Gaza Under Fire

There have got to be better options for the situation in Israel / Palestine; this can't be the best possible scenario. It seems that no one does anything to stop Hamas and Hezbollah from attacks against Israel, which inevitably causes Israel to overreact (in my opinion).

Maybe I am particularly sensitive right now - I am reading Samantha Power's book Chasing the Flame (don't worry, once I finish I'll have another Book Report for you). But it seems that the international community (especially the US) is unwilling to dedicate the resources necessary for better temporary solutions to problems, so we end up with a status-quo that is completely unacceptable.

I was very opposed to Israel's invasion of Lebanon - the one in 2006, I was too young to oppose the one in the early 1980s - and the recent attacks on Gaza seem little better. It makes it hard for the US to criticize Israel however, since we aren't willing to do anything significant that would actually both protect Israel and protect civilians in Gaza (i.e. international peacekeepers and an end to settlements).

Right now, Obama is deferring to Bush. While I understand the desire to have only one president, I think someone needs to get Israel to calm down (or back down). Plus, I am anxious to see if Obama really moves our foreign policy in a different direction or continues our policy of refusing to ever criticize Israel.

Book Report: Paris 1919

It feels like I have been reading this book forever. Overall, Paris 1919: Six Months that Changed the World was pretty good (although her writing and organization is a little confusing at times). I wish I had a map of Europe and the Middle East on hand as I was reading it as her descriptions of the boundary negotiations were quite detailed. And I also found I needed to brush up on my 19th Century European history as I was reading (good old Spark Notes).

It's amazing how much the World War I peace conference set up the world as we know it today - especially in the Middle East and Eastern Europe - and therefore is the cause of many of the problems that we face.

One of the failings of the treaty was how it had to reconcile two different time periods. It was in some ways wedded to the past peace treaties that focused on imperialism, distributing spoils of war and punishing the losers. At the same time, it tried to also look to the idealism of Wilson's Fourteen Points of self-determination and equality (in some cases). So what we got was an imperfect treaty that often diverged from the Fourteen Points.

All of the decisions on the Middle East ignored the idea of "self-determination." The borders of the new countries of Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, and Iraq were based on imperialist aims, not on how best to divide up Kurdish, Persian, Arab and Turkish nations or Sunni, Shiite, Marionite Christians, Orthodox Christians, Druse, and secular religions. And the homeland for Jewish people in Palestine ignored whether Palestinians wanted an influx of European and Russian Jews.

The decision to unite Iraq was based on the British recognizing the value of oil in Mosul and its desire to protect its interests in India. It added Kurish populations to the new country just to add more territory. Lebanon was expanded to give the Marionite Christian population more land, dividing Syria and ignoring the fact that the extra land would include Muslims. At the time this book was written (2002), Syria was still occupying Lebanon.

It is also amazing to see how important personality was in the treaty discussions. Greece was often given its way because its representative was popular and charismatic, while Italy was largely spurned because its reps were tactless and unpopular. The support for a Jewish homeland in Palestine came from effective lobbying.

The bottom line is that the final treaty is obviously imperfect. It was a massive undertaking, but comes out inconsistent and sloppy in many ways. After reading this book however, I am not sure that I blame it for World War II or the conflicts in the Balkans. I do though blame it for some of the problems in the Middle East (Iraq, Lebanon, and Israel/Palestine).

Jindal - Just Governor for Now

Bobby Jindal, governor of Louisiana and possible GOP presidential candidate in 2012 or 2016.

What I like: intelligent and competent (from what I have heard so far), not white (because it is good for the Republican party - the party where rumors of Obama as a Muslim spread too easily), and pragmatic (from what I have heard so far).

What I don't like: for all his intelligence, he believes in intelligent design and is against abortion in all circumstances.

As you can see, I don't know a ton about him. At least, he seems like a breath of fresh air after eight years of Bush and the possibility of Palin for our future. It will be interesting to see his career progress.

UDHR: 60 Years

So today marks the 60th anniversary of the signing of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. One year ago today the volunteer organization I was a part of joined a campaign to raise awareness of the declaration and the approaching anniversary. We were to be a small part of the campaign, but we were excited about it. Our effort fell apart, and the bigger effort doesn't seem to have done much better. Granted, I am writing this post at the beginning of the day, so maybe I'll be surprised by the end.

Fighting for human rights seems destined to break your heart. While there are some signs of progress, it is slow and incomplete. And more often than progress we see new and continuing tragedies. Oh I wish I could come to this fight always upbeat and optimistic, but realistically speaking, progress is way too slow. Around the world we see ongoing violence that is little noticed in places like Somalia and the Democratic Republic of Congo, and even violence that is more well noticed but still nothing is done in places like Darfur, Kenya and Zimbabwe. I myself often pay more attention to conflict, but throughout the third world people still die when more food and basic medical care would prevent their deaths.

Looking back over the last 60 years, it is hard to see positive examples of the world rallying to protect human rights.

I started volunteering for human rights issues over a year ago. After having expanded my reading and visiting Zambia, I decided I needed to do more. It wasn't right for me to go on living an easy life in the face of what I was seeing and learning about. I decided that my short term goal was to volunteer and my long term goal was to change careers to have a focus on more urgent international issues.

The volunteering didn't work out. I imagine those volunteering will disagree, but I found that we weren't having much of an effect. When the problems you cover are thousands of miles away and require money and political action to make an impact, spending a few hours a week just doesn't do much. This experience has lead me to continue volunteering at the local level, where the results are more tangible. I can spend two hours a week and help a student improve in math. I contrast this with spending two hours trying to take baby steps to raise awareness of issues that groups with more resources and reach are also working on to limited effect.

The volunteering has also changed how I feel about my long term goal. My career goal is to make the most impact I can on an urgent issue (or issues). For international issues, there seem to be few jobs but many people talented people who want those jobs. Domestically though, I sense that there are way more job opportunities than qualified candidates. I am leaving open the possibility of finding work impacting major human rights issues internationally. But I believe that one cam accomplish more when focused locally.

This doesn't mean that I think local issues are more important. Human rights need to be protected everywhere and I will take jobs where I feel I am needed. But mobilization and help is easier locally. So for now, that is where I will focus my time.

If I can't work / volunteer to help international problems, what can I do? This is what I am debating these days. I will continue to donate money to worthy causes. I know these donations help, but they don't ease my conscience; in no way do I feel that my paltry donations are all I need to do for these issues.

As for this blog, I am not naive enough to think that it is having an impact. It is more a place for me to express myself than to really raise awareness. I am looking to find ways to increase awareness, but I have no good ideas. When the group I was a part of hosted the Women and Youth Panel, I found that we were preaching to the choir. The people that showed up already cared about these issues. Probably the greatest obstacle to achieving human rights is reaching people who don't want to be reached.

For now though, it seems that I will have to live with disappointment, as the world ignores major human rights issues, and deal with my feeling of powerlessness. Happy 60th anniversary.

Feeling Moody about Moody's?

There is definitely a lot of blame to go around for the current financial crisis, where products were judged to be a good investment but have turned out to be seriously flawed. In lite of this, a large portion of the blame must rest with the rating agencies. They gave high ratings to securities that they later had to significantly downgrade. The question then is why were they so wrong?

There seem to be three possible reasons. One, maybe the loss of value was not something that could have been reasonably forecast. I don't believe that this was the reason. It just seems too obvious that many of these securities were more risky then their ratings showed.

Two, a conflict of interest may have influenced their ratings. That there was a conflict seems clear. Moody's for example, is a for-profit enterprise, and its revenue, since the 1970s, comes from the agencies issuing the securities. Therefore, it is in their interest to please the issuers by granting high ratings. The article suggests that as Moody's became more focused on profits, it lost its independence.

Finally, maybe they just didn't do their research, or didn't do it well. The Times article also gets at this, although only briefly:

Even though the standards at many lenders declined precipitously during the boom, rating agencies did not take that into account. The agencies maintained that it was not their responsibility to assess the quality of each and every mortgage loan tossed into a pool.

It seems to me that Moody's failures are a combination of second and third possibilities I mentioned. I imagine though the difference between the first reason and the third reason is whether you think the things they used for the ratings were reasonable. And I argue that it wasn't reasonable. If they weren't assessing the quality of every mortgage what were they using to generate their rating?

The key though is more than just passing blame. There needs to be serious reform. Non-profit rating agencies are one answer. Changing the source of the rating agency's revenue is another - although that doesn't seem like it would work. And definitely improving their methodology is a must. Let's see if the public / politicians have the attention span to do this right.

Future for Afghanistan

I remember in the VP debate there was a back and forth over whether the strategy to pacify Iraq would work in Afghanistan. Biden remarked that the Iraq strategy wouldn't work - citing comments from the military leader in Afghanistan. At the time though, I didn't really know what they meant - which part of the Iraq strategy wouldn't work? Now I know.

Okay, so turning Sunni leaders against foreign Al Qeada in Mesopotamia fighters was far easier than getting Sunni tribal leaders who support the home-grown Taliban to support the new Afghan government. Is it hopeless?

