Just wanted to make a brief comment on an aspect of the the whole nut-bomber terrorism thing that I haven't seen elsewhere. I want to talk about something fun, something exciting, something all the kids are raving about these days--yes, I'm referring to responsibility.
Obama, in his review of what happened, outlined "the intelligence and other government failures leading up to the botched December 25 terror bombing" (as summarized by CNN). He also said, "the buck stops with me."
That was him being the leader accepting responsibility. It's what he had to do, what most would insist is proper. And I agree, it is. But, let's be honest, he's not really accepting responsibility. He's dancing a little dance we all agree to ignore. He's simultaneously blaming others, blaming a system, and then playing the martyr in a way he knows no one but his most determined opponents will believe (and they would blame him no matter what he said). He's saying, "Here are the people and structures that caused this, people and structures that are not me or of my making--but I will allow you to blame me, wink-wink." We all know he doesn't mean, "this is my fault," we all know, at some level, he doesn't really expect us to believe it's his fault--and yet we all demand that he says it's his fault.
Just another little game of politics that we don't acknowledge but that we play. I'm not saying Obama should really accept all the blame--after all, the systems that were in place were in place when he took office. And I grant that some of his meaning was that he accepts responsibility for fixing the problems. Still...I think the whole thing is funny. It's a mass self-delusion--probably part of the mass self-delusion that we have that the president can really control many things. Perhaps the "buck stops here" thing is less about appearing a mature leader and more about maintaining the fiction of presidential omnipotence.
Thursday, January 14, 2010
Friday, January 8, 2010
Best man for another job
Ezra Klein has an interesting aside today about elections and the skills of politicians. He tosses it off, probably because he considers it obvious, but I think, like a fibrous grass, it's worth some rumination. Boiled down, he says that we elect people for reasons that don't necessarily have anything to do with the job they're going to do. He takes the example of Chris Dodd, a career politician whose eyebrows never agreed with his hair that he had gotten older. Klein quotes Nick Baumann, who praised potential Dodd replacement Sidney Blumenthal for lacking Dodd's, for Baumann, troubling coziness with obese felines (the banking system). Klein points out that what Dodd did have going for him was a familiarity with Senate procedure and a talent, or at least learned ability, to get things done within that system.
But when do we ever elect people for reasons like that--you know, reasons like they might be good at the job? It's certainly not something that comes up much in campaigns--"Vote Dodd! He Understands Procedural Votes!" More importantly, we--meaning party activists and party officials--don't nominate people for those reasons. They don't sell. We nominate people who connect with voters, who arouse passion. Partly, as Klein says, we nominate ideology. More importantly, though, we nominate charisma. Again, maybe it's an obvious point, but it does seem strange that we don't approach the people that we as a people hire collectively the same way that we approach people that we hire in our jobs.
Then again, as nerds across the world eventually find out, popularity does not cease to matter after high school. Job-specific competence matters in job interviews, but how many times does the more charismatic person get the hire, regardless? Charisma matters in any interpersonal setting--from the job interview to the promotion decision. And charisma matters in job functions, too. In some way, the reasons we elect people--passion and charisma--are actually relevant to the job they will eventually do: a leader who can illicit passionate and positive responses from voters will likely be able to do so from other legislators, a key function in actually doing the job. Obama, for example, dripped charisma like Patrick Ewing dripped sweat, and, conceivably (though not necessarily so far in practice) he can also aim his overactive charisma glands at legislators, to help get things done. But what about organizing a bureaucracy? Delegating authority? Wading through massive amounts of information to extract the meaningful bits necessary for a decision? Choosing the right drapes for the Oval Office? Do we vote on those things? Certainly not directly. Obama did show, in organizing his campaign, many of those skills, but I doubt such considerations were on most people's minds when they voted for him. I think sometimes that we vote for qualified politicians almost in spite of ourselves--which is a scary thought.
