Occam's Razor

Who should we trust now?

Lordy, Walter Cronkite is gone. Nearly thirty years after he retired as anchorman for the CBS Evening News, the most trusted man in America has regrettably gone to meet his maker at age 92. What amazed me is that even though Cronkite had been largely off camera for thirty years, his passing has inspired genuine grief from millions of Americans. It seems like more people are mourning Cronkite’s passing than Ronald Reagan’s. Cronkite should have faded from our memories by now but for many of us he looms large and singular all these years later. One thing you hear repeatedly is that America will never trust anyone again as they trusted Walter Cronkite.

If you want to be the most trusted person in America, it helps if you have little competition. Cronkite thrived in television news in an age when you had three networks and thus only three choices for your evening news. Cable was just emerging in the 1970s and cable news did not appear until CNN was born around 1980. Today with so many ways to acquire our news, many of them new, it is hard for any individual today to stand out they way Cronkite did. Few of us even bother to watch network news these days. The whole idea of TV network news is almost obsolete.

Cronkite seemed singular but in reality, he followed in the footsteps of the late Edward R. Murrow, who spotted him as a war correspondent in London during World War II. Murrow made it possible for us to place our trust in Cronkite because like Cronkite, America trusted Murrow. I was not old enough to watch Murrow live on television, but I was certainly aware of his legendary influence growing up. I suspect that even those under thirty who never saw Walter Cronkite behind his desk at the CBS Evening News felt his presence.

We trusted Cronkite not only because he looked trustworthy, but he was born in an age when journalism was a highly ethical career, where facts mattered and where professional duty required impartiality. In our new media age, some of us now place this level of trust in certain news bloggers. In fact, few bloggers are impartial, but many are voracious consumers of the news. A talented few have minds like Sherlock Holmes and can sift through vast amounts of information to discern the truth. A couple of bloggers that I deeply respect include Marcy Wheeler and Andrew Sullivan. Neither Marcy nor Andrew though would qualify as traditional journalists but rather interpreters of the news gathered by others. Cronkite, like all journalists, was a person with his own biases that only occasionally leaked out in the form of editorials. Cronkite though was not afraid to investigate an issue, although while anchorman he delegated most of this work to his staff. He was an imperfect perfectionist, always striving to provide America with the best-informed information available on a particular news day. It was reflexive in him and we could tell. That is why America trusted him. We never got that sense about his replacement Dan Rather. At least Cronkite could tell us, “That’s the way it is,” while all Rather could come up with was a pithy “Courage.”

Cronkite proved that trust must be earned in order for it to be placed. Cronkite earned the trust of millions of Americans through his fanatical devotion to objectivity and insistence on quality shoe-leather journalism. What was neat about Cronkite is you never got the sense that he had a bloated ego. On camera at least, he came across like someone out of a cold shower: relentlessly measured and sober. During the scary years of The Cold War where the stakes were often life itself, you could not trust much, but you could trust Uncle Walter.

Who should we place our trust in now, if anyone? It is unlikely that we will ever see that level of trust again in a television journalist, simply because to have it you have to have both a very large audience and be a journalist at your core. Technology has made the former very hard to acquire, and journalism as I studied it in the 1970s is almost gone. More of us are comfortable having our news served to us with spin, be it from the obviously right-wing Fox News or the obviously left-wing MSNBC. CNN claims to hold the middle ground yet populates its shows with cast of characters paid to show their biases. The closest I can find to high quality journalist on CNN is Campbell Brown. She is much nicer to look at then Uncle Walter, but even she is no Uncle Walter. On the radio, National Public Radio has some terrific hosts, but they are faceless. Hosts like Robert Siegel sound terrific but are faceless. You cannot stare them in the eye and get a sense of their soul, like you could with Walter Cronkite. Nor is it clear how much of what they present on the air they direct. Uncle Walter was in charge of the CBS Evening News. On NPR, it appears the producers direct the work.