It seems that it will just be much harder. We'll have to show that siding with the Taliban means joining the losing side and that through the government is the means to delivering real improvements to the people in their region. In other words, it will take real commitment, real resources (not just military) and time. This should have been the plan from the beginning. Well, hopefully now we have a president with a normal attention span who will see this through. The people of Afghanistan need it.

Nat Geo: An Amazing Thing

I finally realized that National Geographic is the most amazing magazine ever. So I subscribed. Here is what I have been reading about:Rural health workers in India (The article describes an amazing program that is using women in the lowest caste to improve health in the poorest areas.), King Herod as architectural genius (and brutal although its unlikely that he killed all newborn children as the Gospel according to Matthew claims), historical artifacts being looted in the power vacuum of the West Bank, right whales, bee-eaters (some of the most beautiful birds in the world, we saw them in Zambia - check the pictures and see for yourself), Neanderthals (did they exist at the same time as humans?), beautiful ancient Persian archeology in Iran, bush meat trade threatening primates, a good article about giant asteroids and earth, mountain gorillas in Virunga National Park in the Democratic Republic of Congo and caught in the middle of the conflict as well as a profitable charcoal trade, two really good articles on the American West - one on fires the other on drying and droughts, coral reefs, black pharaohs (from Nubia) of Egypt, Hazaras the long-oppressed minority group in Afghanistan (I had never heard of them before reading Kite Runner, and so this article is great), and an article about the Sahel (border between the Sahara and the tropical areas of Africa) where the author was held prisoner by the Sudanese government and I think he will win a Pulitzer Prize for the article.

My favorites are probably the articles about the health workers in India, the Hazara people in Afghanistan, the story on the Sahel, and the gorillas in Virunga. And I am a sucker for clear pictures of whales.

You can see why I am so excited. And this list is from only seven of the year's issues. Amazing. Basically it is a perfect blend of articles on history, international affairs, and animal species and the environment. Oh yeah, there are pictures too.

Natural Resources: More Harm than Good

The NY Times is doing a three-part series on how natural resource wealth contributes to conflict and inhibits growth in developing countries. This topic was a major theme in Paul Collier's book The Bottom Billion (I wrote about this book on my other short-lived blog on human rights but I realize I need to read it again to brush up on its main points). The first article was in this Sunday's Times and I think this is the main point:

This is Africa's resource curse: The wealth is unearthed by the poor, controlled by the strong, then sold to a world largely oblivious of its origins.

In the story the Times tells, one unit of the army controls a tin mine - tin is a major component of computers and mobile phones - and extracts "taxes" from all involved in the trade. The army is unable to control this unit, in part because of ongoing battles between a Tutsi rebel group, the Congolese Army, and Hutu militias left over from the Rwandan genocide.

There are a number of lessons to learn from this article. First, and probably most important is that "conflict diamonds" get the attention, but the truth is that there are many more conflict resources that we use unaware. Many things that we buy finance violence and suffering in the places where the resource comes from. The solution isn't necessarily to stop buying products with resources from the Congo, but to at least be aware that it is happening and demand change.

The second point is the role of multinational corporations. In this example, there is a multinational company that has rights to the mine, but are being prevented from accessing the mine because of the army unit. The multinational company of course says they were going to build schools and power stations and in other ways give back to the region. The problem is that in the past, these corporations haven't given back to the country. Instead, they have taken the resources out, fought to pay as little in taxes as possible, made themselves rich off the resource as the country continues to suffer in extreme poverty. The US government has a long history of supporting corporations who see nothing wrong with pillaging resources from developing countries. In fact our history with the Congo in particular is a testament to this.

The third point that comes out of this article is how conflicts that are ignored can continue to breed violence for decades as long as we continue to do very little to actually stabilize these situations. So much of the violence in the Congo stems from the continued presence of the Hutu militias that carried out the genocide in Rwanda in 1994. Bill Clinton - and Hillary - talk about their regret for turning their back on that genocide. But their talk gives the impression that the event is over, when in fact we are still seeing its ongoing effects. If they really cared, they would have made sure this conflict was actually over before apologizing.

It is depressing beyond mention to see countries so rich in resources and beauty - the Virunga National Park is one of the most beautiful and diverse in the world but the region is too unstable for tourism - yet instead of getting rich and growing because of these resources, they remain in a state of poverty and conflict. Internal groups like the military unit in this story bear some of the blame. But so does a capitalist system that cares way more about profit than it does human rights and decency and an international governmental system that can do little to help those that suffer the most. Then again, you can't expect businesses to care, or international organizations to mobilize, about these things if the people that support them don't care either.

Auto Bailout? *Sigh*

I must say, I am surprised that one of Obama's first proposals is a bailout of the American auto industry. Not only did it seem to come out of nowhere, it also feels ill-advised. I guess I can see that the Democrats want to show that they can provide bailouts for blue collar workers - not just the white collar jobs in the financial sector. At the same time, it really seems like we have been bailing out the American auto industry for far too long. They have a history of building cars that don't last, they seem incapable of staying ahead of trends, and worse of all resist calls to improve fuel efficiency and move towards alternate fuel technologies and only do so after other firms (mostly Honda and Toyota) have beat them to the punch.

Instead, I really think we need to let these companies fail. In their place we could see American car manufacturers that put innovation - and greener technology - first. Now, if the Democrats want to allow for a soft landing of the car companies, and provide support for those who will be laid off, I can get behind that. In fact, maybe they could provide tax breaks for new American auto start-ups that will buy the old manufacturing plants and hire the former workers (this idea is definitely off the cuff - so it might prove unrealistic for new companies to start because of high fixed costs).

I really think this is where Democrats get a bad name. We want to help those of moderate or lower incomes, but we tend to choose policies that are more populist and less economic - policies that might help in the short run, but really hurt in the long run. This makes little sense from an efficiency standpoint and furthermore, it isn't the only option - or necessarily the best option - from a fairness standpoint. I know I won't agree with the Obama administration on everything, but I thought I would make it farther than this.

Note: Although I definitely have my favorite columnists, sometimes I feel like a hack by only printing their opinions instead of mine. It's hard though when they make the point so much better. Anyway, here is David Brooks' take on the auto bailout:

But the larger principle is over the nature of America’s political system. Is this country going to slide into progressive corporatism, a merger of corporate and federal power that will inevitably stifle competition, empower corporate and federal bureaucrats and protect entrenched interests? Or is the U.S. going to stick with its historic model: Helping workers weather the storms of a dynamic economy, but preserving the dynamism that is the core of the country’s success.

Navy I Wear to Work

A while ago I read The Woman at the Washington Zoo, which is a collection of columns by Marjorie Williams, a Washington Post columnist that died of cancer in 2005 three days after her 47th birthday. The title of the book refers to a poem by Randall Jarrell about women hiding part of their true selves to remain under the radar, and thereby achieve some success, in the professional world.

Williams wrote political columns as well as some excellent political profiles, including Jeb Bush, the Clinton and Gore White House, and Barbara Bush. Some of my favorite columns from the book are about politics and modern feminism. The columns are nuanced and very intelligent. Her writing was objective, and sometimes stood against the liberal opinions at the time. The strongest example of this is her writings during the Clinton sex scandal; she seemed to be one of the few who was criticizing Clinton by describing how this was a set back for feminism and sexual harassment in the workplace.

Williams' obvious talents are sorely missed, especially when comparing her to current columnists. Maureen Dowd for example also writes about feminism. But Dowd rarely seems as objective, thoughtful, or capable of nuance. Gail Collins and Judith Warner are both pretty good, but there is something missing in their columns as well.

By the end of the book you are heartbroken, not only because you wish she was still alive and writing, but because of what she went through. You feel for her family, husband and two children, who miss her far more than her readers ever can. And you feel for her because of how much of her rich life she will miss. So that politics is never ignored, she makes sure to show readers how medicine can do wonders, as well as where it falls short. Her treatment was so great because of her connections, and she reminds her readers that most people wouldn't get treatment half as good. So while we marvel at how much extra time she managed, we see that more needs to be done for those without her resources.

Read this book for her sharp writing and deep insights. Read it because you might not find a better columnist or political profile journalist for a long time. And read it because of how close you feel to her before it ends. I miss her and I didn't even know about her while she was alive.

Hillary is Back

Remember when Hillary was getting as much news as Obama? And there was all the talk about whether she would be Obama's VP and if not whether she would campaign for him? Then in a few weeks, it didn't seem to matter. The country easily made the transition from Obama v. Hillary to Obama v. McCain.

Well, now Hillary is back in the news and apparently she is the front-runner for Secretary of State. When I first heard this, I was torn. I felt she had exaggerated her foreign policy experience during the campaign and so I wondered what made her qualified to head the State Department. At the same time, even though I think she is incredibly smart, I think this would be a better position than Supreme Court Justice.