But when do we ever elect people for reasons like that--you know, reasons like they might be good at the job? It's certainly not something that comes up much in campaigns--"Vote Dodd! He Understands Procedural Votes!" More importantly, we--meaning party activists and party officials--don't nominate people for those reasons. They don't sell. We nominate people who connect with voters, who arouse passion. Partly, as Klein says, we nominate ideology. More importantly, though, we nominate charisma. Again, maybe it's an obvious point, but it does seem strange that we don't approach the people that we as a people hire collectively the same way that we approach people that we hire in our jobs.
Then again, as nerds across the world eventually find out, popularity does not cease to matter after high school. Job-specific competence matters in job interviews, but how many times does the more charismatic person get the hire, regardless? Charisma matters in any interpersonal setting--from the job interview to the promotion decision. And charisma matters in job functions, too. In some way, the reasons we elect people--passion and charisma--are actually relevant to the job they will eventually do: a leader who can illicit passionate and positive responses from voters will likely be able to do so from other legislators, a key function in actually doing the job. Obama, for example, dripped charisma like Patrick Ewing dripped sweat, and, conceivably (though not necessarily so far in practice) he can also aim his overactive charisma glands at legislators, to help get things done. But what about organizing a bureaucracy? Delegating authority? Wading through massive amounts of information to extract the meaningful bits necessary for a decision? Choosing the right drapes for the Oval Office? Do we vote on those things? Certainly not directly. Obama did show, in organizing his campaign, many of those skills, but I doubt such considerations were on most people's minds when they voted for him. I think sometimes that we vote for qualified politicians almost in spite of ourselves--which is a scary thought.
Wednesday, January 6, 2010
Ideological Shorthand
This is somewhat yesterweek’s news, but I wasn’t keeping a blog then, so suck on it topicality! So…health care reform and the public option. (Right? We all want to hear about that some more, right?) The “Kill the Bill” noise sure has quieted down. Perhaps that’s because the liberals who wanted more progressive legislation have given up—after all, the Senate passed their bill and all that remains is conference between those two groups of mostly white men who talk to the lobbyists. It’s a done deal, so why bother?
Well, for one thing, if they really thought the bill sans-public option was a net negative for the country, then wouldn’t they still be protesting (i.e., angrily blogging)? Once congressmen begin the messy process of merging the two bills (hint, first get the House bill drunk then make sure the Senate bill pays for dinner), FireDogLake and suchlike may well reemerge with voices raised in all-caps righteousness.
I get the impression, though, from the liberal rags I read, that the bill-killing passion has largely waned. Perhaps proponents have realized the shallowness of the position—that it was in large part a political/rhetorical tactic, not a belief they truly held deeply. (Or perhaps I’m just projecting my own shallowness.)
My take is that the public option came to be largely a form of ideological shorthand—it meant “progressive.” With a ridiculously complicated bill with something like five gajabillion pages (rounded up), its “meaning,” to the general public, even to relatively engaged citizens, is kind of fuzzy. I’m guessing not many passionate progressives read the whole thing. For them, “public option” meant “close to single payer” which meant “FDR-style social programs.” It meant progressive. “Public option” is a lot easier to read (you just did it!) than a labyrinthine tangle of clauses, sub-clauses, and dick jokes snuck in by Chris Dodd.
What I noticed was that, for all the sound and fury on Daily Kos and Huffingtonpost about the bill’s failings, those progressives most likely to be policy wonks, i.e. most likely to have read more than the “public option” twitter version of the bill, saw a lot of good things worth passing: I’m talking about dudes like Ezra Klein, Nate Silver, Matt Yglesias, and that little ball of sunshine, Paul Krugman.
Not all of us can muster the sheer nerditude to wade through all that legislative muck, as much as we would like to be engaged, so “public option” became a short hand for the kind of thing we wanted our government to do. Granted, this is not to say that the public option was meaningless—but it somehow came to “mean” everything, which was, at the very least, a distortion.