The Washington Post asked prominent and not so prominent Washingtonians who they think should inherit Cronkite’s mantle of trust. The results were pretty disturbing and included Oprah Winfrey, Barack Obama, Anderson Cooper and Jon Stewart (please!) I like Barack Obama too but before I put Cronkite levels of trust in him, I would like to see how he did with four years as president. Oprah is energetic, empathetic and certainly filthy rich. Do I trust her to provide the insight and informed judgment needed in the 21^st century? Not a chance, even if she did do much to make Obama our first African American president.

I can think of some non-journalists who I think can rise to Cronkite’s level of trust. These are typically people who tell us uncomfortable but true things about ourselves and our world that we do not necessarily want to hear or take to heart, but which we know in our heart are nonetheless true. And they have also earned a level of trust through actual deeds.

My number one choice is Nelson Mandela. He spent twenty-eight years in prison for his convictions and has a moral authority probably second to none in the world. Mandela, 91, while a great moral authority, does not claim to have any special understanding of the United States and our particular situation. Yet he is probably the most singular, inspiring and trustworthy living worldwide figure since Mohandas Gandhi. In many ways, I think he surpasses Gandhi, who himself was a very peculiar man. As I learned, in the process of trying to make things better Gandhi often made things worse. Mandela is a gentle and compassionate soul whose moral leadership moved the toxic Apartheid state of South Africa into a modern pluralistic state. In the process, he has inspired and revered by billions worldwide.

My number two choice would be the Dalai Lama. Popes come and go, some better than others and some worse, but the Dalia Lama (whoever he is in his latest incarnation) is consistently compassionate and demonstrates a saner and more sustainable way for human to live and the world to thrive. Buddhists though rarely get much respect because they are so unnoticed. Yet Buddhists are often full of great insight and wisdom. To my knowledge, Buddhists have never caused any wars and have always strived to live simply and compassionately. Like Mandela, the Dalai Lama has little to say to America that we want to hear, nor is he vested in the issues of our day.

My number three choice is actually my number one choice because he lives among us. He is a surprising choice because during the years that Americans got to know him best, he was not terribly popular. His name is Jimmy Carter. He is often telling America things that we do not want to hear, but he speaks with great moral authority, is grounded in our culture and our values and has the humbleness that Cronkite manifested on camera as well as a compassion for all suffering people.

What is truly great about Jimmy Carter though is that when he speaks we know in our hearts that he is right. He is right, for example, when he told us that Israel is engaged in a slow genocide on the Gaza Strip.  President Carter is now 84 years old. Given the actuarial tables he will probably not to be with us much longer. For those of us who find it hard to trust in a nebulous god we can neither see nor feel, we look for examples among us of the best that we can be. For myself, I can think of no better person to place my trust in now that Uncle Walter is gone than in Jimmy Carter.

May Jimmy, like Uncle Walter, live a long life. May we Americans learn much from him in the time we are fortunate to have him with us among the living. Like Walter Cronkite, we are unlikely to see the likes of him again.

July 22nd, 2009 at 05:29pm Posted by Mark | Politics 2009, Sociology | no comments

No silver bullet

Those of us of a certain age remember the presidency of Jimmy Carter. While Carter’s post presidency was far more successful than his actual presidency, Carter also had a bad habit of not telling us what we wanted to hear. In the midst of rampant high inflation, oil shocks and other systemic problems most of which were decades in the making he asked Americans to sacrifice. He told us we needed to change ingrained habits to ensure a brighter tomorrow. He talked about the urgent need for our country to establishing energy independence from the Middle East. He told us to turn down the thermostats in the winter and turn them up in the summer.

Americans did not cope well with these suggestions. I cannot remember a time when my fellow citizens were in a sourer mood. It was no wonder then that when Ronald Reagan proclaimed that it was Morning in America, his message fell on receptive years. Living with the reality of the energy crisis and the fundamental changes underway in our economy at that time was no fun at all. Our politicians were convenient targets at whom we could vent our rage. Out went Jimmy, in came Ronnie. Out went fiscal discipline, in came Voodoo Economics. We would grow our way to prosperity by charging it to the U.S. Treasury. We would delude ourselves that we were prosperous the same way that Blondie deluded herself that she could afford all those shoes because there were still checks in the checkbook.