As for the other contenders - I am surprised no one is mentioning Bill Richardson anymore. Maybe Timothy Noah convinced everyone else that it would be a bad choice. And I agree with Gail Collins that John Kerry would not be a very good choice. Frankly, I'm not sure what Kerry would be good for, except to stay on in the Senate. And nobody seems to be mentioning Edwards anymore - all because of an affair.

I think though that Hillary would be a good choice. Her role as first lady did include much time traveling as a dignitary of the US, which would be a large part of her role as Secretary of State. Where I think she exaggerated her experience was her level of involvement in decision-making. Here she would get that chance. The only worry is whether Obama could control her. I would like to think that in this role, it would be easier than if she had been VP.

Congo: What Happened While We Were Watching the Election

The violence and tensions in the Congo, where tens of thousands of the most violent rapes have been happening, has escalated recently. The Tutsi rebels have advanced on major cities, sending as many as 250,000 civilians fleeing their homes. Right now, African leaders are working to diffuse the situation, while western leaders again don't give this the attention it deserves. And I too must confess my lack of attention recently.

While the lack of awareness about this issue is disheartening as always, the most depressing aspect is the peacekeepers. The largest UN peacekeeping mission is in the Congo, but they have been unable to keep any sort of peace or protect anyone. Protesters, fed up with the UN's inability to protect them, were throwing rocks at the UN.

I don't blame them for their frustration. In fact, their anger is my anger. That so many people's lives are continuously put in danger with only minor efforts to alleviate the situation, makes me want to throw rocks with them. Unfortunately, it isn't the fault of the UN, but of the strong member states in the UN that put such a paltry peacekeeping mission in a place with such extreme violence. It is the deficiency of justice in the real world that you can never really express your full anger to the people who are truly responsible for your situation.

Georgia; The Truth Comes Out

The whole situation between Georgia and Russia scares the hell out of me. Not because I am afraid of another cold war. That just seems ridiculous (despite how the cable news channels played that up during the hostilities). Instead, it is the slow access to good information.

This New York Times article provides some evidence that it was Georgia who launched an unprovoked, or at least disproportionate, shelling on villages in South Ossetia. It was that attack - after a cease fire - that provoked Russia's response. This isn't the first article to show Georgia as the aggressor, but it provides more evidence than others I have seen.

Even now though, there isn't complete evidence to say this conclusively. And that is what scares me. In this situation, with little evidence, where both sides have a history of deception and exaggeration, the only option seems to be to trust your ally. That is a significant problem when your ally is just as untrustworthy as your enemy (if you can really call Russia an enemy - our foreign policy still operates that way, but I am not so sure if we should).

What is even worse is that I don't get the impression that the American public is interested in considering the nuance in this situation nor is it patient enough to wait for good information to come out. This pushes our foreign policy in a distinct direction. The job of the president therefore is to be more calm than the people, wait for good information if possible, but always understand that your allies won't always tell you the truth or make good decisions.

Why Aren't They All Religious Left?

From the archives:

Somehow, the following post never actually got posted. But I couldn't let it rest, so here it is. The post is about Huckabee - remember him? He was a candidate for president in the Republican primaries. I know, it seems like such a long time ago. Anyway...

I don't talk about religion on here much, but when I see statements like the following (from this NY Times article), I have to say something.

Since Mr. Huckabee’s success in Iowa, however, his campaign has faced a barrage of attacks on his conservative credentials. Rush Limbaugh has accused him of "class warfare." The Wall Street Journal editorial page has called him "religious left." And his Republican rivals have escalated their criticism. In a debate on Thursday, Mr. Thompson called Mr. Huckabee a "Christian leader" who would support "liberal economic policies" and "liberal foreign policies."

Just to give a little context, the people quoted above are criticizing Huckabee's populist policies, i.e. policies to help the poor and lower middle class. This type of talk baffles me almost as much as it angers me. How can a religious person criticize another religious person for wanting to help the poor? Which Bible are these people reading that suggests free market principles are what God supports and the poor should be left to fend for themselves? Fortunately, Huckabee's supporters do a pretty good job at rising to the defense:

"Can you imagine Jesus ignoring the plight of the disenfranchised and downtrodden while going after the abortionist?" Mr. Scarborough wrote on the conservative Web site WorldNetDaily.com.

Christian Conservative policy, speaking from a religious doctrine point of view, has long strayed from what seems to me to be the message of the New Testament's teachings. By saying this, I mean to argue with Christians using what they say is the basis for their beliefs. I encourage anyone to read the Gospels and tell me why we shouldn't do more to help those in need.

My hope is that Huckabee can use his appeal to shake up Christian Conservatives. There is some evidence that this is already happening. Maybe sometime soon, the Religious Right can get back their soul and focus on helping the poor.

Better Not Forget Samantha Power

The New York Times has a feature that gives short bios of all the people in Obama's inner circle and candidates for high level positions in his administration. Well, let's hope it's not actually all the people. There is at least one important name missing from this list - Samantha Power!

I really don't want Obama to make an early signal that he doesn't really care much about human rights. I don't want to lose all the good feelings I have so quickly. During the campaign, Obama gave signals that he supports human rights; in the last debate (or was it the second debate?), he made it clear that he thought the US should intervene in genocides / ethnic cleansing. The talk was good, now he needs to show it by giving Samantha Power a high level position. Sure, there are others he could appoint. But Power was a close adviser to Senator Obama and continued on in his campaign. She resigned during the primaries because she called Hillary Clinton a monster. Enough time has passed. President-elect Obama needs to bring her back to the inner circle.

New Conservative Path?

As we continue to digest this election, one of the themes will be the next steps for the Republican Party. Commentators are asking what the party has to change if it wants to get back into power. Generally I wouldn't care about this question so much, because I believe that the most that would happen would be a rebranding of the message and a slight focus on different issues. But in the end, I don't expect much change in the overall philosophy.

David Brooks however gave me something to think about in a column he wrote back in May about the conservative movement in Britain. He describes how it changed after a long period of Tory power. Part of the column talks about the movement's focus on reforming a declining social fabric - which I don't really agree with. What I do appreciate, and hope filters here to the US is the following:

This has led to a lot of talk about community, relationships, civic engagement and social responsibility. Danny Kruger, a special adviser to Cameron, wrote a much-discussed pamphlet, “On Fraternity.” These conservatives are not trying to improve the souls of citizens. They’re trying to use government to foster dense social bonds.

They want voters to think of the Tories as the party of society while Labor is the party of the state. They want the country to see the Tories as the party of decentralized organic networks and the Laborites as the party of top-down mechanistic control.

As such, the Conservative Party has spent a lot of time thinking about how government should connect with citizens. Basically, everything should be smaller, decentralized and interactive. They want a greater variety of schools, with local and parental control. They want to reverse the trend toward big central hospitals. Health care, Cameron says, is as much about regular long-term care as major surgery, and patients should have the power to construct relationships with caretakers, pharmacists and local facilities.

What I like about this is that the debate moves from whether we are part of a social community and therefore need to help each other, to how best to accomplish this. My problem with the argument for much greater individual economic liberty is that underlying that belief is the assumption that we do not take care of those who cannot take care of themselves.

I don't have a lot of faith that the American conservative movement will buy into this. I think there is too much individualism spirit in conservatives here. But if it does, I would look forward to the new debates - debates over how best to help each other, instead of whether we should.

No More History Except to Make It

A few weeks ago I discovered American Experience - the PBS series - on Netflix. At risk of further exposing how much of a geek I am, I can say I was ridiculously excited. Right away I rented the episodes on LBJ and Jimmy Carter, with RFK, Ronald Reagan, George HW Bush and Martin Luther King not far behind. Since the election though, my interest has dropped off. I realize at this moment I am much less interested in spending my time in the past. I am less interested in learning about history. I want to live in this moment. I want to be a part of this history. These feelings are a direct result of the hope I feel with an Obama presidency on the way.

An Active Part of History

I didn't really expect to feel proud of volunteering on Obama's campaign. At the time, I felt I needed to do it because the country needed an Obama Presidency so badly. I did it because I had the time and because I knew I would feel guilty if Obama lost and I hadn't done all I could to help.

But I also did it because I was truly inspired by Barack Obama. I think the country needed a Gore presidency in 2000 and a Kerry presidency in 2004. But I didn't volunteer for any of them. And I find it unlikely that I would have volunteered for Hillary Clinton - I would have voted for her, but not campaigned for her.

My volunteer activities only spanned the last few weeks. But during that time I called Obama supporters in New York state asking them to volunteer on the weekend, I called voters in swing states asking who they were going to vote for and hoping to persuade undecided voters to support Obama, I entered data, and during the last four days of the campaign I ran a phone bank in Staten Island, helped with training in Harlem (on Tuesday), and when I had free time I called Obama supporters reminding them to vote.

So as I savor this victory, I know that I contributed, along with many thousands of others, to this victory. This historic moment, this time of real change and hope, came about because 65 million people (53 percent) voted for Barack Obama, but also because of the thousands of people like me who made phone calls, went door to door in swing states, and entered data.