Lest I become a pot criticizing kettle hues—of course “public option” isn’t the only such shorthand we lazy idealists rely upon. There’re also such things as, I don’t know, “Democratic politician” or “not-George-W-Bush-politician,” or even the term "progressive" itself, and I’m as guilty as anyone of such intellectual laziness. And sometimes it’s not really even laziness—it’s just a consequence of an astonishingly complicated world—ideological shorthand is often necessary to take any position whatsoever. A little awareness, though, is a good thing. Otherwise, you can get attached to a name—or a policy—with little real meaning outside of your emotions.
Well, for one thing, if they really thought the bill sans-public option was a net negative for the country, then wouldn’t they still be protesting (i.e., angrily blogging)? Once congressmen begin the messy process of merging the two bills (hint, first get the House bill drunk then make sure the Senate bill pays for dinner), FireDogLake and suchlike may well reemerge with voices raised in all-caps righteousness.
I get the impression, though, from the liberal rags I read, that the bill-killing passion has largely waned. Perhaps proponents have realized the shallowness of the position—that it was in large part a political/rhetorical tactic, not a belief they truly held deeply. (Or perhaps I’m just projecting my own shallowness.)
My take is that the public option came to be largely a form of ideological shorthand—it meant “progressive.” With a ridiculously complicated bill with something like five gajabillion pages (rounded up), its “meaning,” to the general public, even to relatively engaged citizens, is kind of fuzzy. I’m guessing not many passionate progressives read the whole thing. For them, “public option” meant “close to single payer” which meant “FDR-style social programs.” It meant progressive. “Public option” is a lot easier to read (you just did it!) than a labyrinthine tangle of clauses, sub-clauses, and dick jokes snuck in by Chris Dodd.
What I noticed was that, for all the sound and fury on Daily Kos and Huffingtonpost about the bill’s failings, those progressives most likely to be policy wonks, i.e. most likely to have read more than the “public option” twitter version of the bill, saw a lot of good things worth passing: I’m talking about dudes like Ezra Klein, Nate Silver, Matt Yglesias, and that little ball of sunshine, Paul Krugman.
Not all of us can muster the sheer nerditude to wade through all that legislative muck, as much as we would like to be engaged, so “public option” became a short hand for the kind of thing we wanted our government to do. Granted, this is not to say that the public option was meaningless—but it somehow came to “mean” everything, which was, at the very least, a distortion.
Lest I become a pot criticizing kettle hues—of course “public option” isn’t the only such shorthand we lazy idealists rely upon. There’re also such things as, I don’t know, “Democratic politician” or “not-George-W-Bush-politician,” or even the term "progressive" itself, and I’m as guilty as anyone of such intellectual laziness. And sometimes it’s not really even laziness—it’s just a consequence of an astonishingly complicated world—ideological shorthand is often necessary to take any position whatsoever. A little awareness, though, is a good thing. Otherwise, you can get attached to a name—or a policy—with little real meaning outside of your emotions.
Tuesday, September 22, 2009
smoking, not healthcare
Here's an interesting take on the health care debate--an interpretation of the current state of affairs that actually employs analysis, study and scientific method.
The long and the short of it--this investigator claims that the relatively low life-expectancy for people in the US (vs other similarly rich countries) results from the lingering effects of our pre-1980s smoking habits. The article is a good example of how statistics can seem to say things they don't really say--and can say many, many, often contradictory, things at once.
I think the article also has an important point that's, unfortunately, buried deep in the science section of today's Times. Will anyone of any influence actually see this information? The previous president, we know, famously didn't read newspapers. Here's an example of why he really should have--and another reason we're better off with the new guy.
The long and the short of it--this investigator claims that the relatively low life-expectancy for people in the US (vs other similarly rich countries) results from the lingering effects of our pre-1980s smoking habits. The article is a good example of how statistics can seem to say things they don't really say--and can say many, many, often contradictory, things at once.