Reagan exploited a fundamental truth about Americans: in peacetime, the electorate can tolerate a few servings of spinach only. For the eight years of his administration, the spinach diet disappeared and was replaced by the jellybean diet. (Ronnie loved those jellybeans.) To ensure we would not be eating spinach, he strengthened our relationship with Middle East oil suppliers, i.e. Saudi Arabia. All that cheap oil did help grow our economy, which in time perked up the national mood. The Saudis seemed very happy with their new fleet of American fighter jets, not to mention our growing military presence in the region, even though we were technically infidels. It is now clear that this strategy to keep America growing through access to cheap oil had a downside. It tied us intimately to the intractable problems in the Middle East.

In case you have not noticed, the Middle East, never a calm region of the world, is hardly a more secure place than it was twenty-five years ago. In fact, it is arguably in more turmoil than it has ever been. The umbilical cord between the Middle East and us, driven by our insistence on its oil, is now so big and so thick that cutting it is unthinkable. Moreover, the fundamental issues in the Middle East have not been resolved either. In fact, we have exacerbated the Middle East’s problems. We have given oppressive and authoritarian states (Egypt and Saudi Arabia in particular) the means to keep their people oppressed. I strongly suspect that there is a direct connection between the continued oppression in these states and the rise of Islamic Jihadist movements. Osama bin Laden, after all, is a Saudi who had no sanctioned outlet for his grievances. He was told to stuff it or go to prison or possibly be executed.

And so we get in higher and deeper, to the point where we make ghastly half trillion dollar mistakes in hellholes like Iraq trying to undo our mistakes. As if the carnage in the Middle East were not enough to distract us, there are these other problems that make issues like terrorism seem rather trivial. Global warming and its consequence, overpopulation and a ravaged environment, is probably the biggest problem that humanity will ever face. We recognize the need to do something serious to address it, but we are not sure what should be done. Whatever solutions are required, what we have done so far clearly has not worked. It looks like we need a long-term strategy to really address global warming, we need it now, and it must be dramatic. In many ways, these issues are the same issues we tried to address a quarter century ago. Only now having spent twenty five years ignoring the problem, the cost and pain involved in fixing the problem has mushroomed, much like the costs of occupying Iraq.

Americans are beginning to understand, grudgingly, that it is time to eat the spinach again. Since Republicans seem incapable of it, the Democrats will have the unenviable task of leading on these issues. It remains to be seen though whether Americans are willing to accept the pain and sacrifice necessary for genuine energy independence and real solutions to global warming. Thinking back to the Carter years, I am not hopeful. In fact, in our SUV addicted nation, I think we will give up our guns before we will give up our Hummers. Instead, we will look feverishly for that silver bullet that will allow us to live our first world lifestyles without actually having to pay for it.

In today’s USA Today, I read that Honda will release a limited edition hydrogen powered car next year. Great news: it will not pollute the air at all! You will refill your tank at special gas stations equipped with hydrogen pumps. While hydrogen powered cars will not emit any pollution, all that hydrogen is going to have to be manufactured and transported from somewhere. Ideally, it would come from a nonpolluting sources such as hydroelectric plants and wind farms. To make a long story short, hydrogen powered cars probably are not a silver bullet either. At least in the short term producing the hydrogen to run them would probably contribute to global warming. If we use renewable sources of energy, like feedstocks, to produce hydrogen, we may drive up the cost of food, and cause people to starve. We are already seeing the effect from using corn for energy. Corn is being used to create ethanol. As more corn is used, demand for corn increased, and prices rise. As a direct result, rising corn flour prices in Mexico are deepening the poverty of many Mexicans and causing more Mexicans to go hungry. With hydrogen powered cars, our urban skies may eventually be cleaner, but it will not solve the global warming problem. Instead, trying to solve one problem will likely cause additional unforeseen problems. Someone will probably pay a price for every clever strategy we concoct to solve these problems.

