So General Stanley McChrystal has been fired by President Obama for remarks to a Rolling Store reporter that disparaged he and top officials. General David Petraeus will assume his duties as the top commander in Afghanistan. Obama is expecting that Petraeus will succeed in Afghanistan like he “succeeded” in Iraq.
There is no question that Petraeus made a bad situation much better in Iraq. However, it is premature to call Iraq a success. Bombings, ethnic and religious-driven murders continue daily in Iraq, albeit at a reduced level compared to the height of violence in 2006 and 2007. Its government remains shaky at best, corrupt and unable to provide many basic services, including dependable electricity. With luck, something resembling a real and stable government may eventually emerge.
We won’t care. Once the last American troops leave Iraq, it will become just a bad memory. Of course, we don’t really plan to wholly exit Iraq. The 50,000 troops that remain are there primarily as catastrophe insurance. Fifty thousand troops won’t help much should Iraq devolve into a large scale civil war, but if used strategically they might prevent a fragile country from devolving back into a civil war. At least the level of violence is down in Iraq. However, this is largely due to our withdrawal. It’s harder to work up a dander when the people you hate the most are no longer patrolling your neighborhoods and killing your friends and neighbors.
Iraq and Afghanistan have vastly different cultures and climates, but they do share some similarities. Both have a history of corruption, shaky governments, foreign occupations and playing pawn in larger superpower conflicts. The success of the otherwise reviled Taliban was in part due to their ability to inject something like rule of law in a country that rarely had it before. Neither Iraq nor Afghanistan quite qualifies as countries because there is not enough commonality to bind together the ethnic factions into something resembling a nation. Nationhood seems only possible during dictatorships like Saddam Hussein’s or when inflicted by repressive local powers like the Taliban. Resistance to foreign occupation is the major uniting factor among these disparate tribes. Loose federations are a more natural fit than strong centralized government, when they work at all.
So given this history, what can we expect in the way of accomplishments in Afghanistan from the wonderful General Petraeus? It’s not hard to figure out and we are seeing it unfold already. First, the government (to the extent it exists) will continue to be corrupt. Petraeus really cannot do anything about that. Second, the level of violence and our casualties will be directly proportional to the number of our troops in the country. Third, and this is really what matters the most, anything we do to bring about a stable government will at best have a very temporary effect.
Since the country has no history of strong and effective central government, in all likelihood the Afghanistan we imagine will never evolve into it. Yet, without an effective central government, any hope we have that its government will, by proxy, control the Taliban for us is just not possible.
Petraeus will try strategies similar to those he used in Iraq. Those strategies have had mixed success. Some of the local Sunni militias that he sponsored felt betrayed when the U.S. withdrew, leaving them outnumbered by larger groups of Shi’ites out to wreak revenge. Expect Petraeus to say that we cannot start to bring troops home in 2011. President Obama seems to already be tacitly agreeing, saying that people are getting too wrapped up around dates. In short, the groundwork is being prepared for an even more extended American occupation. On the surface, this is kind of nuts because our war in Afghanistan is now our longest war. In a few months, we will be beginning our tenth year of war in the country.
This strategy is something akin to making a basket from center court on a first try. It is theoretically possible, but the odds are maybe one in five hundred. Why is our strategy doomed? There are too many risky variables.
First, the vast majority of Afghans see us as hostile occupiers, not friends. Why would you take advice from your enemy?
Second, corruption is everywhere and deep seated. Our military is contributing to it by giving payola to warlords there to move supplies in.
Third, the strong central government we crave has never really existed in Afghanistan before. If it can be created at all, it will take decades to achieve, not eighteen months. Still, this throw from center court might be worth taking if it could be attempted at a reasonable cost, but it is already proving ruinous. Since 2001, we have spent around $280 billion just on our war in Afghanistan.
Fourth, the Afghan army is even less coherent than Iraq’s army, rife with the usual corruption and frequently absent if not wholly indifferent soldiers.
Fifth, the American people already realize the war is lost, and don’t support it.
Sixth, if it can work at all, it will likely take decades and trillions more dollars. We have neither the money nor the time.
At best, Petraeus will stabilize the situation for a short while. However, in the end he cannot possibly achieve the goals Obama laid out. He will be exceptionally lucky if he can succeed just to the extent he did in Iraq. No general, no matter how committed and brilliant, can lead a people or a country to a place they do not want to go.
President Obama is a smart man so he should be smart enough to realize his strategy is doomed. Afghanistan has trapped many a political leader in a box. He will be just another and it may in retrospect be seen as his most unwise action as president.
About a month ago, I expressed my alarm with certain members of The Tea Party movement. Since I wrote, my alarm has grown. The FBI conducted a well-publicized raid of the Hutaree Militia in southern Michigan toward the end of March, arresting nine members who seemed dangerously close to attempting armed insurrection.
In fact, militias are popping up all over the place. The Southern Poverty Law Center reports an increase of 363 new “patriot groups” in 2009, an increase of 244 percent from 2008. You can bet these patriot movements are more about locking and loading guns than planting flags in veterans’ cemeteries. Randy Brogdon, a candidate for governor of Oklahoma is calling for the formation of a state militia to presumably protect Oklahomans from some sort of unnatural act, like the U.S. Army occupying the state and instituting martial law. (News to Brogdon: the state already has an armed militia. It’s called The National Guard.)
Meanwhile, Sarah Palin seems to be endorsing the idea of some sort of theocratic, or at least Christian-Judea state, when she actually said:
Lest anyone try to convince you that God should be separated from the state, our founding fathers, they were believers.
Ms. Palin clearly has not read her constitution, which explicitly separates church from state and specifically disallows any religious test as a condition of holding office. In fact, separation of church and state was a crucial aspect to our formation as a country, as centuries of witnessing what happened by merging church and state in Europe showed what a bad idea it was.
