On the Contrary

In the New York Times this morning there were two editorials that set out what is the conventional wisdom about the recent election and what it portends for the Democrats and the other probably more to the reality of the situation instead of the conventional wisdom.  Sadly the nation moves usually on conventional wisdom, not reality which has been badly mangled by the media which tends to bend to the conventional wisdom without questioning some of its underlying assumptions.  To be sure, the media rarely speaks truth to power. They are too afraid to lose their access if they actually challenge these people.   Least we forget Iraq, death panels, socialize medicine, and I could go on indefinitely.

David Brooks in his editorial, What Independents Want, was pushing what I consider the conventional wisdom, albeit, inaccurate.  He accurately noted that there was a swing in independent voters toward conservatives, but he then identified the effects as the cause instead of the real root cause.  His premise was that independents think that President Obama “is moving too fast.”  He cites the economy (the real cause), increasing distrust in government, fear of the deficit, too much government regulation, and probably the accommodation of Wall Street by the Democrats (this one is right on).  Then of course he recommended to his conservative brethren that we should get back to the basics of small government and let businesses do their thing, and fail if they must (read wall street).  He did get one of these things right:  “Independents support the party that seems most likely to establish a frame of stability and order within which they can lead their lives.”  Problem is his conservative prescription for that will only fail as it did last time around.

As always the devil is in the details and one should ask David how he would have handled the bank crisis back in 2007 and what should we do now to make sure the whole economy is not threatened.  Would we do that with less government and fewer regulations?  Same with health care or the climate/energy bill.  If less government is so wonderful, why aren’t these problems already solved after eight years of Republican control?  The real issue here is that the economy is not improving and all the rest, distrust in government, less regulations, etc. are a result of the lack of improvement, not the cause of the problem.   The one thing I always find astounding is that when things are going bad, why do the voters want to bring back the people who got us in this mess and have no ideas for our future?

The other editorial was from Paul Krugman, Obama Faces His Anzio, where Paul identifies what I think is the real problem.  It is not that President Obama has tried to do too much, but he has been too timid with what he has done.  His intrepidation caused him to implement policies that are only minimally effective.  The bank crisis was averted, but then he started accommodating the bankers and real change was not effected.  The stimulus bill by his own staff’s estimation was too small.  He has compromised or watered down what he was going to do and the result is very little progress.  Paul compares this to the Anzio Beach fiasco in World War II:

“The World War II battle of Anzio was a classic example of the perils of being too cautious. Allied forces landed far behind enemy lines, catching their opponents by surprise. Instead of following up on this advantage, however, the American commander hunkered down in his beachhead — and soon found himself penned in by German forces on the surrounding hills, suffering heavy casualties.”

President Obama was elected on a change agenda and then he didn’t.  Mr. Krugman’s final summary is where I think the truth really lies:

“If the Democrats lose badly in the midterms, the talking heads will say that Mr. Obama tried to do too much, this is a center-right nation, and so on. But the truth is that Mr. Obama put his agenda at risk by doing too little. The fateful decision, early this year, to go for economic half-measures may haunt Democrats for years to come.”

Well, as noted, that is what Mr. Brooks is saying already, but I am with Paul on this.  President Obama was too timid and without some real backbone from the Democrats between now and 2010, I believe he may have wasted his chance.  The conventional wisdom summarized by Mr. Brooks is gaining speed, and if the Democrats cannot do something to improve the economy, the conventonial wisdom will prevail and we will have the same failed policies voted back into office in 2010.

“The public has soured on Obama’s policy proposals. Voters often have only a fuzzy sense of what each individual proposal actually does, but more and more have a growing conviction that if the president is proposing it, it must involve big spending, big government and a fundamental departure from the traditional American approach.”

“The president’s challenge now is to halt the slide. That doesn’t mean giving up his goals. It means he has to align his proposals to the values of the political center: fiscal responsibility, individual choice and decentralized authority.”