In looking back at this time, I realize I met many great people who are committed to Democratic (liberal) principles and the democratic process in general. I also learned how to be flexible under pressure - to change and improvise when needed. And finally, I learned the pride you can feel by being an active part of history.

Joe the Independent

Now that the Democrats don't need Lieberman - with their strong majority in the Senate (not counting the three races still to be decided) - their is talk of punishing him for his support of John McCain. I find this ridiculous. Lieberman and McCain are good friends and kindred spirits in the Senate - both are moderates and have a history of taking stands against their party. Add on top of that the lack of support Lieberman received from his Senate colleagues when he lost the primary in his Senate race, and it is obvious why he supported McCain.

Don't get me wrong, I realize that Lieberman is definitely more to the right than the rest of the party and can be a thorn in the party's side. And he made some really stupid statements on the campaign trail for McCain - using fear tactics on foreign policy that seemed straight out of the Republican playbook. And he spoke at the Republican National Convention. Okay, I don't have much love for him right now either.

In the end though, I don't think a party should punish someone for a position or person they support. What matters more is votes. And if punishing Lieberman will make him more likely to vote with Republicans on key issues, then I think it is a bad idea. Democrats need to realize that despite large majorities, they will still need to build coalitions. Part of building coalitions is having a big tent party - one that accepts those who don't toe the party line on all issues (the other part is knowing how to court those from the other party - including those who are not treated well by their party).

It may not seem like it right now, but Democrats need Joe Lieberman. How they handle this will be a good indicator of how they plan to handle things for the next two years.

More on the Election

I am still trying to get out all that I feel about this election. Right now, the joy of the victory is giving way to an extreme optimism for the next four (hopefully eight) years. Although part of the excitement is the real change we are getting from Bush and Republican policies, I also know it goes beyond that. I wouldn't be this excited if it had been Hillary or Edwards (or even Richardson). I think Obama's election is transformative - or at least has the ability to be. Not just because it changes the way the world thinks about us, but because it changes the way we think about ourselves.

One of the best parts of Obama's campaign is that it empowered his supporters and asked us to have an active role. And so I hope that the volunteer energy that Obama created doesn't end with the election. We have real problems in this country that can't be fixed through higher taxes alone. On September 11, 2008, both Obama and McCain came to New York for the memorial event and spoke at Columbia University later that night. They both talked about creating a renewed interest in public service. President-Elect Obama's new website, change.gov, has a feature on it called America Serves that describes his plans for increasing volunteer work. I seriously hope that this is a major push of his administration.

The bigger challenge though will not be encouraging more volunteers, it will be forcing the country to sacrifice a bit more. Recently, we have been told to consume our way out of recessions and we have been given endless credit to do so. We are encouraged to live way beyond our means - in both financial and environmental terms. This has to stop. We need to borrow less or else risk another recession like the one we are in now. We need to use less oil if we truly hope to have some independence from the affairs of the Middle East. And we need to consume less, while we also change our sources of energy, if we hope to have an impact on global warming.

I do believe that we elected the right candidate for encouraging more volunteering. I don't know if there is any politician who will seriously ask people to sacrifice. Hopefully I am proved wrong.

Would Wallace Have Voted for Obama?

Peggy Wallace Kennedy, the daughter of George C. Wallace and Lurleen Wallace, who both were governors of Alabama, wrote a really good commentary on the CNN website. Basically, her piece says that her father - the most famous advocate for segregation - would have voted for Obama. For those of us who don't know the end of Wallace's story (how he renounced his former positions), the commentary is uplifting.

The Cabinet

I keep thinking that sometime soon I am going to take a break and read about politics less obsessively. It never happens though. Oh well. Now that the election is over, everyone is talking about who President-elect Obama will choose for his administration. I don't have too much to contribute to this - at least at the moment. Basically, I do think he should reach across the aisle - at least for symbolic reasons. And I don't want to see too many Clinton people, although that might be hard to avoid.

As for specifics, I would have thought Bill Richardson would be a great choice for Secretary of State, but Timothy Noah begs to differ. His one short paragraph about why Richardson is a bad choice makes me realize I didn't know as much about him as I should have and therefore slightly embarrassed for supporting him at the beginning of the primaries. Timothy Noah may be way off, but I don't know enough even to be able to defend Richardson. I agree that we don't want Summers as Treasury Secretary, mostly because of how bad of a job he did at Harvard. I think Arnold though would be a good choice for EPA.

On McCain

I want to write a longer post about McCain later, but for now, I want to add my thoughts about his campaign. The bottom line is that I lost respect for him as the campaign wore on. Partly, it is because of the level of his negativity along with the elements he chose to focus on. All of it seemed so disingenuous - so unlike him. Spending so much time on Ayers was absurd, and calling Obama a redistributionist (for a tax policy not so different from one McCain from four years ago would have supported) was something I wouldn't have expected from him. He also chose to focus on symbols and culture wars (Joe the Plumber and Sarah Palin) instead of substance.

Worse though is what he allowed the campaign to do to his positions. So many of us hoped that McCain would change his party. For the past four years, McCain has moved to the right, probably with the intention of winning the Republican nomination. But even after winning the nomination, he continued to move to the right and appeal to the Republican base. So instead of changing his party, McCain let the party change him (Brooks covers this theme here, and of course he does a better job than I do). The Republican platform's immigration policy - so different from McCain's previous position, is far to the right. His tax policy is no different from Bush's - including tax cuts for the very wealthy. Even his global warming stance, which admits warming exists, shows disdain for anyone with even the slightest concern over nuclear power.

When I look back on the way the campaign moved through the final months, I see a candidate I don't recognize from the one I admired. Last night, at the concession speech, we saw part of the old candidate again (many people independently said that to me today). The old McCain was honest, gracious, and tough but fair. It's too bad we only saw that McCain after the race. I might say things would have been different if McCain had been able to be himself during the race, but I'm not so sure. At the very least though, I would have respected him far more.

Iran and Venezuela

Maybe it is early still, but I really think two things are going to change Iran's power in negotiations with us. First, Ahmadinejad will no longer have President Bush to take attention away from Iran's failed economy and as the reason he needs to pursue nuclear technology. Secondly, as gas prices decline, so will their revenue. This will of course make their economic situation worse as well as exacerbating the impact of the sanctions. I think we can look for a President Obama to have a much stronger position if / when he negotiates with Iran.

These same reasons might weaken Chavez in Venezuela.

President Barack Obama. Amazing

I am still trying to process the election results and come down from the excitement. Actually, I don't want to come down too much. To be honest, I was anxious for weeks, and it got worse the last few days. I didn't realize how bad I wanted Obama to win. It went way beyond how I felt in 2000 and 2004.

This is the reason I volunteered for the Obama campaign. I knew that if I didn't work the phone banks and enter data, I would blame myself if he lost. It's not that my ego is that big. I just knew that I couldn't actually be upset if he had lost and I hadn't done a thing to help. Volunteering also helped me keep my mind busy as I wondered if the candidate I wanted to be president so badly could actually win.

The fact is that from the beginning I believed this country could elect a black president. At first that belief was just based on faith in our country. But seeing him win the primary in Iowa confirmed this belief. Towards the end though, my fear of not getting what I thought we needed so badly blinded my faith.

The voters yesterday showed that my early faith was not mistaken. And the rest of the world got the message as well. For two elections, the world saw the US elect a president who seems unintelligent and needlessly aggressive and condescending. They assumed we were a country of fools who don't share the values of the rest of the world. After last night, they saw that we can make some bad decisions, but we can also make some truly amazing decisions.

Health Care

I went to an amazing policy breakfast the other day on health care. It was hosted by the Maxwell School and Public Agenda and featured Drew Altman. Because of the breakfast, I am now a huge fan of Public Agenda (a group I knew nothing of before this) and I expect I will be paying more attention to them in the future.

Basically, the breakfast did a great job of highlighting the real differences between McCain and Obama's health care philosophies (and by extension the difference between Republicans and Democrats) - which is different than talking about their plans. Neither are likely to have their actual plans passed, so understanding their philosophies is more important.

Before I get into that though, Drew Altman made three important points that I want to mention. First, he said surveys show that people are more concerned with making health care more affordable - with being able to pay their bills when they receive health coverage. Percent of people with health insurance isn't as big a concern (except how an inability to afford coverage would affect them).

Secondly, he said that what we have seen recently is that as costs are increasing, health plans are charging higher deductibles and providing skimpier coverage. This is likely to continue unless something major changes.

Finally, he talked about what he thought was mostly likely to happen. He thought it somewhat unlikely that there would be an immediate major shift in health care policy. Instead, he predicted small changes that would build on the Children's Health Insurance Program or maybe a bigger program that moved towards universal coverage but would be phased-in if the economy improved.