Just yesterday across the Potomac River, about 75 mostly white men brandishing semiautomatic weapons demonstrated their new right to bear arms in a national park. Who signed this bill into law? Why, the president of the United States. No, it was not the last conservative one, but the new liberal Democratic one named Barack Obama. Strangely, because they apparently inhabit a different world than the rest of us, they are convinced that Obama is trying to take away their right to bear arms. If words were bullets though, the words uttered at this rally would cause PTSD in any survivor of the Oklahoma City bombing who tuned in. Mike Vanderbough, leader of the “Three Percent” movement, had previously called upon followers to break the windows of thousands of Democratic Party offices in response to the passage of health care reform. He enlivened the group by smashing a brick on the stage at Fort Hunt Park. According to Dana Milbank of The Washington Post:
“I was trying to get the attention of people who are pushing this country toward civil war, that they should stop before somebody gets hurt,” Vanderboegh said of his brick-throwing campaign. He then read the philosopher John Locke’s words that there comes a time when people are “absolved from any further obedience” to their government.
The armed citizenry cheered. “This is what the other side doesn’t understand!” Vanderboegh shouted. “We are done backing up! Done! Not one more inch!”
One thing is clear. Democrats will not be starting any new civil war. With these sorts of remarks, the Hutaree Militia example and the increase in so-called patriot movements it is clear that a small minority of Americans is dangerously close to open insurrection. The kindling seems to be stacked. All that is needed is a match. It won’t take much to set these groups off.
They have made it abundantly clear that they feel America is drifting toward socialism, but they seem to be slowly absolving themselves of the need to enact reform through our constitutional system of government. So-called patriot Sarah Palin seems to be encouraging them. When pressed she will doubtless say that she was meant to be taken metaphorically, but it is abundantly clear that some critical mass of these militia members are not playing with a full deck. What are they to think when Sarah Palin says, as she did on April 9thto Southern Republicans to not retreat, but reload. Armed insurrection must be okay, because Representative Michele Bachman (MN) at a rally also attended by Sarah Palin referred to the federal government as a “gangster government”. I guess the 2008 elections must have been rigged or something but it’s clear if anyone is openly brandishing arms, it’s these “patriot groups” not the Obama Administration.
It sure sounds like many loose-hinged people are piling up reasons for the ends justifying their ready means. Those who do or have held public office, like Palin and Bachman, are being irresponsible and possibly seditious by alluding to unlawful means to change government. No one who calls him or herself a patriot would ever start an insurrection against their own constitutional government. A true patriot values our republican government, in good times and bad. They know that however extreme things might appear at any one time, natural forces will tend to counterbalance other forces in time. That’s why we have elections and three separate but equal branches of government. Republicans will doubtless pick up seats in elections this fall. The only question is how many. If political power is what you yearn for, then insurrection is the worst way to go about it. The vast majority of us are not wingnuts. We value our democracy and the rule of law. While Democrats gaining seats this fall seems unlikely, there is no surer way to make this a reality than by engaging in some serious armed insurrection. Nothing makes property values and portfolios drop faster than a civil war.
President Obama is not a moron, and he realizes these so called patriots are a real threat. He is trying to reduce the threat in two ways. First, he has the FBI working closely with state and local law enforcement officials to figure out which of these groups are truly dangerous by defanging them before they cause loss of life. With so many groups, it is probably impossible to keep up with all of them. Second, he is keeping a low profile and not publicly talking about the obvious threat of domestic terrorism. Perhaps with a bit of luck none of these sparks will catch on this very dry kindling.
The sad reality is that the socialism these groups see is largely a figment of their fevered imaginations, and shows how out of touch they are with reality. Obama has not tightened gun laws. He has loosened them. Health care reform is not socialism, unless doing the same thing nationally that states like Massachusetts did is socialism. If so, Mitt Romney is a socialist. Requiring people to purchase health insurance is no more socialist than the vast majority of states requiring people who drive to buy auto insurance. If anything, health insurance reform enhances personal responsibility. It means that people have to take responsibility for the cost of their health, rather than foisting it off on the rest of us who are insured. It costs each of us insured about $1200 a year to pay in additional premiums to cover these irresponsible people. Why would any of these rugged individuals object to making people carry their own freight?
The truth is that if John McCain had won the presidency, proposed these same things, and enacted these same laws, the opposition would have been largely muted because these laws are actually quite mainstream and look very close to what Republicans were calling for back in the 1990s. What is the difference? Well, Obama is clearly a Democrat and McCain in a Republican. Most of us are not fooled, even if these wingnuts cannot admit it to themselves. The real issue is that Obama is a black man with power. That is the animus driving these people. If something ignites this kindling, it will be the flame of racism, which, sadly, is not yet extinguished in our country.
What a curious analogy by South Carolina Senator Jim DeMint: if Republicans and others opposed to “socialism” can stop President Obama and Democrats in Congress from passing health care reform, it will be Obama’s Waterloo. He will be doomed to finish out an ineffectual term, kind of like Jimmy Carter.
Most of us Americans have a hazy idea at best about The Battle of Waterloo. A quick recap for those of you who might have been asleep during the lecture on European history: in the Battle of Waterloo, Napoleon had managed to return to power in France after being exiled to the island of Elba off Tuscany. (It would be like Obama losing a second term, and then later winning another term.) Napoleon had already held power for a decade. Having been bitten many times by Napoleon, allied powers quickly organized to defeat him again. English and Prussian powers were able to defeat his armies rather handily in June of 1815 at Waterloo in Belgium. After all, they knew what they were up against and brought forty thousand more soldiers than Napoleon to the battle. After the battle, Napoleon went to live on another island, this time St. Helena in the South Atlantic Ocean, where he died rather ingloriously of stomach cancer in 1821.
In short, Waterloo was the concluding battle of Napoleon’s resurgent short second reign. In contrast, President Obama has been in office a little over a year. The closest analogy one can make between Napoleon and health care reform legislation was Napoleon’s administrative reforms, which included a tax code, a public road and sewer system, establishing a central bank, and a set of civil laws known as the Napoleonic Code which were, at least in theory, quite progressive. Many of these laws and institutions survive today and may be Napoleon’s true legacy in France.
