I don’t always agree with Brad, or several others that post here, but I respect his intellectual honesty and that of many other authors on this blog. Finally, on how to run a blog, I have no idea. Personally, I began posting on this one with a pseudonym, Lily. Yes, Herb, there were personal security concerns… thank you for understanding that! But, at the same time, it began to feel somehow dishonest… I have a reputation amongst my friends and associates as a "what you see is what you get" kind of person, and it’s something I try to remain true to. Yes, my real name is Claudia, but I prefer not to share my last name. It is quite unique, even more so than my first name, and there are some seriously crazy people in this world. My opinions are not always popular ones, especially in this state, and I while I would love to shout them from the top of the Confederate battle flag on the state house grounds that probably wouldn’t be the smartest thing to do.

Thanks for inviting me in, folks… I’ll try not to be a stranger!

Claudia

You mean the insurance industry is AGAINST it?

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Check out the letters to the editor today and be edified.

It seems that a guy who speaks for the insurance industry doesn’t like our own Paul DeMarco’s idea for a single-payer health-care system. Well, that settles that. If the middlemen, who would be completely eliminated along with all their lovely profits, think it’s a bad idea, why on Earth should anybody listen to a mere physician such as Paul?

Anyway, for y’all who are too lazy to click, here’s the letter:

Government monopoly won’t help health care
Guest columnist Paul DeMarco (“Really fixing U.S. health care,” June 5) argued that single-payer health care should be implemented in America.
Although Americans are clamoring for health care reform, this is one proposed solution that should be taken off the table.
Under a single-payer system, the government could hold a monopoly over health care coverage, offering only one insurance plan option. If the government decided to reduce funding or deny coverage for medical technologies or procedures, Americans would either have to forgo potentially life-saving procedures or finance them out-of-pocket.
Under the current system, if people are dissatisfied with their plan, they can simply switch insurance carriers.
Any possible savings from a single-payer system would be quickly eaten up by increased use, and bureaucratic inefficiencies would replace functioning free-market systems. The result would be an overburdened, underfunded system that is more cumbersome to navigate than the current one.
We should seek alternatives to a single-payer system to ensure health care for all.

ED BYRD
President
S.C. Association of Health Underwriters
Columbia

I was interested in how he brushed over the "any possible savings" part. Savings, of course, would be inevitable, because you would eliminate the third-party profits. Whether that were "quickly eaten up" in the way he suggests or some other way is certainly possible, but not inevitable.

Divided We Fail

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Just about every morning, I run into my friend Samuel Tenenbaum at breakfast, and we talk about various wonkish things, and have a high old time ingesting caffeine and blueberries.

And just about every morning, he mentions that it’s past time I should write about AARP’s program, Divided We Fail. Essentially, it’s an effort by AARP to get candidates in the presidential campaign talking about important domestic issues such as health care.

Shortly after he started working at AARP — and Divided We Fail is his particular mission — I dropped by his office and shot this video (with my phone, sorry about the low quality), which is essentially his answer to my question, "What are you doing here?"

At around that same time, Jane Wiley and others from that organization came by to see the editorial board and talked to us about the same thing. And we have yet to write about it, whereas others who don’t run into Samuel all the time have already written about it. That’s Jane pictured below. (If I shot video at that meeting, I’m having trouble finding it now.)

Well, we’ve had the Legislature winding down, etc., and all sorts of other excuses. But Samuel (and Jane, in her lower-key way) is (are) right to nag me about it.

This is one of several efforts going on in our state that do the very same thing, only with different issues. I wrote previously about the folks trying to raise the profile of global warming in the campaign. There’s also something going on backed by Bono of U2 and saving-the-world fame, and something else pushed by Bill Gates and his lady. I plan to do a column on the whole phenomenon, now that it’s summer.

But in the meantime, check out the grainy video, as Samuel summarizes it better than I could, and then look at the Web site.

I will return to this subject. Yes, I will…

Jane_wiley

What about Ken Wingate?