Now, the major differences between the parties on health care:

Republicans:
-Want to move away from the employer-based system
-Believe a market-based approach can make health care more affordable
-Want less regulation on coverage
-If people have control over their coverage and knowledge of the real costs of their care, they will make better decisions and waste less money (health savings accounts are a move in this direction)

Democrats:
-Want to build on the employer-based system
-Want to move towards universal coverage
-Believe we need to regulate levels of coverage
-Buying health care is extremely complicated and public cannot make decisions about coverage

After hearing this, I think I came down on the side of Democrats. First, I think health coverage is a right not a privilege. Also, while I think we definitely need to do what we can to make health care more affordable, I don't know that I trust the market for this - especially if there is less regulation. Choosing health care coverage is a really complicated decision that involves many factors, some of which the buyer doesn't even know to consider. People will have to make decisions about deductible amounts, choice of doctors, and detailed levels of coverage for treatments. It's not that I think the public is stupid, but that there is naturally information asymmetry that the insurance companies can and do exploit.

Here is where my mind splits though. Above I said I think we need to make health care more affordable. I don't really trust government to be able to do this. The problem is that markets are often more efficient (not always, but often) but definitely not fair. Since so much of health care is about fairness (ie ensuring everyone has adequate coverage), markets cannot be trusted. But without some market pressure, we won't be able to afford to provide coverage for everyone.

I obviously need to do some more thinking about this. I think there is a lot of bad information out there (one-sided pieces like Michael Moore's Sicko for example), and I have not found much good information aside from this breakfast panel. There are some serious questions out there that I haven't heard good answers to yet, like: What are the real strengths and weaknesses of some of Europe's single-payer universal coverage systems? How much do they cost? Why are there extreme variations in costs between states that don't match variations in outcomes?

This is going to be a huge issue no matter who is elected. Costs are rising rapidly and for such an advanced country we have too many people who lack coverage. I will definitely be coming back to this issue. (After all, I didn't even touch on the lack of access to preventative medicine for people without coverage or the overall health of our country.) This is all I've got for now though.

What You Need to Know About Oil

If you are curious about why oil prices have changed so much recently (or even if you think you know), read this article in the Times. If you don't have time, I have highlighted the main points below. If you don't even have time for that, then I would send you away with this main point: Current capacity for the production of oil is flattening while global demand is rapidly increasing. Because of oil futures speculators, prices will fluctuate, but in the long term, prices will rise. We need to decrease our consumption and find alternate sources of energy. The author believes (as does Thomas Friedman, and as do I) that we should create an artificial price floor (through taxes) to accomplish this because every time prices decrease, we forget and we stop conserving.

Those Damn Speculators

According to skeptics like George Soros and Michael Masters, a hedge-fund operator, the only thing wrong with the oil market is the market itself. Speculators, they say, drove the price away from its "fundamental" value; worse, a new breed of institutional investor has been buying oil futures, hoarding the supply.

On the other hand:

Of course, capitalism demands that people, or at least investors, make bets. That is how resources are allocated and money is invested where it is needed; high prices communicate scarcity. You could even say the oil market has performed a vital service to the country by telegraphing the need to conserve and to develop alternative supplies.

Recent History of Oil Prices:

The reason that the history of oil is basically one of attempted price fixing is that, as technology has improved, drilling costs have fallen, meaning that prices have been under near-continuous downward pressure. Like most commodities, oil should sell for whatever the cost of producing one additional unit is — in this case, one more barrel. Economists call this the "marginal" cost. If someone charges much more than that, a competitor can offer to sell it more cheaply.

It’s only when oil is scarce that things become interesting. If there isn’t enough to go around, then the marginal cost no longer matters because, at the margin, there is no more oil to produce. Under such conditions, oil will rise to the price at which people stop using it — either because they drive less or because they find another energy source. This is called the price of demand destruction. Think of that as the upper bound on the price. With the twin shocks of the ’70s — the Arab embargo and the Iranian revolution — oil did reach an upper bound, jumping tenfold to $40 a barrel in 1981. Demand quickly collapsed, and the price eventually sank all the way back to the marginal cost, $12.

Low prices were good news for consumers but a mixed blessing for society. Since it takes time for oil companies, as well as consumers, to react to price changes, markets tend to respond with a perilous lag. In the ’80s, oil companies were spending billions looking for oil, and Detroit was retooling its plants to make smaller cars, even as the price of oil was collapsing.

In the mid-1980s the oil industry suffered a terrible slump. Thousands of petroleum engineers were fired or left the business. Congress lost interest in energy conservation, and projects to develop shale oil and other alternatives were dropped. In Europe, high fuel taxes meant that people still had an incentive to conserve. In America, families became unwilling to ride in anything but trucks.

Even as oil prices rose in this decade, big oil companies — still responding to the price signal of an earlier period — plowed most of their cash flow into dividends and stock repurchases rather than risk it on exploration. State oil companies overseas, like Saudi Arabia’s, which control four-fifths of the world’s reserves, refused to make the investment to develop their fields to full potential for fear of flooding the market (another reaction to low prices). For similar reasons, there was a lull in building critically needed refineries.

By the time oil companies woke up to the consequences of low prices, it was in some sense too late. There was "a missing generation of engineers," according to Daniel Yergin, the chairman of Cambridge Energy Research Associates and the author of "The Prize," a history of the oil industry. There was also a lack of drilling rigs and men to work them. Drilling costs soared, and equipment was often unavailable. Also, countries where oil is abundant, like Russia and Venezuela, were increasingly chauvinistic and hostile to foreign operators. Civil unrest set back production in Nigeria.

By the middle of this decade, various big oil regions — Mexico, Nigeria, the North Sea, Colombia, Venezuela — were experiencing production declines.

The lesson here is that a high price of oil is the only thing that forces us to conserve and invest in alternate energy. Hence the need for an artificial price floor.

Also, if you think compressed natural gas (CNG) is the solution to our problems, read this article. Basically, if we really want to decrease our dependence on foreign oil and fight global warming, we need to decrease our consumption, not change the form of our consumption.

Who Did the Times Endorse?

The New York Times endorsed Obama. That shouldn't surprise anyone. What is surprising though is who the Time has endorsed over the years. The graphic shows that they have endorsed the losing candidate 15 out of 37 elections and haven't endorsed a Republican since Eisenhower in 1956. Also, they didn't endorse FDR in 1940, his third election. Instead they endorsed Wendell Willkie (who?) because they thought he could better protect the country, because FDR's fiscal policies apparently were failing, and because they didn't want to give a president a third term. Interesting.

Also of note, the Times endorsed Dewey over Truman, and endorsed Lincoln both times and Grant both times. In 1928 they endorsed Al Smith (whose dinner Obama and McCain recently attended). I wonder if they knew the country (aka the south) was too anti-Catholic to elect him.

A Huge Endorsement

Colin Powell endorses Obama for president. That speaks volumes. He did it because of McCain's recent tone and choices. And he did it because Obama offers a significantly different foreign policy approach. I was hoping this would happen.

Palin and the Conservative Movement, Part 2

David Brooks is really shaping up to be one of my favorite columnists. He is the only conservative (albeit a moderate one) who can really challenge me and also give me hope for a better conservative movement. This column is probably one of his best. In it he laments the Republican party's decision to wage a culture war on intellectuals.

Politics in our country would be so much better if it involved more intellectuals on both sides. Now, I refuse to believe that conservative politics is incompatible with reason, intelligence, and academic study. My hope therefore is that at some point, conservatives get tired of listening to, and voting for, people like President Bush and VP candidate Sarah Palin.

I'll let Brooks take over from here:

What had been a disdain for liberal intellectuals slipped into a disdain for the educated class as a whole.

[Edit]

This year could have changed things. The G.O.P. had three urbane presidential candidates. But the class-warfare clichés took control. Rudy Giuliani disdained cosmopolitans at the Republican convention. Mitt Romney gave a speech attacking "eastern elites." (Mitt Romney!) John McCain picked Sarah Palin.

[Edit]

She is another step in the Republican change of personality. Once conservatives admired Churchill and Lincoln above all — men from wildly different backgrounds who prepared for leadership through constant reading, historical understanding and sophisticated thinking. Now those attributes bow down before the common touch.

What is so upsetting is how many intellectual people in the Republican party go along with this (just as too many liberals for too long allowed the Democratic party to talk down to people of faith). Hopefully this changes, and soon.

Palin and the Conservative Movement

The last time I wrote about Palin was following the GOP convention. We have learned a lot since then. What seems clear to me is that she just isn't up to the task of being President. What surprises me is that so many think she is.

It's obvious that people like her because they think she is like them. What I have trouble understanding is why people want someone like them to be president. I guess I assumed everyone wanted someone better than them to be president.

This in part is a battle of the culture wars we find ourselves in. Republicans tend to be wary of intelligence in leaders. Now, while I understand being wary of a certain kind of intelligence - one that shows the leader is not connected to the everyday lives of regular people - that doesn't mean that it's opposite, stupidity, should be favored.

Let me be clear about my terms with specific examples. John Kerry is probably a good model of the disconnected intellectual. George W. Bush and Sarah Palin to me represent the type of vapid and lack of intelligence that are sometimes favored by Republicans. On the flip side, you have someone like the Clintons (character failings aside) or Obama - people who are clearly intelligent but also grounded. I would definitely put John McCain and Joe Biden into the category of intelligent people.