There are unlikely to be any silver bullets for us on the global warming issue. Technologies like hydrogen-powered cars, while better than doing nothing, are merely tinkering around the edges. Real solutions are likely to be too painful to adopt. To address it we must consume much less energy than we do now. We must stop our population growth and eventually reduce our population to levels that the earth can handle. We must live in denser neighborhoods. In short, a few servings of spinach will not suffice just like a couple week on the Atkins Diet won’t make you a thin person for life.

I expect that Democrats have learned from the Carter years. I think they will give these issues attention, but not enough to alter the dynamics between the needs of people and the needs of the planet. Instead, they will choose a middle ground. Arguably, it may be the better of two bad choices. Turn the screws too tightly, and the Republicans get back in charge, which if their history holds true suggests we will go back to giving lip service to the global warming problem. That will be toxic to our species and to our planet.

Hillary Clinton epitomizes this middle ground. She is expressing hope and optimism that we can address global warming, energy independence and all the other issues our nation is grappling with. To me it sounds like a new version of Morning in America. Hope is a necessary ingredient to drive change, but more than hope is needed. These actions, however much hope they may inspire, are doomed and fall short of what is needed.

What is needed is massive and painful societal change. I have some ideas that are unlikely to go anywhere. However, if they were enacted they would demonstrate to the world that we are serious about global warming. Mind you that these are only first steps. How many of these would you personally commit to in order to address global warming?

• Limit tax deductions for dependents to two dependents per household.
• Tax homes that exceed a reasonable square footage, say 2000 square feet.
• Limit trash collection to once a week.
• Prohibit the use of power mowers. If we must have power mowers, ensure they use catalytic converters like our cars use.
• Require all houses to undergo annual energy audits. Fine those that do not meet strict efficiency standards.
• Limit power consumption from carbon producing sources to a given number of kilowatt-hours per household per month. Exempt households that receive their energy from clean power sources.
• Put a surcharge on energy use to be used for the development of more clean forms of power.
• Prohibit new development on undeveloped land.
• Limit the number of automobiles to one per household.
• Pay per pound of garbage collected.
• Provide tax credits for households that have certified systems that keeps temperatures at 65 or below in the winter and 80 or above in the summer.

Yeah, I know. Most if not all of these ideas are dead on arrival in Congress, even if my party, the Democratic Party wins control of all branches of government. As President Carter found out, this will be too much spinach for the national stomach to digest. While other actions show good intent, only actions like these will lead to meaningful change.

The reality is that our golden era of energy gluttony has passed. This new era in which we will arrive either sooner or later will not be as comfortable, but we and/or our grandchildren will have to get used to it. It is either that, or as is suggested in the movie The Last Mimzy, the future of the human race and of the planet looks unimaginably bleak.

May 11th, 2007 at 10:07pm Posted by Mark | Politics 2007 | no comments

Needed: a dose of reality for presidential daughters (and sons)

Those of us who watched The West Wing were treated to a fictional, yet likely accurate portrayal of the life of presidential offspring. Viewers best knew the fictional President Bartlet’s daughter Zoey. At the end of Season Four, she was kidnapped on the night of her graduation from Georgetown University. She also prominently dated Bartlet’s very African American personal aid, Charlie Young. Both of these events caused end of season cliffhangers.

From The West Wing we learn that the gilded life is not necessarily easy for presidential offspring. The Secret Service is omnipresent, making it very difficult to maintain privacy and the semblance of a personal life. There is also the ever-curious press corps, who likes to read into the president defects they detect in their offspring. Like modern day princes, these presidential sons and daughters are thrust into a role not of their choosing. Moreover, once their famous parent leaves office, they often become curiosities. Like Amy Carter, sometime they are banished to obscurity. However, if they are particularly smart, good-looking and their parents are well connected they can end up earning six figures right out of college.

Chelsea Clinton has a new job, the Associated Press reports. The 26-year-old former first daughter recently started working for Avenue Capital Group, a New York-based hedge fund that handles about $12 billion in assets.