“Events have pushed Barack Obama off to the left. Time to rebalance.”

These quotes are from David Brooks’ editorial this morning in the New York Times (The Obama Slide).  For those of you who are unfamiliar with Mr. Brooks, he is a somewhat reasonable conservative columnist who from time to time makes some insightful comments.  This is not one of those times.

Mr. Brooks’ analysis seems to be that President Obama’s slide is because he tried to do too much and was leaning way to far to the left.  In order to get the middle of America back on his side he has to hew to the middle.  This idea of where the middle is, is probably the biggest misconception by the media and the pundits.  When pundits refer to moderate Democrats, they are really talking about moderately conservative Republicans who have no place to land since the Republican Party went extreme.  People are confused because President Obama has failed to communicate a way forward and to justify that way forward.  They are confused because he abandoned his platform to seek bipartisanship.  He has left it to Congress and they have created a mess.

Mr. Brooks actually has this exactly backwards.  President Obama has drifted way too far to the right in his policies and has lost his progressive rudder.  By trying to win over Republicans, his policies have become ineffective.  Take his first problem, the economy.  The stimulus package was watered down by tax cuts and non-simulative spending by the right.  He allowed that to happen to get their support by failing to lead and communicate what would best help us in our time of crisis and then stand firm for it.  Yes, he bailed out the banks, but where is big government on regulating those banks to prevent a repeat?

On many of the issues he campaigned on and won a large majority, he has backslided on.  He talked single payer for health care and then immediately gave up that bargaining chip when he kicked off health care reform.  He told us we needed open government and then has prevented us from really finding out what went on regarding detainees and torture.  He promised to end Don’t ask, Don’t tell and has done nothing.  He continues to block our attempts to find out just how much ease dropping the government is doing on our own citizens.  Where leadership was required, he hewed to the right and ducked the tough decisions.  He has failed to take a progressive agenda and use his communication skills to sell them to the public.  Democrats want out of the Middle East and it looks like what we are getting is more Bush surge mentality.  What is the end game?

Health care is the most telling example.  The majority of the population wants a public option.  But nobody knows what the plan is and where he stands so they are confused.  The failure to lead here has been colossal.  It is going to cost money and it is a moral responsibility so if he would have faced up to this and led, as Bob Dole in his Washington Post editorial yesterday noted, he be up in the polls by 10% (Starting Over With Health Care).

Mr. Brooks seems to think that our solutions must be through “decentralized authority” and “traditional American Approach”.  He is talking about the era of Ronald Reagan and that is how we got here.   President Obama’s failure was to not clearly communicate the details of his policies and then use his communication skills to show the voters how government can get us there.  He left a void that was filled by misinformation and lies crafted by the right.  He attempted to compromise with a Republican right that is dysfunctional and has no plan for our future.  So contrary to what Mr. Brooks is advocating, President Obama needs to get back to his Progressive roots.  He needs to clearly communicate his vision for the future, craft legislation to reach those goals, and clearly communicate his bottom line.  He needs to lead the people instead of being a facilitator.  Had he done that, there would have been no slide.

President Obama’s slide is a direct result of his lean to the right and weak leadership.  His policies have been poorly communicated, misunderstood, and eviscerated by attempts to compromise with failed ideology.  Instead of focusing on bipartisanship with a party that has no intention of allowing him to succeed on anything, he needs to focus on what will work.  Now he needs to read Mr. Brooks’ column and do just the opposite.  Decide what will work for this country and then start fighting for it.  He would be amazed at how many people will get behind a leader who will lead.

Related Blog:  Othello, Iago, President Obama, and the death of Progressivism

We got a wakeup call from of all people, conservative columnist David Brooks.  In his column yesterday in the New York Times, Vince Lombardi Politics, Mr. Brooks made the point that maybe winning isn’t everything, and compromising on legislation to get a win or to achieve what is politically possible may, in fact, pass legislation that is at best ineffective.   That would seem to be the modus operandi of the Obama Administration and the Democrats these days and it is so sad that even the conservatives see the obvious.