I think the main misconception is that liberals think only the highly educated (read: Ivy League) are competent to run the country. But for most liberals actually, education doesn't so much matter. While Clinton and Obama were educated at Ivy League schools, McCain went to the Naval Academy and Biden to University of Delaware and Syracuse Law School. Other Republicans also fit here - like Romney, Thompson, Giuliani, and Jeb Bush. All of these people have demonstrated that they understand the main issues in our country.

I have heard many conservatives say that intelligence doesn't so much matter if the person surrounds themselves with smart people to help them make decisions. I find this to be such a cop-out. How can you make decisions on policies if you aren't smart enough to understand them and therefore wouldn't know when to oppose what your advisers are saying. We need no better example than President Bush, who seemed to be ruled by his staff (especially Cheney and Rumsfeld) instead of the other way around.

I can understand when imperfect candidates come along, sometimes you have to hold your nose. But I would prefer if people would acknowledge that instead of lying to everyone else and themselves. Let's go back to John Kerry. Clearly, he wasn't an ideal choice for President. He was smart, but he seemed to lack good ideas (not to mention a serious foreign policy). But I voted for him because I agreed with his policies far more than Republicans. What the 2004 election gave us was a contest between a rather unintelligent Republican candidate, and a smart but aloof Democrat. I still think the better bet there is someone who at least understands issues and can talk about them in depth and using complete sentences.

The point I am trying to make is that no one should be satisfied with a president (or a vice president who could easily become president) who seems dim, and yet also unaware of his or her inability to grasp so many complicated issues. Just like no one should be satisfied with a John Kerry. Instead though, people are celebrating Palin's ability to make only broad but meaningless statements like, "gosh government, you need to just get out of the way."

Both Wrong

So the debates are over - three between Obama and McCain, and the one between Biden and Palin. I'll talk about Palin another time. But for now, I want to express my one disappointment - that neither candidate was able to admit that they were wrong at least once about Iraq. John McCain, at the beginning, supported the troop levels in Iraq and believed we would be welcomed as liberators. Looking back, that was obviously an error in judgment.

As the insurgency increased without sign of end (despite "last throes" comments from the administration), McCain did become one of the first to suggest increasing troop levels significantly. And here is where Obama was wrong. He opposed the surge from the beginning and even had trouble admitting when it was working. Granted, this wouldn't have worked without the Sunni Awakening - but nor would the Sunni Awakening have worked without the Surge.

So here we see the two politicians having made errors of judgment on the war. Both can of course point out where the other had erred, but neither has admitted their mistake. We can't blame Bush for saying he hasn't made any mistakes in office if every other politician is equally incapable.

It's About Time Mr. Rosenthal

The steroids issue in baseball is one I can't look away from - particularly with Mark McGwire. Probably my best post ever was about this topic. Although I am disappointed in McGwire more than words can say, I think the press, along with the fans, pretends like they didn't enable this by wearing blinders to what was going on.

Finally, a sports columnist has written the column that I think all of them should have written already. He acknowledges, with much embarassment, how he ignored obvious signs of what was going on (he actually quotes himself from an old article looking foolish in retrospect).

Here it is, and here is the best part:

"Then there is the Hall of Fame, which leaves me similarly ambivalent. The Hall instructs voters to consider not just playing ability, but also character, integrity and sportsmanship. I do not vote for McGwire because I am not convinced he meets those subjective standards. Yet I ask myself: Am I penalizing Big Mac because I was the fool?"

I’ve been waiting for an article like this for over three years. I wish all sports writers were this self-aware.

He also does a great job of acknowledging how that summer, 1998, brought so many baseball fans back to the game. Because of that, it is hard to separate and understand our different emotions. I did fall in love with baseball again that summer, and it was because of McGwire. That can't be taken away. But I am so profoundly disappointed in how it seems he achieved it.

I wonder if I'll ever be able to reconcile these emotions.

One of Those Days

I'm having one of those days. I feel like I did during the late stages of the Democratic primary - where the campaigns and the news coverage of the campaigns just disgusts me. Let's see, we had more talk about Obama's lipstick wearing pig. And as was common in the Democratic primaries, the McCain camp feigned outrage and persuaded the public that the comment was about Palin. Then the McCain camp said that the Obama camp was acting desperate by attacking McCain. The race is insanely close right now, and there is a person who can say with a straight face that one camp is desperate.

Then I read an article about Biden's "gaffes". Now, I will be the first to criticize his real gaffes, like when he said Obama was the first articulate African-American candidate. But only in today's insane, 24-hour news coverage world is a slip of the tongue like calling his opponent George McCain or talking about the Biden Administration. These are slip-ups, and it seems like the only candidate that the press can appreciate is one who never makes a mistake.

Then we had reports of Democratic corruption and likely ethical lapses. Worse is the realization that Democrats protect their own as long as they can as much as Republicans do (ie Pelosi firing back against the Republican Minority Leader).

As I write this though, I am watching McCain speak at Columbia University (as I sit a few blocks from where he is speaking). McCain's conversation is helping my mood. His tone is civil, his points are well articulated even when I disagree. This is the person I used to respect. Unfortunately, his campaign has taken over and created a different candidate, and that is a shame. I do feel the same way about Obama. Hopefully his conversation later will also leave me feeling better.

I do wonder if maybe Obama made a mistake by not doing the town-hall meetings with McCain. Granted, that would have played to McCain's strengths more than Obama's. But maybe the tone of the campaigns would have been different. Then again, the tone is still up to the candidates, no matter what forum they choose to debate each other. So maybe it is a pipe dream to hope that somehow campaigns can somehow be civil.

Chess and South Ossetia

I've been looking to get a better description of the events that lead up to the Russian invasion of Georgia. Through these events I have realized just how much we are dependent on the media and their portrayal of events. The earliest reports suggested that Russia's invasion of Georgia was unprovoked. Now the story seems to be that the Russian response was not in proportion to Georgia's provocation. But the only way we can know which of those it was is to get an unbiased account of events. I am still not sure I have gotten that.

This article in the New York Review of Books is the best I have come across. What is amazing about the article is how it has the feel of a chess match. Basically, the article is saying that Russia has been planning to protect and recognize the independence of these regions of Georgia (Abkhazia and South Ossetia) for some time. It was a response to the US expanding NATO to former Soviet countries, including Poland and now Georgia as well as the US recognizing Kosovo's independence, which Russia fears would strengthen more secessionist movements. Apparently, this has left Russia fearing for its security while also being humiliated at how the US ignores its wishes even in cases where there could be reasonable compromise (ie Kosovo).

Russia's response recently, according to the article, was to make a point to the countries in its region. The point was that US promises of security are merely talk. Russia sees that the US is tied down in Iraq and needs Russian cooperation with Iran. Therefore, Russia can exercise power in its region without serious American intervention. This is supposed to give pause to those who feel safe by American guarantees of support.

It is no surprise that international affairs involve a lot of strategy. But since I spend so much time thinking of examples where strategy seems like less of an issue (Darfur for example, where I care less about strategy and more about seeing some real action), the extent to which both sides are calculating responses and making decisions about gains really struck me.

So the US now has to decide its next move. Our most recent move is to back out of civilian nuclear pact with Russia - which doesn't seem like a major play (not really responding "with tempo"). We need Russia's help, so the options are limited. Being tied down in Iraq further limits our response. We made a decision to invest heavily in the Middle East - with military operations as well as our national attention - which takes away from what we can do in other areas of the board.

As I think all this through, I picture a chess board. I see the US bogged down in a king side attack (Iraq). So Russia sees that it can take one of our pawns. Our only response weakens our on-going king side attack. It seems then that Russia will be able to keep our pawn.

There are two lessons here. One, chess isn't so boring after all. Two, the invasion of Iraq continues to bring out our weaknesses elsewhere. Iraq doesn't seem like it was a very strategic decision. Then again, I never really pegged Bush as a long-term strategic planner.

Budgeting and Pork Spending

Okay, as both candidates are making certain pledges about their spending and savings, I feel the need to weigh in. I have been a budget analyst for only five years now, but I have come to learn a few things on the job. Some other things I have learned just by following the news.

First, one of McCain's big messages is how he will change Washington. And one of his biggest projects will be cutting pork barrel spending. Now, pork spending does make me angry too - it is often a misuse of scarce resources and also is a factor for why it is so hard to vote out incumbent politicians from office. At the same time though, it is less than one percent of the federal budget, which means it is hardly worth the time and effort spent opposing it. Also, it's not like this is a new gripe for Presidents. Bush has long opposed pork spending, but he has so far been unable to do anything about it. So I know McCain claims he will end pork spending, but as long as Congress controls the purse strings, he is going to have trouble getting a budget through Congress without any pork in it.