I think the article also has an important point that's, unfortunately, buried deep in the science section of today's Times. Will anyone of any influence actually see this information? The previous president, we know, famously didn't read newspapers. Here's an example of why he really should have--and another reason we're better off with the new guy.
Thursday, June 25, 2009
Twittering Iran
So, we follow the tweets. We see the pictures and are disturbed, angered, inspired, hopeful, impressed. We make our profile pictures green in "solidarity."
But, what is the real import of all of this? There are some (really, I'm not making a straw man argument) who say that this sort of thing is just done, really, to make us feel good about ourselves, to play pretend protester from behind a computer screen.
Fair enough. And, as Fareed Zakaria argues (h/t Dan) says, twitter won't mean a whole heckuva lot if the Iranian regime decides to go ahead and mow people down.
There is something qualitatively different, however, about oppression and brutality merely performed and oppression and brutality visible to the world. Would Vietnam have ended at the same time without television and photographic images seen by those back home? Maybe. It's hard to say. Some historian or media studies person could make a better argument about that than I. But, is it really so self-serving and naive to believe that social media broadcasts of protests and oppression can help change the course of events? I get the feeling people hate on twitter b/c it's used for such ridiculous personal posts. But, content does not define a medium. A lot of television is crap. A lot of photography is pornography. Images and records of events, on television and in picture, can be powerful catalysts for change.
I know, I know...easy to type. But, tell it to the guy staring down the muzzle of a machine gun.
But, what is the real import of all of this? There are some (really, I'm not making a straw man argument) who say that this sort of thing is just done, really, to make us feel good about ourselves, to play pretend protester from behind a computer screen.
Fair enough. And, as Fareed Zakaria argues (h/t Dan) says, twitter won't mean a whole heckuva lot if the Iranian regime decides to go ahead and mow people down.
There is something qualitatively different, however, about oppression and brutality merely performed and oppression and brutality visible to the world. Would Vietnam have ended at the same time without television and photographic images seen by those back home? Maybe. It's hard to say. Some historian or media studies person could make a better argument about that than I. But, is it really so self-serving and naive to believe that social media broadcasts of protests and oppression can help change the course of events? I get the feeling people hate on twitter b/c it's used for such ridiculous personal posts. But, content does not define a medium. A lot of television is crap. A lot of photography is pornography. Images and records of events, on television and in picture, can be powerful catalysts for change.
I know, I know...easy to type. But, tell it to the guy staring down the muzzle of a machine gun.
Monday, May 18, 2009
Fuel Standards, Finally
This is great news. The Obama administration is tightening national fuel standards, in line with the program California has been trying to enact since 2002.
Money quote:
"...inaction [on fuel standards] has been a factor in the current dire state in which General Motors and Chrysler find themselves. The Japanese automakers are far ahead in developing smaller, more efficient vehicles, although they, too, will have to adjust their product lines."
The article describes how California had applied for a waiver, as far back as 2002, to lax federal fuel standards, but industry and the Bush administration WOULD NOT LET THEM ENFORCE TIGHTER STANDARDS. Get that--industry, and their supposed allies in office, disallowed environmental measures in an attempt to protect industrial profits. And they ended up not only harming the environment, but crippling the US auto industry.
How tragically ironic! If the auto-makers hadn't insisted so vehemently that they be allowed to continue making gas-sucking behemoths, the Japanese wouldn't have run them out of business.
Which leads me to conclude that 1) The US automakers are retarded and/or 2) the actual "industry" opposing those regulations wasn't so much the automakers, but the oil companies. Probably, it's a little of both.
Money quote:
"...inaction [on fuel standards] has been a factor in the current dire state in which General Motors and Chrysler find themselves. The Japanese automakers are far ahead in developing smaller, more efficient vehicles, although they, too, will have to adjust their product lines."