In this health care battle, if any side has superior forces, it is the establishment. It is true that Democrats have the political advantage in Congress. However, the watered down legislation making its way toward the reconciliation process represents significant concessions to the health care and health insurance industries. Single payer health care? Gone. A public option health care plan to compete with private health insurance plans? It has virtually no chance of being added during the reconciliation process, based on press reports. If brought up, it stands little likelihood of making it through reconciliation.
In many ways, if the current legislation were enacted, it would be a great victory for the health insurance industry. These companies understand that in the end they cannot sell health insurance if no one can afford to buy it. The legislation requires most uninsured Americans to buy health insurance from the private health care insurance industry. The government is basically requiring Americans to dole out more of their hard earned money to give to private corporations, not the government. That sounds like the government is assisting the corporatocracy, not socialism. If Americans cannot afford to buy the product, in many cases the government will offer subsidies and tax credits to make it possible.
To label these reforms as socialism is ridiculous. If regulating the health care industry is socialism, then one has to ask the obvious questions of what else the government is doing is socialism, because most of the federal government could be construed as socialist. Regulating drugs for safety and efficacy must be socialism because it interferes with the free market for drugs. Federal highway transportation standards and interstate commerce regulations must be socialism. Most significantly, Medicare and Medicaid must be socialism. Yet, few of those railing against socialized health care are talking (at least openly) about getting rid of Medicare and Medicaid. Many of them loathe Medicaid (health insurance for the poor) but to vote against Medicare would estrange them from virtually every senior citizen in the country. Republicans, of course, thrive on cognitive dissonance. So sure, of course they can be for socialized medicine for senior citizens yet bitterly oppose it for the rest of the working class whose taxes, by the way, are funding the Medicare system that seniors are using.
The only health care legislation that would truly be socialist would be a certain forms of a single payer health care system. This would have the government pay all Americans health care bills. In return, you would have to get health care from a government approved health care provider. Even so, as envisioned, the single payer health care approach is probably not socialistic, because the government would not directly provide the care. Most single payer health care systems follow this model. Great Britain’s Public Health Service is a major exception. Curiously, in Great Britain the Conservative Party is aligning itself as the savior of the PHS.
Is a public option socialistic? A public option provides a government administered (not owned) health care plan open to all legal U.S. residents. It would probably look a lot like Medicare; in fact, it might be Medicare extended. However, practices currently do not have to accept Medicare patients, and many do not (or do so only with grumbling) because they do not feel they are adequately reimbursed. A public option would probably not be wildly successful. A public option would probably be like buying a “good” or “better” model refrigerator. Most Americans would lust for the “best” models available from companies like Blue Cross. However, having a public option, even if it is not as great as Blue Cross, beats having no health care at all. Ask forty seven million uninsured Americans. What a public option does is help make health care more affordable because health insurers would have genuine competition. However, as I noted, the public option has little chance of passing with health care reform.
The argument really amounts to whether the federal government should mess further in the health insurance marketplace. It’s about making sure the government does not grow any further, except in ways that matter to Republicans, like having large defense contracts to privileged contractors like Halliburton. It is apparently okay for the government to ensure that securities are traded in a fair and open manner. However, it is not okay for the government to require a level playing field for health insurers. State corporation commissions ensure level playing fields all the time with electric, sewer and water rates and we don’t fret about it. Some states even regulate health insurance providers. We recognize that industries that are monopolies, or near monopolies like the health care industry in many states, need regulation to ensure that a vital service is available at all. It is hard to think of any service more vital than health care. Moreover, it’s hard to think of an area more in need of regulation, given astronomical premium increases and no constraints about whom a company can insure.
It is clear what the cost of inaction would be: eventually there will be no health insurance industry at all. Maybe that is what Republicans are secretly hoping for, although the way they take major contributions from the health care industry it is hard to believe. After all, if no one but the very wealthy can afford to pay out of pocket for health care, perhaps with all these surplus doctors costs would finally drop to an affordable level. I personally think it’s more likely I will get a visit from the tooth fairy than this ever happening.
So I would not hold my breath there. I can guarantee you one thing: if health care reform does not pass, eventually the health care industry will be petitioning Congress for regulation. The last thing they want is not be the broker between you and receiving health care. So take your health insurance reform now or later. The reality is the current legislation is a great gift to the health insurance industry, which will likely ensure its survival with, at best, only a light touch from government.
Waterloo? In this case, Napoleon is not President Obama, but the health insurance industry. Perhaps the rock group Abba got it right:
There are few things more American than the right to make an ass of yourself. Perhaps it is the swine flu but lately it seems like the Republican Party is being gripped by a form of insanity. It must be a fever because what else could explain such delusional thinking of late? Substantial numbers of Republicans actually believe that Barack Obama is not a U.S. citizen, but was born in Kenya. Then there are these orchestrated protests at town halls being given by our congressional representatives and senators that seem to be attracting large numbers of orchestrated lunatics. It is one thing to be opposed to health care reform and to speak up in a civil manner. It is quite another thing to show up at these events, recite inanities if not outright falsehoods about health care reform and basically try to prohibit even a discussion on the topic from taking place. The National Republican Committee seems to be behind these protests, but they are also being whipped up by prominent conservatives like Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck too.
What is really going on here? What is happening is that America’s demographics are changing to the point where their impact is being acutely felt. What is really very scary to these protestors is that white privilege is losing its grip on America. For years the demographics of America have been trending less white and more multicultural. America witnessed a watershed moment with the election of Barack Obama. In the minds of most of these protestors, having an African American as president was insulting enough. It was just as insulting that Barack Obama would also try to rapidly enact the exact reforms on which he campaigned.