Second, Obama says he is going to eliminate programs that don't work. By doing this he claims he will fund his new programs. This is nothing new either. In fact, Bush has also tried this to limited success. The fact is, many programs that seem ineffective have Congressional support for one reason or another. So as I said about McCain, Obama will have trouble getting his budget through Congress when he cuts some of their beloved programs.

Look, budgeting involves making real choices about priorities. Money, even for the federal government, is a scarce resource. You can make changes on the margins by improving efficiency, cutting ineffective programs, and eliminating pork spending. But you don't make any significant impact on the budget that way; it won't help you cut taxes or create new programs. In the end, the real choice is between the level of services you want and the amount of revenue you want to raise. If you cut taxes, at some point you are going to have to cut services. And if you want to provide more services, you are going to have to raise more revenue. Don't listen to anyone who tells you otherwise.

Shame

I am becoming more upset each day at the way two politicians - the only two - who seemed capable of rising above it all take the low road and choose to distort each other's record. This graphic at the Times does a good job of showing some examples of this. You can also check out factcheck.org. Here are two of what I think are the most egregious misstatements - one from each of the presidential candidates. McCain first:

"I will keep taxes low and cut them where I can. My opponent will raise them."

Reality Check: This drastically simplifies what the candidates' tax plans would do. Mr. McCain would preserve all of the Bush tax cuts, while Mr. Obama would let them expire for those making more than $250,000 a year. Mr. McCain would also double the child tax exemption to $7,000 and reduce business taxes. Mr. Obama would reduce income taxes and provide credits for people earning less than $250,000 a year. The nonpartisan Tax Policy Center found that Mr. Obama's plan would amount to a tax cut for 81 percent of all households, or 95.5 percent of those with children. The center calculated that by 2012 the Obama plan would let middle-income taxpayers keep about 5 percent more income on average, or nearly $2,200 a year, while Mr. McCain would give them an average 3 percent break, or about $1,400. The richest 1 percent would pay an average $19,000 more in taxes each year under Mr. Obama's plan but see a tax cut of more than $125,000 under Mr. McCain.

This is just classic Republican talking points. Paint Democrats as tax and spenders, regardless of their actual revenue proposals. Now, if they were to say that Obama's plans wouldn't actually provide enough funding for all his projects, that would be a different thing.

And from Obama:

"Now, I don’t believe that Senator McCain doesn’t care what’s going on in the lives of Americans; I just think he doesn’t know. Why else would he define middle-class as someone making under $5 million a year?"

Reality Check: This refers to Mr. McCain’s answer at a forum last month when the Rev. Rick Warren of the Saddleback Church asked the candidate to give a specific number for the income level that divides the rich from the middle class. "How about $5 million?" Mr. McCain initially answered. The audience laughed and Mr. McCain went on to say: "But seriously, I don’t think you can” cite a number. He also foresaw how the opposition would use his answer. "I’m sure that comment will be distorted," he said. The nonpartisan FactCheck.org concluded that was what Mr. Obama did — distort what it called Mr. McCain’s "clumsy attempt at humor."

This is just absurd. Granted, McCain dodged the question on what constitutes middle class, and he did it in a stupid way. But that doesn't justify taking a joke and making people think he meant it seriously. Shame on Obama.

Our political process would be so much better if someone like FactCheck.org was given more attention by the press. Seriously, if I were running a network, I would be the first to do that - have FactCheck there during a broadcast to have them report on statements they know to be untrue.

The Message

Now that the RNC is over, McCain's message is starting to clarify. There seem to be three main points. One, McCain is a war hero and Obama is not. This tact didn't work for Kerry in 2004, nor did it work for Bush or Dole against Clinton in 1994 and 1996. We'll see how well it works this time.

Secondly, McCain is running on change. And the more I hear it, the more it irritates me. John McCain has done some important things in the Senate, definitely more so than Obama. And some of that was done by opposing his party. But since 2004, McCain has been voting with his party more and more. It is no longer accurate to suggest that his policies will be different from President Bush's policies. He wants to continue Bush's tax cuts (which he once opposed for giving too much back to the super-rich), he has no plans for withdrawing from Iraq, he is more militant towards Iran, and he supported a law that allows the CIA to use the type of torture techniques he opposed for the military. In fact, even his stance on immigration has changed and is more conservative than Bush. Reading the Republican Platform here, you can see that it opposes any amnesty and wants to deport all illegal workers.

John McCain is no longer a maverick and seems to be far from the moderate he used to be. The Republican base is starting to realize this (hence their excitement), but I don't know if independents are catching on. If McCain were the person he was between 2000 and 2004, I wouldn't be so worried. I could relax knowing we would have someone different in the White House. Unfortunately, McCain seems to be moving further and further from that person every day.

Finally, the Republican campaign is using the same talking points they always do. They say Obama will raise taxes and is weak on foreign policy. They aren't responding to particular policies of Obama's and instead are relying on reinforcing stereotypes. This worked for them in 2004, but not in 2006. Hopefully voters don't buy it this time either.

More on Palin

Governor Palin's speech at the convention was pretty good. She managed to make some sharp attacks against Obama without coming off too harsh. What is becoming more apparent is the ways in which Obama and Palin are similar. Both are young and attractive, good speakers who are able to attack yet appear clean in the press, and even though neither have a lot of experience voters seem to trust them anyway. This later point is definitely the case with Obama, and it is what has been said about Palin in Alaska. You would think that with these two so similar, some of the attacks about experience would stop. Apparently not.

On another note though, it is becoming more clear how conservative she is. The scariest thing we have heard so far: she looked into banning books when she first became mayor of Wasilla.

Bush's Legacy

I doubt this will be my only post on this topic, so bear with me. I read two really good pieces on this recently. First, there was the long piece in the Sunday Times Magazine. This paragraph seems to sum up the debate:

Bush’s place in history depends on alternate narratives that are hard to reconcile. To critics, he is the man who misled the country into a disastrous war, ruined U.S. relations around the world, wrecked the economy, squandered a budget surplus to give tax cuts to fat-cat friends, played the guitar while New Orleans drowned, politicized the Justice Department, cozied up to oil companies and betrayed American values by promoting torture, warrantless eavesdropping and a modern-day gulag at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, for people never even charged with a crime. To admirers, he is the man who freed 60 million people from tyranny in Afghanistan and Iraq and planted a seed that may yet spread democracy in a vital region, while at home he reduced taxes, introduced more accountability to public schools through No Child Left Behind, expanded Medicare to cover prescription drugs, installed two new conservative Supreme Court justices and, most of all, kept America safe after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

I think in the near term, this pretty much covers it. In fact, I think there is a lot of truth to almost everything said in that paragraph. The rest of the article though was not very memorable - focusing mostly on what / whether Bush thinks about his legacy.

I don't think that paragraph though gets at long term prospects for Bush's legacy. After all, we don't tend to remember much about former Presidents. Now I think too many conservatives (I won't mention any names), including Bush himself, seem to assume history will judge Bush favorably. Those people always mention Truman. (My question, where is Bush's Marshall Plan?) Other people (again, you know who you are) refuse to even consider the legacy question, leaving it for historians to judge. I find that to be a bit of a cop-out and I imagine those same people didn't give Clinton the same consideration.

This short piece in the Atlantic (June 2008) does a great job at looking at what we do remember about our past presidents and therefore what we'll likely remember about Bush.

But when things work out in the long run—and especially when we can claim the credit—Americans tend to forgive their leaders for the crimes and errors of the moment.

That’s why—to judge by the rankings that historians and pollsters regularly churn out—we’ve forgiven Teddy Roosevelt his role in the bloody and disgraceful occupation of the Philippines. It’s why we’ve pardoned Woodrow Wilson for the part his feckless idealism played in unleashing decades of strife and tyranny in Europe. It’s why we’ve granted Harry Truman absolution for the military blundering that prolonged the Korean War and brought us to the brink of nuclear conflict.

[Edit]

But these well-respected presidents have benefited, as well, from the American tendency to overvalue activist leaders. So a bad president like Wilson is preferred, in our rankings and our hearts, to a good but undistinguished manager like Calvin Coolidge. A sometimes impressive, oft-erratic president like Truman is lionized, while the more even-keeled greatness of Dwight D. Eisenhower is persistently undervalued. John F. Kennedy is hailed for escaping the Cuban missile crisis, which his own misjudgments set in motion, while George H. W. Bush, who steered the U.S. through the fraught final moments of the Cold War with admirable caution, is caricatured as a ditherer who needed Margaret Thatcher around to keep him from going wobbly.

So it's reasonable to think that, if Iraq works out, Bush might be looked back on favorably. This thought doesn't make me as depressed as it used to. But it does make me want to learn a lot more about Truman, Teddy Roosevelt and Wilson as well as Coolidge and Eisenhower.

And the comparison between Iraq and Korea does make me think differently about Korea. In our national consciousness Korea is seen as a great success. And South Koreans are grateful that they are not under the North's control. But if these two wars are similar, and if they end similarly, does this mean that Iraq was right and just mismanaged (as Korea was, although maybe not to the same extent), or was Korea wrong?