Take health care.  On Meet the Press Sunday, Senior White House Advisor David Axelrod, when pressed on whether the Obama administration would get health care reform passed with a government option, Mr. Axelrod kept repeating that we would get health care reform passed.  In other words they were willing to compromise away a government option if that is what it took to get a health care reform package through Congress.  As I have written before, what’s the point?  Without a robust government option there is no reform.  The fear of many of us is that if you compromise away real reform now in order to get a bill under your belt, you may also waste a crisis to force real change.  One might ask when are we ever going to draw a line in the sand and say no more back sliding?  When will we be willing to wait in order to get what is really need instead of the quick fix to say we won?

Take energy and climate change.  Because the Republicans are brain dead and deny both our energy problem (addiction to oil) and climate change, there will be little support from these morons, so quit trying.  But then there are the Democrats from coal states with the same myopia.  In order to bring them along, the bill got watered down to the point where it is a very timid approach to our problems.  Even with all amendments to make the plan almost ineffective, most pundits were urging passage in the Senate because at least it is a beginning ( See Tom Friedman’s column,  Just Do It).  The fear is that the Senate will water it down even further.  Again what is the point if in order to appease all the little self-serving people in the Congress, we finally pass a bill that is at best neutral?  Are we once again compromising away our future?

I listened to a discussion of the impact of finally seating Al Franken in the Senate, bringing the 60th vote for the Democrats.  Because the Democrats are anything but in lock step like the Republicans have been and are, there is little chance this would guarantee anything.  But what I found most interesting is that they felt there would be a power shift away from the moderate Republicans (Snow and Collins) to “moderate” Democrats like Ben Nelson.  What I found interesting was calling Nelson and his ilk moderate.  The nation has moved center left and Nelson and other conservative Democrats are center right and yet the Press still refers to them as moderate Democrats.  The Republicans have become the far right with no viable solutions for our future, the conservative Democrats have become moderate Republicans, and the mainstream Democrats are the center today and nobody gets it.  Worse we keep watering down our agenda to keep these “moderate” Democrats happy and what we are really doing is legislating a moderate Republican agenda while the nation cries out for a Progressive way forward.

I think it is time to quit compromising or looking for bipartisan support.  All one has to do is read the polls to know the nation is far ahead of our Congress.  That is when we expect our President to lead, and instead what we are getting is compromise to nowhere.  The future is no longer clouded and if President Obama continues to give up the ship in order to get a legislative win, then he will lose both the American public’s support, and he will have lost one of the greatest opportunities given to a President.  If he fails to start challenging the system, then he will be seen as just one more political hack that sounded good and did nothing.  He himself has said that we are at a turning point.  So just when does he rise to the crisis and start leading?

David Brooks, a reasonable conservative, one might even say moderate Republican, gave a five point plan for how the G.O.P. could not only help their country, but begin the resurgence of their party (Taking a Depression Seriously).  So I thought I would look at this plan and ask a few questions/comment on the five points.