The opposition, as it always does, tries to push back. What is unique this time is the extraordinary lengths this group is going to in order to get attention. Obviously these people have been seething since the election. When a balloon pops, it pops at its weakest point. Today we see that when these feelings become overwhelming, they are articulated by their loosest cannons on the GOP ship of state.
Do not assume though that these loose cannons are rolling around the deck because their pins rusted out. The crew (in this case the National Republican Committee and prominent conservative commentators) has been actively working to pull out their pins. They do so deliberately because they know that talk has its limits and to effect change it must be followed by actions. These tactics seem to be working to some extent. People whose support for Obama was tentative to begin with might be persuaded to believe the incredible about him if sufficient numbers of their neighbors say so, particularly in a bad economy. Similarly, much of the disinformation about national health care reform feeds into general American paranoia about Washington and its surreptitious motives.
The general thrust of all these actions is arguably quite conservative. Conservatives by their nature do not welcome change. They resist change. Conservatives are used to a power structure where white men hold most of the political power. It is as American in their minds as George Washington and Thomas Jefferson. However, when you run out of convincing arguments and when the American people are generally not behind you, then in their mind some extreme tactics are required. Playing by the rules simply means they will become further marginalized. Go on the offensive using bizarre and unworldly tactics and at least you have attention and can attempt to direct the conversation. Trying to do so in gentlemanly conversations in Congress does not change the dynamics.
The attempt will likely prove futile. At best it may prove effective in the short term, but it will not prove effective in the long term. While there is an excitable minority that believes in conspiracy theories, most of us have brains that are more firmly attached to reality. For those of us who inhabit the real world, the silly belief that Barack Obama was born in Kenya, and is thus a “false” president, is laughable and ludicrous. It amazes us that anyone other than the tiniest fraction of the weirdoes could possibly believe something proven so demonstrably false.
Similarly, we wonder what these people are smoking when they worry about socialized medicine. We already have Medicare and Medicaid. Many of the people squawking the loudest are already receiving Medicare and would be unable to pay for their own medical care if it disappeared. Many of these same people choose to remain blissfully mindless that health insurance companies already effectively decide who lives and dies by deciding which treatments they will or will not cover. The only way to make sure that insurance companies will not deny necessary coverage is to have the law require universal coverage. In any event, America is a democracy. Who would you rather make this crucial decision, a representative democracy where at least you could petition for changes or an unelected insurance company accountable only to their stockholders?
America’s changing demographics is a trend that cannot be changed. America is already very multiracial. The biggest change is that changing is that the era of white male privilege is going away, and it is being noticed in the form of “scary” things like Hispanic Supreme Court justices, African American presidents and new policies that include audacious notions like health insurance companies shouldn’t be able to pick and choose who they cover. This is a privilege, by the way, that has been enjoyed by members of Congress and federal employees for decades with no complaints. No member of Congress, even the conservative Republican ones, is anxious to change their Federal Employees Health Benefits Plan so they could be excluded from coverage because of their preexisting conditions. Regardless of what happens to other Americans, they will give up their FEHBP coverage shortly after their cold dead fingers are pried off their guns.
The sad reality is that protestors trying to crash town hall meetings on health care or who push crazy ideas like Obama was not born in the United States are being manipulated by people who really do not have their best interest at heart. Except for the self made millionaires attending these rallies, attempts to avoid health insurance reform simply mean these very people are likely to be excluded for their own preconditions, if they have not been already. Moreover, they will likely soon be priced out of the health insurance market altogether as premiums continue to rise beyond their ability to pay for them.
I would hope most of these points on health care reform would be obvious, but based on the debate in Congress, apparently not.
Just as there is no free lunch now for health care, there will be none after we are done reforming health care. It is going to cost a ton of money no matter what happens or does not happen. In the end, doing nothing will be far more expensive than creating universal health care.
The first decade of universal health coverage is going to be particularly expensive. There is no way around it. This is because there are forty seven million uninsured Americans and their health is often poor. Treating their chronic problems is going to be very expensive. For many of us who are insured, our health is poor too. We eat too much, exercise too little, and have too many bad habits. Often, we also do not particularly like who we are and where we are in life. In short, we are a seriously messed up people, physically and psychologically. This is due in part to our pretension that we are all rugged individualists when in fact we are all intimately tied together in a mutual codependent relationship. What do you think all those roads, bridges, railroads, telephone lines and networks mean, anyhow?
The reason a public health care plan is being opposed has nothing to do with socialism, but profit. The American medical industry is hugely profitable and the powers that be want to keep it that way. In short, profits come before people and as a result, people are needlessly dying or living in unnecessary misery.
While there is much we can do to control health care costs, in the end costs will only level off if we get off our fat asses, lose weight, kick our bad habits, and live healthier lifestyles in general. In short, we have to grow up and face the music. We need a government that tells us this truth and provides incentives so we will choose to get there.
A public plan will deliver quality care for lower cost than private plans. America’s public plan may not turn out to be as well thought out as health care plans in places like Europe. By squeezing out the middleman, it will be more affordable than any plan private industry can put together. Moreover, private industry knows it, which is why they are fighting so hard against a public plan. It is their death knell. Just look at the administrative cost of Medicare, Medicaid and the Federal Employees Health Benefit Plan and compare these expenses with our private health insurance administrative expenses. The latter are many orders of magnitudes more expensive.
A public health plan would only be socialist if the government owned all the hospitals, doctors’ offices, labs and clinics in the country. That is on no one’s radar. However, a public health plan would require universal insurance coverage and set uniform standards for patient care. This is not socialism because the government does not own the means of production. It is no more socialism than the FAA is socialist because it directs the air traffic.
A workable American version of a universal health care plan would have three levels of service: basic, silver and gold with the level of care rising depending on your ability to pay. This is because, despite our pretensions, America is class conscious, so we will want a higher level of service based on our ability to pay. Those of us who can afford gold service will want to flaunt it.
We already are paying through the nose because we do not have national health insurance. The cost is manifested in our emergency rooms and added on to premiums paid by the insured. All things being equal, if the uninsured contribute to their health care, it drives down premiums for the rest of us.