In large part, how we view Bush will affect how we view wars like Iraq in the future. Years removed, I do think we devalue deaths in war if the war was successful. Which makes it easy to hate Iraq now, but hard to hate the Korean War. Keep this in mind when the next Bush advocates for the next Iraq ten or more years from now.

Your Prediction

This electoral map at the Times is well worth checking out. What do you think? Will it be Obama or McCain?

Alaskan Veep

The political world is buzzing about McCain's choice for Vice President. I have long thought (although I apparently didn't write about it) that McCain was in a particularly tough position when it came to selecting his running mate. If he chose someone too conservative, he would turn off some of the moderates and independents who were leaning is way. But if he chose someone moderate, he would risk watching the Republican base stay home in November.

Considering that, I think his choice makes sense. Governor Palin seems to have excited the conservative base. As for turning off independents, we'll have to see. My gut instinct though is that she won't scare them as much as a Huckabee - or someone similar - would have.

One place I think it doesn't make a whole lot of sense is in the electoral college. Alaska was going to go to McCain no matter what. Minnesota on the other hand might have been in play had McCain chosen Pawlenty. In fact, I wonder if Gephardt would have been better at delivering Missouri than Edwards was for North Carolina in 2004. Anyway, it appears that McCain believes that Palin's impact nationally will be more meaningful than Pawlenty's impact in Minnesota.

As for whether she balances his governing philosophy, I don't have much input on that at the moment. But David Brooks has an interesting take:

He really needs someone to impose a policy structure on his moral intuitions. He needs a very senior person who can organize a vast administration and insist that he tame his lone-pilot tendencies and work through the established corridors — the National Security Council, the Domestic Policy Council. He needs a near-equal who can turn his instincts, which are great, into a doctrine that everybody else can predict and understand.

This is an interesting analysis, but I wonder if Brooks is putting too much into the VP position (probably based on the Clinton and Bush models of having a powerful VP). Conceivably, McCain could find people like that fill his administration. Although I guess his choice of Palin makes one doubt whether he will.

Now let's talk about the the real issue with this choice: gender. John McCain chose a woman. My initial reaction to the choice was positive. I am glad that if McCain loses, one of the top choices to run in 2012 will be a woman (a woman who by then will have considerably more experience). And any talk about whether she should be running for VP instead of spending more time taking care of her four-month-old infant is, well, sexist. Nobody says that about a man running in the same situation.

Unfortunately though, I still find the choice to be a bit of a let-down. Gail Collins says it pretty well:

This year, Hillary Clinton took things to a whole new level. She didn’t run for president as a symbol but as the best-prepared candidate in the Democratic pack. Whether you liked her or not, she convinced the nation that women could be qualified to both run the country and be commander in chief. That was an enormous breakthrough, and Palin’s nomination feels, in comparison, like a step back.

The real question though is whether this will actually draw independent and liberal women. Are they upset enough still from the primaries that they will flock to Palin and McCain? This of course remains to be seen and I don't really have a prediction. The McCain camp is doing everything it can, including acting hurt on Clinton supporters behalf and suggesting that the Obama campaign was sexist. I have heard others say though that liberal and independent women will still vote Democrat, following issues (like abortion rights and equal pay laws) instead of symbolism. I hope so.

Obamanomics Explained

I just finished reading this piece from the Times Magazine about Obama's economic positions. It's really enlightening if you have the time to read it.

What is comforting about the article is that it shows Obama has a firm grasp of economics. He seems to understand that markets are on the whole efficient, but often not fair, and that there exist obvious market failures. The key is in balancing all of this. Here are some of his plans:

- Obama is for tax cuts for middle- and low-income wage earners,

The Tax Policy Center, a research group run by the Brookings Institution and the Urban Institute, has done the most detailed analysis of the Obama and McCain tax plans, and it has published a series of fascinating tables. For the bottom 80 percent of the population — those households making $118,000 or less — McCain’s various tax cuts would mean a net savings of about $200 a year on average. Obama’s proposals would bring $900 a year in savings. So for most people, Obama is the tax cutter in this campaign.

and tax increases for the highest earners (partly reversing the Bush tax cuts, and then increasing the taxes further). For those of you who are concerned the increases would stifle innovation and investment, consider that the proposed increases wouldn't come close to reversing the gains upper income earners have seen over the past few decades. Also realize that, "Most families [low- and middle-income] are still making less, after accounting for inflation, than they were in 2000." This might sound like pandering, but the reality of stagnant wages for middle- and low-income earners can't be ignored and isn't good for the country.

And it seems on the surface at least that recent history supports at least some redistribution. As the article points out, the negative effects of Clinton's tax increases never materialized and the trickle-down effects of the Reagan and Bush tax cuts also never seemed to occur. Granted, showing a direct causal relationship between a president's policies and economic outcomes is imperfect to say the least, but I would be willing to increase taxes on the rich and risk losing some efficiency in the market for at least some increase in fairness.

- Obama favors an increase in government spending on infrastructure. This I think has the most promise, if done wisely. While we don't need new highways as much as we did after World War II (which by the way, I hadn't realized was a result of witnessing how easily Germans could move good during the war), we have serious unmet needs relating to energy and the environment. With significant government funding, we could increase sustainable energy and the infrastructure that supports it (ie power lines, which are unfit to meet probable changes in our production according to this article). What makes this so attractive is that it could provide jobs for the part of the workforce that is suffering from the loss of manufacturing and related industries overseas. I don't believe in protectionism and I realize that re-educating workers isn't the solution many pretend it is.

To the extent that he sticks with these policies, and manages to move on them, it seems that Obama by far represents our best hope in managing our economy.

It's Our Fault

Last summer, I hoped that the presidential race would be between two people who could rise above petty, name-calling partisanship and talk about the real issues. If you asked me the two people most likely to do that, I probably would have said Obama (or maybe Richardson) and McCain. Well, here we have a race between Obama and McCain, and neither are particularly living up to those standards. The debate isn't any more intelligent than it would have been if it had been between Clinton and Romney. I have basically tuned most of it out by now because of that.

Reading David Brooks' column, I do find it hard to blame them. The media remains fixated on covering the horse race and the insults back and forth - and the public seems to revel in that as well. It seems as though it isn't the candidates that are at fault for our system, but us. There are no transcendent candidates. None. But maybe you knew that already.

Sad News from Zambia

Reuters has reported that the President of Zambia, Levy Mwanawasa has died. What I will remember most is that he was one of the few African leaders who criticized Zimbabwe's Mugabe, realizing that a leader who blatantly ignores democracy makes not just himself look bad, but also all those who support him. But he was also the leader of a landlocked African country trying to sustain growth and escape poverty. I visited Zambia last year and it is an incredibly beautiful country with some of the most friendly people. Hopefully his successor will keep moving Zambia forward.

Worse Off?

I just saw an ad by John McCain where he says we are worse off than we were four years ago. Of course I agree, but I am surprised that McCain is willing to admit that. I mean he must realize that he is in part responsible for that, right? He is a Republican who voted with the administration those four years. And how does his party feel about him saying Bush made the country worse off?

Of course this is the line that McCain must walk. He needs to distance himself from a wildly unpopular president, while not going too far to alienate the party faithful.

More on Zimbabwe

In my last post on Zimbabwe, I wrote about Mbeki's poor leadership. Now, the talk is all about sanctions - the West is pressing for sanctions. The African Union doesn't support sanctions on Zimbabwe, and I can't say that I blame them.

Sanctions are not as effective as you would think based on how often they are trotted out as the solution to a problem. Granted, they seem to have worked in Libya (eventually), and are playing a role in Iran and North Korea, but were ineffective in Cuba and Iraq (during Saddam). In the end, in a situation like Zimbabwe, sanctions are likely to hurt the people way more than the leaders. And as long as the government has a monopoly on power and are adept at winning illegitimate elections, there is little hope of the disgruntled people tossing their leaders out.

But this is the West's only option at the moment. Criticism of Mugabe form the West has little effect because he can just dismiss the comments by saying the word "colonialism". But the African Union has much more power. If they were to refuse to recognize Mugabe's election and then isolate him, that would likely be enough to force a change. So far, they haven't officially recognized his election, but they haven't called it illegitimate and asked for a re-vote, and they have called for power sharing. Calling for power sharing between a leader that used violence to stay in power, and a reformer who "lost the run-off" isn't a workable solution.

Many of course point to Kenya. Although there was much praise of the Kenyan agreement, it remains to be seen whether it will in fact work. Besides, in Kenya you had ethnic battles between the parties. That doesn't seem to be the driving factor in Zimbabwe. Removing Mugabe is unlikely to cause the sort of disruption that would have resulted in Kenya if one side was removed from power.

In the end, the African Union isn't willing to take the big steps necessary to make meaningful change. There are some leaders who want to (like Levi Mwanawasa in Zambia), but not enough. Instead, they try to placate people like Mugabe, who ruin their country and then refuse to stand for a legitimate election. It would be much easier for the international community, and the West in particular, to allow the African Union to manage their own affairs if they actually showed strength.