Clinton had been working as a consultant for McKinsey & Co., the international consulting firm, since 2003, reportedly for a six-figure salary. She received her master’s degree from Oxford University after graduating from Stanford in 2001.

Federal campaign records indicate that Avenue Capital founders Marc Lasry and Sonia Gardner have donated thousands of dollars to Democratic lawmakers, including Chelsea Clinton’s mother, New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, as well as to various Democratic campaign committees. There was no word late yesterday from Avenue Capital, any of the Clintons or their reps.

Arguably, Chelsea was simply astute enough to turn the detriment of being a presidential daughter into an asset. If you Google Chelsea’s name, you will find that she has been a busy daughter in the six years since her father left office. After finishing high school at the exclusive Sidwell Friends School in Washington, she received a bachelor’s degree in history from Stanford, where she commendably graduated with highest honors. She recently received a degree in international relations from Oxford University, which her father also attended. Ironically, she now lives in the Chelsea neighborhood of Manhattan. It is just a bit north of the current residence of another presidential daughter: Barbara Pierce Bush, who lives in Greenwich Village. I have to wonder if they occasionally get together for cappuccinos at Starbucks.

Granted, the cost of living is very high in New York City. Even so, Chelsea Clinton’s six-figure salary, given that she is a 26-year-old woman with a master’s degree and is not a lawyer is virtually unheard of. Bill Clinton earned only $30,000 a year as the governor of Arkansas, and that was after spending some time as a professor at the University of Arkansas and unsuccessfully running for Congress. It does not take much to infer that Chelsea’s comfortable salary was due in large part to her parental connections. It also does not hurt that she is a very attractive woman. Presumably, she carries a premium for both her good looks and parental connections. I assume this was the reasoning behind McKinsey & Co. offering her such an inflated salary. Reports suggest she has the Clinton charisma. She may be the next generation of a future Clinton political dynasty.

Like Chelsea, President Bush’s twin daughters Jenna and Barbara are also cute and attractive. Unlike Chelsea, they never properly lived at the White House. Both were 18 when Bush was elected and just beginning college. After graduating from the University of Texas at Austin, Jenna laudably spent some time teaching in public schools in the District of Columbia. Her twin sister Barbara chose to attend Yale, which her father and grandfather attended. Perhaps this was done in part to keep the Bush legacy at Yale alive for another generation.

However, both Bush daughters have had their issues with the law. Barbara and Jenna were charged with being a minor in possession of alcohol at a Mexican restaurant in May 2001. Jenna had a similar incident at an Austin bar a month earlier. In addition, The Washington Post reported in 2002 that the Bush girls were spotted (but not cited for) drinking at a Washington DC nightclub. Having spent some time recently pondering genograms, I have to wonder if the Bush twins have been channeling their father’s issues with alcohol and parental authority. Time will tell. While nominally Republican, both act more like Democrats.

Of Jack and Jackie Kennedy’s children, John Jr. became a glamorous assistant attorney in New York. He attracted a lot of press, but never became a politician. Perhaps this was because, like his father, he died young. He died in 1999 at age 39 (along with his wife and sister-in-law) when he piloted a piper cub into the Atlantic. The crash was thought to be due to his inexperience piloting aircraft. Caroline, the sole surviving child of the Kennedy marriage and now technically an orphan, is politically active in a few of her father’s causes. She is one of the founders of the Profiles in Courage Award. She is a graduate of both Harvard and the Columbia Law School. Her modest life seems a sensible response to her family’s tragic tendencies.

What is true about all these people is that it was difficult for them to encounter the real world. Chelsea Clinton probably enjoyed the most freedom, until her father ran for president. All have enjoyed both the perquisites and the detriments of being offspring to the president of the United States. Their lives were changed forever.

For me this background makes the case of Amy Carter so interesting. I have already confessed my admiration for Jimmy Carter. There was no cushy private school for Amy when the Carters were in the White House; she went to D.C. public schools. Her relatively normal entry into adulthood was perhaps assisted by the public’s general disdain for her father. The Carters were determined not to give their daughter any special favor. Amy fell into obscurity.