President Obama is right in that we cannot move in a revolutionary way from our current system into a single payer system. A single payer system is a likely final destination. We can get there by letting private plans compete under standardized rules with a public option. A single payer system will emerge when it becomes clear that the private sector cannot be profitable while delivering the same level of care as the public plan. When this happens, no one will shed a tear except those currently reaping windfall profits.
Medicare and Medicaid already prove the government can run health care systems. They exist because the private insurance market did not want to serve these markets. Private industry does not want to offer affordable health plans to the uninsured or the uninsured would have them. What are we afraid of?
Despite the American Medical Association’s position, most doctors’ offices would be thrilled to accept a modest fee to do away with the nightmare of dealing with insurance companies. Their paperwork is costly, burdensome and adds no value to patient care.
Rugged individualism is a nice virtue but incompatible with 21st century medicine. When it comes to medical care, we all go down together or we all rise together. This will provide plenty of incentive to make a workable and universal system.
An effective compensation system will reward solutions rather than reimburse for tests.
There is plenty of bleak economic news among the recent headlines. Today I read online that housing prices are 18% less than they were a year ago. The last unemployment report showed 7.2% unemployment, but yesterday came a raff of announcements from major employers that they too were cutting jobs. These include Caterpillar (20,000 jobs), Pfizer (8,000 jobs), Sprint-Nextel (8,000 jobs), Home Depot (7,000 jobs) and General Motors (another 2,000 jobs). Even Microsoft is planning to lay off people. It will shed 5,000 jobs over the next eighteen months. In fact, in 2008 the economy shed 2.6 million jobs, the most since 1945 and 2009 is just getting started. We can expect even higher unemployment numbers to be reported in early February. One has to look hard to find any company that is beating the odds. IBM still made a profit and beat Wall Street expectations, but it is unlikely that their winning streak will extend through the current quarter. As for the value of stocks in general, the S&P 500 index is at about 62% of what it was a year ago.
The only thing we can say with confidence is that we have not hit the bottom yet. Many economists think that things will turn around when the government stimulus finally kicks in late this year. I am no economist but my hunch tells me that a real recovery is likely in 2010 or later, rather than this year. In short, this economic downturn may well be the 21st century’s Great Depression. It is dramatically altering our financial landscape and fundamentally changing our assumptions about how society is supposed to work.
Banks are supposed to be in the business of lending, but few want to lend to anyone but their most creditworthy buyers, even after getting huge capital injections courtesy of the U.S. taxpayers. Why? There is too much uncertainty in the market. Why lend out money when you might not get it back? Moreover, sustained deflation is a real possibility. If it happens, it means that banks that hold on to their assets may yield more relative wealth than by loaning it out, even with interest. Of course, if no one lends money the economy halts, which is clearly well underway.
How did all this come about? It all comes down to one word: trust. The global economy runs on it. We have to have trust in our institutions to play by a set of fair rules. Until and unless it does, the economy is unlikely to markedly improve. Equally as important to our recovery as the massive stimulus bill being debated in Congress is the establishment of a new set of financial rules to govern the country and the world.
You may have noticed that the new Obama Administration is working hard to be the most transparent administration in history. It is doing this by putting far more public records online and in a more timely fashion than ever before. By being open about the way it is governing, it is desperately hoping to foster trust.
Yesterday within an hour of belatedly being confirmed, President Obama swore in as Timothy Geithner as the new Treasury Secretary. The evening was well underway when Geithner was sworn in, but Geithner went swiftly from the ceremony to work at the Treasury Department. He did so because the sooner he could affect a new set of financial rules affecting the country, the faster trust could be restored. Geithner and President Obama realize that the new rules must be judged fair, transparent and must be impartially applied. This is how trust is restored.
When Ross Perot first ran for president in 1992, he talked about the “great sucking sound” that would result from the then unratified North America Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). He predicted that NAFTA would cause more jobs to move from the United States to Mexico than would be created. Whether he was right or wrong was debatable, but in 2009, we are hearing a global great sucking sound as millions of jobs vanish and wealth disappears by the trillions of dollars. That is the sound of trust being lost.
The world is reacting like a wife who discovers her husband is a philanderer. Just as marital trust is hard or impossible to renew after an affair, when shady Wall Street deals abuse our trust (evidenced in diminished stock portfolios and plunging home prices), financial trust becomes hard to reestablish too. In most cases, the abused wife will divorce her philandering spouse. She may marry again, but only if she is confident that her new husband would have the qualities her old husband lacked. When a massive trust crisis happens to a populace, a depression can result.
President Obama, his administration and the Congress thus must work very hard to establish the trust and confidence of the American people and the world. Like it or not, our wealth and future prosperity now rests in their unproven competence. This is why President Obama is working so hard to find common ground with Republicans. Trust is enhanced if both sides of the aisle can embrace a new set of governing rules, and is diminished when it does not exist. This approach may be unpalatable to many on both sides of the political spectrum, particularly given the Republican’s recent and toxic record, but it may be crucial to our recovery.
The good news is that we now have a true grownup leading our country. He understands in this critical time what is required for the rest of us to regain trust. So there is genuine reason for hope. Let us hope that we can work through our jitters and through transparency, decency and fair play come out of this and into a better future.
I could not help but marvel today watching Barack Obama’s historic inauguration on television. It is true I marveled at seeing a black man take the presidential oath of office. If you had asked me in 2004, I would have guessed we would have to wait another two decades before we were collectively mature enough to elect a black man as president. It is also true that I marveled at the million plus Americans standing shoulder to shoulder on the Mall in freezing weather. They stretched from the Capitol all the way to the Lincoln Memorial, with most cheering and waiving American flags. What I found the most marvelous of all was the peaceful transition of power itself. In many, if not most places in the world, a transfer of power of this magnitude is a cause for civil war or rioting. In the United States, it is a time for celebration and partying. Every four or eight years the world has a chance to witness and marvel at America’s peaceful transfer of power.