1. “First they take the current economic crisis more seriously than the Democrats.” -  What David is arguing here is that the Obama administration has been too rosy in its economic forecasts and therefore all focus should be on the economy.  Okay so far, but then he says that focusing on other priorities such as education, health care, energy is too distracting.  In other words this is not an opportunity to reinvent these failing policies but we should be focusing only on the economy.  Uh, David?  Isn’t health care, energy, and education intrinsically linked to our economic well being?  For us to have a vibrant economy in the future, we need to be leaders in these fields.  Somehow David is implying that these, although important, are side issues to fixing the economy.  He doesn’t say what investments or strategies he does recommend for “focusing” on the economy so one is left to wonder if this is more tax cutting.  I think David knows government must play a role here, but he is not going out on a limb so say what that role should be while the G.O.P. continues with its tax cuts fix everything chant, and cap all federal spending.
2. “Republicans could admit that they don’t know the future holds, and they’re not going to try to make long range plans based on assumptions that will be obsolete by summer.” – This to me is just another attempt at saying we should not be investing in our future now.  What he is really saying is we need to restore the market to where it was before, then we can consider our way forward.  I also reject this.  First the markets were fundamentally flawed.  Part of restoring the market is to fix it in a way that does restore our future.  Secondly, as noted above, if stimulus is required, and that is what most of us believe, shouldn’t we be spending in things that have long term strategic value instead of whatever gets the market going again, but doesn’t give us any long term assets for our future?
3. “Republicans could offer the public a realistic appraisal of the health of capitalism.” – In other words instead of pushing the market place solves all problems, recognize that it is the best innovative force but has serious problems that have to be addressed.  I couldn’t agree more with him here, although I have a feeling that the Republican’s idea of regulation and the Democrats idea are very different.  Their last go round left holes you could drive Mack trucks through as the Republicans led the charge on deregulation although the Demos went along.
4. “Republicans could get out in front of this crisis for once.  That would mean being out front with ideas to support the wealth-creating parts of the economy rather than merely propping up the fading parts.” – Now here David gets a little more specific to include encouraging the global community not to depend on just the U.S. stimulus, but to put pressure for them to also join in.  He also calls for an end to populist talk about letting Citigroup and others fail as this would be counterproductive.  I would agree with both points here. It would appear that David is supporting the stimulus package, or some sort thereof, since he thinks other countries ought to join in.
5. “Republicans could make it clear that the emergency has to be followed by an era of balance.” – I am not sure what this means, but I think I agree with it.  It says once we get the vehicle back on track we need to start reducing the debt.  I think President Obama has already said this, but the devil is in the details.  If you take this in light of #1 & #2, it means getting the economy running again and then little progress on health care, education, or energy which most of us think are the way forward.

David does not expect Republicans, at least in the near term, to shift to these priorities.  It appears to me that David is showing his moderate Republican stripes because it is clear to me that he does support federal (and international) stimulus support.  The critical question is what kind of stimulus spent on what.  Republicans, both moderate and red state maniacs, don’t want to see investments in health care, education, and energy research because of their belief that government programs are inherently inefficient.  But many of us think these investments are the key to reviving our economy.  This is the real battle ground.  We have followed their lead for the last eight years and we are at least eight years behind in where we could have been reviving our nation.  David will be forever hobbled in his thinking by failing to see that the government has to be an important partner in our economic future.

David Brooks made a valid point the other day when he wrote (Who will he Choose?)  that Barack has a tough choice to make in selecting the secretary of Education:

“On the one hand, there are the reformers like Joel Klein and Michelle Rhee, who support merit pay for good teachers, charter schools and tough accountability standards. On the other hand, there are the teachers’ unions and the members of the Ed School establishment, who emphasize greater funding, smaller class sizes and superficial reforms.”

Reformers, superficial reforms?  I think we know where Mr. Brooks stands.  What I love about these discussions is that it does not come from seasoned teachers who know the real problems, but from intellectualizing administrators and policy people who remember their experiences in school and generalize them to the problem.  My claim to special knowledge?  I am married to a high school English teacher who has worked for over 30 as a teacher and who this year took on the worst of the worst (failed everything in their freshman year) to try to bring them back.  Her stories are heart wrenching and they don’t fit neat little conceptualizations like charter schools and tougher accountability.

Let’s just start with the idea of merit pay that the conservatives are so in love with.  It may work or may become a real counterforce for good education.  Ask your self this:  Who gets the good kids and who gets the bad ones?  How do you level the playing field when your raw material may come from an inferior source?  Will teachers begin to maneuver to get the cream of the crop so to enhance their ability to earn their merit pay at the expense of others?  I hate to break it to some of you arm chair quarterbacks, but many already do that without the merit pay.  So the real question is how do you set up a system that is fair and really does reward merit?  I believe the Denver schools have tried and it would be interesting to see how they have faired.