The last of the Carter’s three children (her two brothers were 15-20 years older, so they were adults when Carter was in office), Amy’s post White House life was frightfully ordinary. She too went to college, but to “ordinary” colleges like the Memphis College of Art and Tulane University. After her collegiate experience, she was left to fend for herself. As I recall from press reports, she worked in a bookstore to make ends meet. However, she has been politically active. She participated in various sit-ins on issues including apartheid in South Africa and the Reagan Administrations policies in Central America. She dallied on her way to the altar, not marrying until she was 29. She refused to be “given away” at her wedding, and has retained her maiden name. She is currently raising one son with her husband, and is avoiding the limelight.

I suspect over time that some of these presidential offspring will be running for higher office too. Perhaps it is in their blood, or they picked up the expectation watching their parents. I can sense thirty years from now there may be another Senator Clinton in the Senate. However, I am leery about all of these glamorous and often pampered next generation politicians running future ships of state. Our current president perhaps demonstrates that political dynasties tend to be bad ideas. Those who run the ship of state should be people grounded in real life. Arguably, because George W. Bush was not, it contributed to his singular view of the world and the disaster that now is Iraq. Iraq would have never have happened on Bill Clinton’s watch. Bill Clinton certainly came with many faults. He is also quite brilliant and has an amazingly flexible mind. I personally was thrilled at his election. Any man who took at much joy in a burger and fries from Burger King as he did could get my vote. For my money, he was grounded in the real world. He may have come from trailer park trash, but this and his intelligence gave him the insight to deal effectively with people. It may also be one of the reasons he was so despised. The same is true with Jimmy Carter. Both rose above their modest circumstances and in so doing, became very effective politicians.

So if we must have political dynasties, I am keeping one finger crossed behind my back. It is not crossed for a future Senator or President Chelsea Clinton, but instead for a future Senator or President Amy Carter. Amy’s life at least was grounded in some reality, despite being the president’s daughter. It appears that there are no coattails from her father’s term in office on which to run. However, I would rest easier with her steering the ship of state.

I bet Amy enjoys a burger with fries too.

November 24th, 2006 at 06:46pm Posted by Mark | Politics 2006 | no comments

My hero

Everyone should have their heroes. I may be 47, but I’m not too old to have my hero. Jimmy Carter is my hero.

I hate to admit I admire Jimmy Carter as much as I do. For one thing he is a passionate Christian and I am not. I am not sure exactly what I am, but I am not a Christian. While I like individuals who happen to be Christian, as a class I am not fond of Christians. But then there’s Jimmy. And after analyzing my feelings about the man I realize I like him because he is a Christian.

A contradiction? Not at all. I admire Christians who can actually act Christ-like. When I think my disenfranchisement with Christianity, aside from all the silly mysticism of much of it, my number one gripe is that most Christians seem to be more spiritually aligned with Satan than with Jesus. But then there’s Jimmy Carter. Here’s a man who epitomizes what Christianity should be but so rarely is. Certainly he is not alone. Perhaps I note so few of them because they so quietly do their work. But from my perspective true Christians are a rare breed. And I believe that Jimmy Carter is near or at the top of the list of people who epitomize the Jesus I found from reading the Bible.

I often wonder how many of those people who purport to be Christians have actually bothered to read Jesus’s words. Here in Virginia you can’t walk two feet without bumping into purported Christians. Unfortunately we’re talking about the Jerry Falwell type of Christian. These folks have no qualms about amassing large sums of money even though Jesus disdained wealth. These Christians seems to be obsessed over the evils of gays and sodomy even though Jesus hung out with Samaritans and prostitutes and stayed away from the rabbis at the temple. These Christians are people who every day feel free to condemn me and people like me for my lifestyle but seem to have wholly missed Jesus’s words saying only those without sin should cast the first stone.