I felt the spirit of George Washington alive today in the city named to honor him. In his life, George Washington was so popular that could have been president for life. Instead, Washington performed perhaps his most patriotic act by declining a third term in office. In doing so, he showed us fledgling democrats that regular changes in leadership were healthy for a democracy and that our constitution transcended the personalities in power at any given moment.
Thanks in part to George Washington’s precedent another peaceful transfer of power went off today like clockwork and with great celebration. At precisely noon, President Obama became our 44th president, even though he had not yet taken the oath of office. At that exact time, the President’s military aide carrying our nuclear launch codes moved from President Bush’s side to President Obama’s side. Following protocol the new president saw the retiring president out of the Capitol and waved goodbye to him as a helicopter carried him out of Washington. Doubtless inside the president’s desk in the Oval Office was a letter from Former President George W. Bush to President Barack H. Obama with a customarily letter of congratulations and some personal thoughts on the transition of power.
As a civil servant myself, I watched this transfer of power at a somewhat lower level. Last Thursday, I was invited to a high level meeting. I sat across the conference table from our Associate Director. Also in the room were representatives from another department that we meet with quarterly. With one working day left on the George W. Bush Administration, the transition of power was on everyone’s mind and was freely discussed. Everyone was completely matter of fact about it and deeply respectful of the process which by then was well underway. Our Director was a political appointee and wanted to hang on in his job. Hearing nothing from the incoming administration though he knew what was expected and tendered his resignation. He did so not because he wanted to but because that is the way our system of government works. By losing his job, he demonstrated his respect our constitutional process and for the judgment of the American people.
Arguably, the outgoing administration was one of the most egregious in ignoring the law and the constitution. Yet, even this administration could not ignore our democratic electoral process. Had the outgoing administration, like so many banana republics, tried a coup d’état, I have no doubt where the loyalty of our armed forces, our secret service and our civil servants would have lied. Any such attempt is doomed to fail in America. Americans would not allow it. If push came to shove, the military, as is true of civil servants like me, are required to put the constitution above the orders of the president.
It says so much about the character of our country that these values are hardwired into us, in both good times and bad. Back in 2003, I penned a post where I lamented that America had lost its soul. Perhaps it was lost for a while. Perhaps our constitution was a more than a bit tattered by the latest Bush Administration. Yet, we survived and we did so in part because of George Washington’s example and the orders given by the people who once every four years weigh in on who their leader shall be.
Each inauguration is like a heartbeat in the life of our country. The mere fact that it happens like clockwork, in good years and bad, is proof that our country shall endure. Through regular repetition, these events ensure, however imperfectly, that our democracy will continue and we will keep moving forward toward a more perfect union.
I was not worried about yesterday’s election outcome. When the economy tanked in mid September, it became abundantly clear to me than no Republican presidential candidate could beat this political headwind. The only question was the magnitude of Barack Obama’s win and how many other Democrats would be pulled in his wake. Given the circumstances, the Republicans in general did pretty well.
President Bush, a deeply unpopular president whose approval ratings were in the twenties, clearly dragged down the Republican brand. Republicans also carried an enormous set of baggage into this election. They were instrumental and wholly complicit in creating the worst economic crisis since The Great Depression. It was somewhat karmic that it untimely reached the severely acute phase just six weeks before the election. Republicans had also embroiled the country in two foreign wars and dug us more than ten trillion dollars into debt. Because of their policies, most Americans have seen their real wages decrease. Virtually everyone who put money aside has watched the value of their portfolios drop precipitously. All of these stupid actions were entirely preventable had we elected pragmatic men and women instead of ideologues.
Yet, in spite of all these things, McCain lost by only six percentage points, which suggests his campaign was reasonably effective. Moreover, while Democrats made broad gains in the House and Senate, their gains were not as sweeping as pundits like me anticipated. There are five Democratic Senate pickups for sure, with four races still in dispute. At best only one of the four in dispute will tip toward the Democrats. Democrats will not have a filibuster proof majority in the Senate. Democratic House gains were relatively modest under the circumstances too. Democrats picked up 19 seats so far while eight other races remain in dispute.
Viewed over the last two years, the magnitude of our political change has been remarkable. Before the 2006 election, we had one party Republican government. In January 2009, we will have one party Democratic government. Republicans will still be able to block legislation in the Senate via filibuster but they do not control the agenda.
Still, thinking Republicans should feel shell-shocked. This election showed that the solid red South is crumbling. In an election or two, it might disappear altogether. Florida has always been somewhat iffy, but was decidedly peeled away. My state of Virginia, which has not voted for a Democrat for president since 1964, voted for Obama over McCain by five percent. North Carolina still has not been called, but if the current results stands, Obama should carry that state too. McCain is likely to hold on to Missouri, but just barely. While the current electoral count is now 349-163 for Obama, the final count is likely to be 364-174, a trouncing of nearly 200 electoral votes. Moreover, Republicans have no clear path back into power. New younger voters preferred Democrats by nearly a factor of two to one. Their best hope for returning to power is simply to hope that Democrats governed like buffoons too. When the Republican Party eventually is voted back into power, it should look substantially different from the current party.
While for me the outcome was never in doubt, I felt euphoric nonetheless when it arrived. I felt happiest for my African American brethren, most of whom assumed they would never live to see an African American elected President of the United States. The scenes on TV of so many African Americans crying in joy after the networks called the election for Obama were poignant, heartfelt, wondrously joyful and oh so heartfelt, as was Obama’s masterful victory speech. As a metaphor, the election of Barack Obama works well on so many levels. For the last eight years, America has projected itself as an insular, unreasonable, mean and dogmatic nation. Last night I saw reemerge the America I knew growing up. With Obama’s election, racism in our country was dealt a fatal blow and African Americans realized they too were fully enfranchised citizen not just in law, but in fact. A new and better America has emerged that is more tolerant, generous and inclusive than the America of the 20th century. In the 21st century, real America is not rural American, but is colorfully multi-hued, as reflect by its new president elect.