The article describes how California had applied for a waiver, as far back as 2002, to lax federal fuel standards, but industry and the Bush administration WOULD NOT LET THEM ENFORCE TIGHTER STANDARDS. Get that--industry, and their supposed allies in office, disallowed environmental measures in an attempt to protect industrial profits. And they ended up not only harming the environment, but crippling the US auto industry.
How tragically ironic! If the auto-makers hadn't insisted so vehemently that they be allowed to continue making gas-sucking behemoths, the Japanese wouldn't have run them out of business.
Which leads me to conclude that 1) The US automakers are retarded and/or 2) the actual "industry" opposing those regulations wasn't so much the automakers, but the oil companies. Probably, it's a little of both.
Friday, May 15, 2009
Catch Me if You Can?
I'm very upset and worried about this. Obama has hired the lawyer responsible for defending the worst polluters in the world as his "ENFORCER" of environmental regulations.
It is forcing me to question the post I wrote only yesterday deriding people who demand ideological purity from their President.
If I can, I would like to simultaneously defend myself against hypocrisy and define why this is so worrisome.
I am willing to accept compromise. Even on the environment, which I'm realizing is probably my number one issue. For example, Obama seems to have decided that cap-and-trade is the most politically feasible method of addressing climate change. Many argue that a carbon tax would be more effective. But less likely to pass. So, Obama wants cap-and-trade. I understand that.
This appears to be something very different. This appears to be what Reagan did--put people in charge of government agencies whose philosophy was that those agencies should cease to exist. It is not a compromise, it's abandonment. It's sabotage. It's not accepting the less-than-perfect, it is ensuring the frustration of the good.
At least, it appears that way. Perhaps, Obama is playing a "Catch Me if You Can" game. Get the thief to catch other thieves. She knows all their tricks, so she can stop them. I hope that is what happens. However, I fear that Obama is really just caving to industry. He has hired someone who is compromised, who knows that these big corporations, once Obama's terms are over, are ready again to shell out the big bucks for more protection. In other words, it's in this person's professional interest to remain on good terms with, to be nice with, the very corporations she's supposed to be regulating.
To put it more succinctly, she has a vested interest in doing her job poorly. She may have the purest of motives (which I highly doubt) but still, always, in the back of her mind will be the thought--if I really call these guys out on their environmental abuses, if I make them look bad, if I make them lose money, am I screwing my kids out of a bigger inheritance?
I don't want the environmental enforcer having those thoughts.
It is forcing me to question the post I wrote only yesterday deriding people who demand ideological purity from their President.
If I can, I would like to simultaneously defend myself against hypocrisy and define why this is so worrisome.
I am willing to accept compromise. Even on the environment, which I'm realizing is probably my number one issue. For example, Obama seems to have decided that cap-and-trade is the most politically feasible method of addressing climate change. Many argue that a carbon tax would be more effective. But less likely to pass. So, Obama wants cap-and-trade. I understand that.
This appears to be something very different. This appears to be what Reagan did--put people in charge of government agencies whose philosophy was that those agencies should cease to exist. It is not a compromise, it's abandonment. It's sabotage. It's not accepting the less-than-perfect, it is ensuring the frustration of the good.
At least, it appears that way. Perhaps, Obama is playing a "Catch Me if You Can" game. Get the thief to catch other thieves. She knows all their tricks, so she can stop them. I hope that is what happens. However, I fear that Obama is really just caving to industry. He has hired someone who is compromised, who knows that these big corporations, once Obama's terms are over, are ready again to shell out the big bucks for more protection. In other words, it's in this person's professional interest to remain on good terms with, to be nice with, the very corporations she's supposed to be regulating.
To put it more succinctly, she has a vested interest in doing her job poorly. She may have the purest of motives (which I highly doubt) but still, always, in the back of her mind will be the thought--if I really call these guys out on their environmental abuses, if I make them look bad, if I make them lose money, am I screwing my kids out of a bigger inheritance?
I don't want the environmental enforcer having those thoughts.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)