Then there is Jimmy Carter. Humble. Decent. Not the proselytizing type. Not the sort of man to give you a lecture for your behavior. He is a man much more concerned about living the example of Jesus through deeds than through words. Here is a man who if he followed the Ronald Reagan model for ex-presidents might have grabbed speaking fees for tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars at a pop. Instead he went home after a bitter defeat, licked his wounds, built the required presidential library and went to work. Most of us know that he started Habitat for Humanity, which creates affordable housing across the nation. Many of us also know he has worked tirelessly to bring democratic government to nations that never knew it. If you look around the world today and wonder why there are more democratic nations than there were in 1980, don’t think Reagan or Bush had much to do with it. Thank instead Jimmy and Rosalyn Carter who monitored countless elections. Thank also Jimmy and Rosalyn for all their work vital work in world sustainable development.

People often say that Jimmy Carter was a terrible president. The truth is that Carter was too good to be our president. We say we want a man of peace and high character as our president. But in fact we prefer the macho cowboy as president, not the 98-pound weakling. We even prefer adulterers like Bill Clinton to weenie men like Jimmy Carter who confess lust in their hearts but don’t do anything about it. We saw Jimmy Carter as almost effeminate: a wimp. Here was a guy who agonized for weeks before sending American forces into combat in an unsuccessful attempt to free our hostages from Iran’s custody. We all know W would not be such a wimp. He’d send in the Marines! Send out the strike fighters! He’d show those wacky Persians who’s the boss! Yes, we require a real man (or perhaps someday a real woman) as our president. We don’t want someone who realizes what a hollow thing our sexual stereotypes are and instead is content to be an honest and fallible human being.

The truth was that Carter was a president during times that would have tripped up anyone. The same fate would have befell Gerald Ford had he won in 1976. There is not much any president can do to reduce high inflation, high interest rates and oil shocks in four short years. But Carter did what he could. Although the deficits of the 1970s look puny by modern standards he did manage to reduce the annual federal budget deficit, unlike his immediate predecessors. And he made unpopular but correct choices in a number of areas. Does anyone remember the hubbub of “giving away” the Panama Canal? Does anyone care now that it is under the control of the Panamanian people? It was the right thing to do and Carter had the leadership to make sure it happened.

And what other president prior to Carter did as much for world peace? Certainly many presidents sent men to war to create a peace. But Jimmy Carter actively worked to solve the thorniest foreign policy issues. The Camp David Accords were an amazing achievement that created a peace that has endured for over 25 years between two implacable foes: Israel and Egypt. It is no wonder that for this and his many other achievements in peacemaking Jimmy Carter belatedly won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002.

Last night I watched Carter, nearly 81, speak at the Democratic National Convention. His voice was unsteady at times but he is otherwise in remarkably good health. He gave of one the most concise but on target speeches against George W. Bush and his strategy of preemptive war that has ever been made. Who else could say this with such conviction and authority?

Today, our dominant international challenge is to restore the greatness of America – based on telling the truth, a commitment to peace, and respect for civil liberties at home and basic human rights around the world. Truth is the foundation of our global leadership, but our credibility has been shattered and we are left increasingly isolated and vulnerable in a hostile world. Without truth – without trust – America cannot flourish. Trust is at the very heart of our democracy, the sacred covenant between the president and the people.

Jimmy Carter is modeling the behavior we should all emulate. If we had courage we would be following behind him. Instead of squandering our lives playing with game cubes or watching “reality” television, our lives could take on genuine meaning and richness. Carter is showing us a path we can all choose to take. How many of us have the courage to rise above our selfishness and live the meaningful life?

If I could pick just one person among all the brilliant people, statesmen and theologians in this world to spend an hour with I would pick Jimmy Carter. Just to have the opportunity to shake his hand would be the highlight of my life. Jimmy, if you are in Northern Virginia, take this as a standing invitation. And as a wishy washy Unitarian Universalist to a true Christian I say: God bless.

July 27th, 2004 at 09:44pm Posted by Mark | Best of Occam's Razor, Sociology | 4 comments