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When I first heard Ken Wingate was being appointed to fill in as interim treasurer, I had these thoughts:

He’s a good guy, a good choice. I first came to know him during the epic battle to outlaw video poker; he helped run the "vote No" campaign on the referendum that never happened. I believe
that campaign’s efforts is what caused video poker to panic and sue to stop the vote — which backfired and ended up in the industry’s being banned. He then ran for governor, which was overreaching for a guy who hadn’t held public office before. But when he was knocked out in the 2002 GOP primary, he got behind nominee Sanford, and eventually headed the governor’s MAP commission, in the early days when we still had hopes for the Sanford administration.
He’s a morally and socially conservative family guy — a real one, instead of the phony one that Thomas Ravenel tried to project in last year’s election — and there’s one thing I can say with certainty: We won’t see Ken Wingate rolling up our money to snort stuff up his nose.
What was the hurry? The governor should not have acted so precipitously; it seemed like he was picking the first guy who said "yes." This was a great opportunity to show that the governor would do a better, more thoughtful job of hiring a treasurer than we could get through popular election, and rushing the job was no way to give that impression. But I was apparently wrong (remember, I’m describing first impressions here). Somebody had to be in that seat to sign checks, starting right away. So, good one there, governor.
One other concern, and this one remains. The governor didn’t necessarily need to pick one of the people who had run for the office; in fact, this was a good opportunity to go beyond that self-selected group — even though Greg Ryberg would have been fine for the job. But what about a professional — someone who already knew the workings of the office and could keep it running smoothly during this temporary period, thereby avoiding upsets to the important but highly routine work it must do? Why an outsider? I could see if you had specific plans for changes, and wanted a new broom. But you don’t do that with a temporary appointment (the Legislature could appoint someone as early as today if Ravenel resigns). Why introduce two jarring disruptions in a brief period? That’s not good management. As fine a pick as Wingate is personally, the message sent by such a decision is troubling. Here’s the connotation: Someone from the private sector is always better than an experienced public servant (read that "bureaucrat," and make a face like you smell something), whether he knows anything or not, and even if he doesn’t have time to learn where the men’s room is before he’s gone. It suggests a carelessness with regard to the public good, the making of an ideological point ahead of efficiency and accountability. This is just a small caveat right now, and I suspect Mr. Wingate will do a fine-enough job that he will soon put it out of my mind. But for now, I make note of it.

I’ll come back later and comment on the nasty things the Democrats are saying about Ken. (NOTE: Earlier, this paragraph said "later today." The way the day’s been going — those videos took a while — it might be more like tomorrow.)

Reading the numbers

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Reading proof for our Monday page, I again run across that famous statistic, "one cat and her offspring produce 420,000 kittens over seven years." It’s in a letter promoting spaying and neutering.

You know, one of these days I’ve got to see that cat. That’s got to be some cat.

Speaking of statistics, there’s an interesting column in The Wall Street Journal today about another one you may have heard before:

Call it the reading income gap: Children from
low-income households average just 25 hours of shared reading time with
their parents before starting school, compared with 1,000 to 1,700
hours for their counterparts from middle-income homes.

These oft-repeated numbers originate in a 1990 book by
Marilyn Jager Adams titled, "Beginning to Read: Thinking And Learning
About Print."

Here, according to columnist Carl Bialik, "the Numbers Guy," is where that stat came from:

Ms. Adams got the 25-hours estimate from a study of 24 children in 22
low-income families. For the middle-income figures, she extrapolated
from the experience of a single child: her then-4-year-old son, John.
She laid out her calculations and sources carefully over five pages,
trying to make clear that she was demonstrating anecdotally the
dramatic difference between the two groups.

Mr. Bialik isn’t arguing that the general trend Ms. Adams is trying to describe is false. He notes that the stat "makes sense. It’s a hard thing to measure and therefore hard to contradict; and the figures meld with related research."

But still, he warns against the temptation to which various child-advocacy groups succumb, that of citing the numbers as though they are statistically defensible. They are not. Using data such as that can hurt your credibility, even when you’re right in the overall point you’re trying to make.

bradwarthen.com

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