It remains to be seen whether through sheer force of personality President Obama can truly unite us. Unquestionably, he inherits problems of a magnitude not seen in more than a generation. Yet, since we must move through these times anyhow, we are blessed with one of the few leaders up to the job of leading us safely through this treacherous minefield.
For many of us older Americans, the end of the Bush Administration feels like the moments after Watergate’s sad denouement. We remember a sense of relief and a feeling of national shame as we watched the presidential helicopter carry away a disgraced President Nixon. When President Ford told us that our long national nightmare was over, we cried in relief (but not in joy) and wondered if our nation would really remain true to its ideals.
The sad truth for those of us who lived through the Nixon years is that these last eight years have been far worse. Back then we were not numb to the implications of Nixon’s unconstitutional and unlawful actions. Yet President Nixon was at least held accountable by Congress. This congress has given this administration a pass for its crimes. Just to make sure no one is held accountable, President Bush is likely to offer pardons to all the usual suspects. Over these last eight years, we have repeatedly witnessed egregious and previously unthinkable crimes by our government, executed in a premeditated and matter of fact manner by our insular and headstrong leaders. We have seen our nation engage in torture. We have watched our president blithely ignore laws he found it inconvenient by issuing signing statements that he embodied with the force of law. Our armies have inflicted mass suffering on Iraqis by the millions. In doing so, we inherited a staggering karmic debt that will take generations of good deeds to repay. We have spent like a drunken sailor, mortgaged our future and nearly kicked off another Great Depression, bringing the whole world with us. We have witnessed ideology wholly divorced from reality and suffered its disastrous consequences.
My euphoria last night, like that of many Americans, came from the realization that our constitution still works in a creaky sort of way. Sadly, due to our spineless Congress, it did not work through our system of checks and balances, but in a delayed manner through our electoral system. Yet we finally did emerge from our fear-induced stupor and by electing Barack Obama took the critical step necessary to put the nation aright again. In seventy-six days, for the first time in eight years we will have a president that actually puts the rule of law and our constitution first. Imagine that! In seventy-six days, the lunatics will be formally kicked out of the asylum and the grownups will be back in charge.
I was one of those people watching the Obama infomercial last night. I didn’t actually watch it live. I was buying a rug at the time. After it was hauled home and laid out over our new wood floor, I took the time to watch it online. Man, that was one slick infomercial!
Frankly though, I have come to expect slick from the Obama campaign. If Obama wins the presidency next Tuesday as all but a handful of polls suggest, the credit will have to be shared equally between Obama, who is a uniquely compelling candidate, and his campaign staff which is running probably the best run political campaign I have ever seen.
It helps to have tons of cash, of course. Many of us older Americans are still in shock from learning of his $150 million haul in campaign contributions in September. In fact, I still cannot get it through my brain that Democrats, mostly through grass roots efforts, are raising more money than Republicans. Until recently, one thing you could always count on during a presidential campaign was that the Democratic nominee would be at a significant financial disadvantage. Typically, Republicans with their fat checkbooks raised and outspent Democrats two to one. It is my belief that this money advantage more than anything else explains why Republicans have disproportionately held the presidency for the last fifty years or so. Money buys access in the form of commercials, flyers, pollsters, number crunchers and data miners. Moneyed people, who are disproportionately Republican, also tend to either be or have more influence with powerbrokers.
The Obama team though changed the game. It starts with a compelling candidate. Clearly, Obama was not the ideal candidate, particularly when it came to experience. It would be easy to say Obama simply has charisma, but he is blessed with so many talents as a politician and speaker that it is hard to number them all. Among them is his natural eloquence, both spoken and written, as well as marked intelligence, sincerity, people skills and general niceness. I am sure there are Obama haters out there. You may loathe his policies, but you have to be part Grinch to dislike him as a person. Most politicians like, say, John McCain, paste a phony smile in front of a crowd. It is obvious that John McCain is not a happy man. That is not Obama’s problem. He smile is downright beatific. It projects the soul of a man who is at peace.
Obama’s problem though is not his liberal position on many issues. His real problem throughout the campaign has always been his race. While most Americans are not overtly racist, a sizeable minority remains reflexively racist, and an even smaller amount is overtly racist. Many of us are not even aware of our inner racism. I too sometimes have to fight feelings of wanting to walk on the other side of the street when a group of African American males is about to pass me on the sidewalk. I have to assume that a certain amount of racist feelings are hardwired into the primitive parts of our brains.
Thus, it is no small matter for us white Americans to turn off that part of our brains. Yet, for the most part, Obama has succeeded. Obama though had another unique advantage: having a black father and a white mother. He is not so much black as he is multiracial. Having grown up in predominantly white neighborhoods, he understands white America. He has spent his life traversing through it. In many ways, black America is more unfamiliar to him than white America. After graduation, he moved to Chicago specifically to get the African American experience that largely passed him by growing up.
Obama’s campaign is amazingly well managed. John McCain is getting (he hopes) some mileage by saying Obama is already measuring the drapes for the Oval Office. Here’s the thing: that’s not a bad thing, that’s a good thing. It’s not that Obama is taking his election for granted, although the polls suggest he is a shoe in, it’s just that in a well managed campaign these are exactly the sort of activities you should be doing during this part of the campaign. If John McCain is not doing the same thing, he is inept at managing his campaign.
While it remains to be seen if a President Obama will be as successful a manager of the federal bureaucracy as he is with his campaign, his slick campaign can be taken as a very hopeful sign by us disgruntled citizens. It’s been a while since we’ve seen government work in any meaningful fashion. Obama seems to intuitively understand how to walk the fine line between leadership and management. The trick is to know who to pick to be your managers and exercising the right strategies to empower and police them.
With a few notable exceptions, the Obama campaign has been classy and always three steps ahead of the competition. Reporters following him on the campaign trail are a bit disgruntled because they too are being well managed. A well-managed campaign knows how to use the press to its advantage. This means many reporters have limited access to the candidate.
Running a presidential campaign is a huge project. It spans all fifty states and even goes abroad at times. Just the logistics of managing rallies would be intimidating enough, but there is also a huge, interconnected ground game underway. Since I have given the Obama campaign money, I too have been contacted, once a week lately, to see if I will attend rallies, or canvas my neighborhood, or call undecided voters. Obama is smart enough to know that at the grass roots level, people have to feel vested in the outcome. So to the extent possible the campaign staff is letting committed activists in neighborhoods take the lead on local canvassing.
One of the major reasons that Hillary Clinton lost was because she was out managed. The Obama campaign was always several steps ahead of her, and that was because they ran a better organized and more sophisticated campaign. While Clinton was worrying about winning primaries, the Obama campaign was caucus savvy and working both the grassroots and the Netroots ruthlessly. Obama runs a proactive campaign. Only a few times in this long campaign has his campaign suffered serious distractions. The only problem that turned out to be a major problem was his relationship with his incendiary pastor Jeremiah Wright. Even so, in time Obama was able to assuage most of these fears.
Yesterday’s final Obama infomercial was a brilliant conclusion to a meticulously well-managed campaign: well produced, heartfelt, pragmatic and timed to seal the deal. It moved us past the election to let us envision very clearly what an Obama Administration would look like. The vision was both pragmatic about the challenges and hopeful. It was a message I have not heard in a long time: a call to mutual service. In exchange for us stepping up to our civic and family duties, he would bend our recalcitrant government to make it work to meet the needs of ordinary citizens.
My thanks to my friend Renee, who invited a whole bunch of us over to her house last night to watch the first presidential debate between Senators McCain and Obama. It is more fun to watch debates in the presence of other likeminded people. If you are a political junkie like me, the first presidential debate is the highlight of your political year. This year it is hard to imagine a debate where the issues mattered more. There as always was the stoic Jim Lehreh at his desk facing the candidates, two podiums and an audience full of eerily silent people lurking in the dark.
As theater, the debate did not quite meet my expectations. I only grudgingly give it a C. I came prepared for a good verbal swordfight but with a few exceptions, nothing like blood was shed. It soon became clear that Barack Obama was going to be gentlemanly throughout, no matter what mud was slung his way. If you are trying to appear presidential and bipartisan, this is likely a good strategy but makes for ho-hum television. Still there were so many missed opportunities to hit McCain. Obama reiterated the obvious ones, like McCain’s support for the Iraq War and his tendency to vote the party line. I guess it would have looked mean spirited to inflict too many wounds. McCain after all is an ex-POW and was tortured by the North Vietnamese. Perhaps Obama figured he should not suffer too much.
Frankly, I had far more fun watching and listening to Senator McCain than Senator Obama. The frequent split screen shots were quite revealing. I figure McCain must have cracked a molar from pressing his jaws so tight. While obviously trying to hide his true feelings, McCain’s face was actually a window into his soul. Basically, he was seriously pissed. For the most part, he could not actually come out and act pissed so instead we got many half smiles that looked totally fake while inside you could see that major earthquakes were going on. There were times when I felt certain that McCain was fantasizing about walking across the stage and giving Obama a shiner. It was perhaps borne out by his inability to look at Obama during the debate, and his halfhearted handshake before and after the debate itself.
Not that I was planning to vote for McCain anyhow but his body language and screwed up face just confirmed for me that I want neither he nor his vice presidential pick to have their hands anywhere near our nuclear launch codes. When he did criticize Obama, it was in a mean and condescending way: poor little Barack, he is so dangerously naïve and inexperienced.
Obama was, in a word, unflappable. For McCain, debating Obama turned out to be like being at a carnival game booth where you keep trying to hit the moving ducks and you find out that you never came close. Obama was consistently measured, respectful and when he criticized McCain, it was always based on the facts.
It was also hard not to contrast their styles. Obama has a broad and natural grin that just radiates sincerity. McCain looked like he had an inflamed hemorrhoid. You could see that at times not all his neurons were firing in the proper order. His sentences often rambled and his thoughts were not always coherent. He frequently repeated himself. He went on and on about earmarks, as if cutting them would seriously address federal spending. Puh-lease. If you really want to cut federal spending you have to cut Medicaid, Medicare and Social Security, and neither of them are suicidal. Obama slipped up a few times too. He called McCain “Jim” at one point but quickly corrected himself. As a master speaker, McCain was wholly outclassed.
The pundits are suggesting that neither McCain nor Obama won the debate, but of those who had an opinion, Obama generally got higher marks. Who won really matters little. What matters is: did the debate change the dynamics of the race? Various focus groups of independent voters watching the debate showed that overall Obama did a better job of wooing independents than McCain. I doubt the polls will change much as a result of the debate but if they move at all, they will move toward Obama.
Overall, McCain performed better than I expected. While rambling and incoherent at times, I heard less of it than I anticipated. Moreover, there were times when he looked genuinely sincere and thoughtful. Those times though were few and fleeting. Behind in the polls, he felt the need to sling as much mud as he could at Obama to see if any of it stuck. In my opinion, none of it landed. In this jousting match, neither rider was thrown off their horse. Obama had McCain reeling a few times but McCain managed to stay on. McCain hit Obama’s armor a few times but neither he nor his horse had to check their stride.
Most of us were hoping that both candidates could be pinned down on the current economic crisis. Neither McCain nor Obama rose to Jim Lehreh’s bait, and gave circumspect replies that basically did not tell us how they felt about the package beyond some principles they wanted to see in the final legislation. Both seemed anxious to weasel around the question. That was disappointing but perhaps not wholly unexpected given that the issue is in such flux now. What legislation that finally emerges at this point is anyone’s guess.
The vice presidential debate next Thursday is likely to be far more entertaining.
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