Then there is the issue of accountability.  It is as if the problem in our schools is poor performing teachers and if we just held them to tough standards, everything would be peachy.  There are a few problems with this assumption.  First and foremost while you can find bad teachers, they are the exception, not the rule.  Most enter the profession because they want to help and teach kids.  What they find is a wasteland of kids who don’t want help.  Once again that is an over generalization, but that is the root problem.  We used to have a society in that getting an education was the key to everything.  But many children come to school with a sense of entitlement and little inclination for the hard work to achieve.  So let’s test more and hold more teachers accountable is an easy fix that does not really address the real problem:  Parents.

Charter schools are another take on the market place (like merit pay) approach to the problem.  It sets up schools that have more flexibility to rid themselves of problem kids.  It is another form of skimming and still doesn’t address the real issue.  It is very similar to the health care plan of conservatives that allows the private insures to skim off the healthy, leaves the poor and sick to be taken care of by the government, and decries new taxes to pay for them.  Charter schools have their place, but we have to decide now whether we really mean no child left behind because that is what they do.

So back to the root problem, truly troubled children.  In my wife’s class she tells me that little teaching goes on because it is a discipline problem every other minute.  So just throw them out you say?  What about no child left behind?  She is trying to reach them and engage them and there is just not enough of her to go around.  These children have been abused, none have a two-parent family, most are living with relatives, a sister, a brother, in a car.  They are angry and they don’t care.  What happened to these kids is that they were born in miserable circumstances and they have never been wanted.  Now they are angry and troubled.  Yes she is having some success, but with more help she could have had more.  These kids require almost one-on-one attention to reach them and we simply don’t allocate these types of resources.

So as we go through all the pontifying about how to fix the schools, maybe we ought to think about what will fix the kids.  I read an interesting story the other day about how Florida has taken an aggressive approach to kids living in bad circumstances by intervening early.  Here in Sacramento there is a recent case where a child was found starving and they took her out of the home but left the other kids.  They are all dead now.  What it is going to take is to hold parents accountable for raising responsible children that are ready to learn, and early intervention where there is neglect and abuse.  Nobody is talking about any of that.  They all think that schools can save what we have neglected.  It doesn’t work that way.  Maybe for a few if there are enough resources….

Once a week or so I like to just gather up little snippets of news that tells us much about ourselves and try to draw a few inferences.  This week’s lineup includes:

• Campbell Brown of CNN was interviewing Peter Schiff, author of “The Little Book of Bull Moves in Bear Markets: How to Keep Your Portfolio Up When the Market is Down”, about the auto industry bailout.  He railed against their “union contracts” and then said, “And what we don’t want is the government determining what type of automobiles GM should be manufacturing, because if we think they’re losing money now, wait until we see how much more money they would lose when the government is running them.”  This is classic conservative thinking.  Anything government does is bad.  I guess that would include setting tough mileage standards that might have made them competitive today.  By the way when you look at their labor contracts, they have already been renegotiated and they are the type of contracts (sans healthcare that our government ought to provide like every other industrialized nation does) that would reinforce and create a strong middle class.
• In the same vein have you noticed that all the economic talking heads that up until the crash, didn’t predict the crash, are all experts on what we should be doing with our money and how we will get out of this mess?  It really is frightening when the spouters of the conventional wisdom that never saw this mess coming are the “experts”.  To get out of this mess we are going to have to spend our way out and recreate a strong and growing middle class.  Conservative economic theory is only about how we facilitate the rich to get richer.
• By the way for you investors out there, I meet a really interesting fellow in New York who was staying at the Mercer.  Actually he was living there so you get the drift on his economic status.  He had an investment firm he sold a few years ago as he said he saw this thing coming and was now producing a documentary film.  He said that the bottom of the market will be 7500 and at the time I took that with a grain of salt.  Well it almost got there Thursday.  He said when it stabilized out at 7500, buy.
• Nebraska finally amends their drop-off law to 30-day-old infants.  When people started dropping off their teenage kids, I remember the response of many about how these parents are scum.  Reality, however, is that many of these parents have children who are truly troubled and they can’t get help.  While legislators blovate about how there are plenty of services available and these parents were just failing to actively pursue these other avenues, several parents like Lavennia Coover, a kindergarten teacher who dropped off her 11-year old son, told a completely different story.  It is never quite as simple as we think, especially if we have never walked in their shoes (New York Times).
• There was a recent story in the New York Times about the waning power of Russia to meddle in South American affairs with the demise of the price of oil.  Isn’t it interesting that Iran, Venezuela, and Russia are all dependent upon the West’s economic well being for their own power?  Gives diplomacy a whole new lease on life.
• As the protests in Iraq continue over the Security Pact (New York Times), did you ever wonder what we are committing ourselves to?  The commonly reported story line is that we will be out by 2011, but I wonder what is in the small print?  Ever wonder why our press has not gone through it and found the little details that we might not like?  I have to wonder because we keep letting contracts to build stuff over there.
• Here is a shot at all those who are complaining that Barack is bringing back in old Clinton hands and those already in the mainstream of Washington.  First, except for Hillary herself, these people backed Obama not Hillary and that was risky in itself.  What does that tell you about these old Clinton people?  Second as David Brooks pointed out in his column on Friday, “The Insiders Crusade”, these people are not ideologues, but pragmatic experienced politicos.  That my friends, has been why the conservatives have failed.  They were ideologues who could not provide a flexible response to changing conditions.  From my first item above, the guy just can’t get off the idea that the government is the problem.  Sometimes it is, and sometimes it is the solution.  Show him the door.  Treasury Secretary Paulson threw money at the banks assuming they would do the right thing and that would fix the economy.  Well they did do the right thing…for themselves.  But self-interest is not necessary the best thing for all of us.  We need people who will try new things, and move on if they don’t work.  We need people who will try bold approaches unhindered by ideology.  Hopefully that is what we are getting.  So those of you who are despondent that he didn’t bring in a whole new set of liberal attack dogs, chill out.
• Gas prices are going down and everyone is rejoicing.  Well think about this:  If you believe the market place works, we need to put (not my idea, but Tom Friedman’s) a $1 surcharge on gas so that the price never again dips below $4/gallon.  We use the income for alternate energy research and infrastructure improvements that move us away from oil.  Keep reminding your self that Europe pays almost twice what we do and is why they have such a wonderful mass transit system.  If we don’t, we will fall back into old habits.  Already the use of mass transit has started to fall here at home.
• One last thought:  This week the pundits have been ringing their hands over Obama’s pick of Hillary as the Secretary of State and who will be in charge, will their be a clash of approaches, what will Bill be doing.  Forget it.  Just trust in his judgment.  That is why we elected him.  This is cocktail fodder, not news.

The end of another week and I am in sunny San Diego enjoying the weather, the sun, and the ocean.  Could life be any better?  You have to take one day at a time.

This Sunday there were a couple of themes that came out in the Sunday News shows and the editorials that I think are worth reiterating here.  The first has to do with how the Republicans have campaigned, who they are campaigning to, and the second has to do with our economy, its fix, and its future.  Let’s start with the Republicans.

David Brooks, the conservative, opined in “Ceding the Middle”, that modernizing the Republican party was critical to a win and that John McCain “…never escaped the straightjacket of a party that is ailing and a conservatism that is behind the times. And that’s what makes the final weeks of this campaign so unspeakably sad.”  David is arguing that there is still great value in conservative values, but that by not modifying their approach to the challenges of today, the party missed a major opportunity to revamp and revitalize the Republican Party.  He still thinks John McCain would be a great president, but I would argue that if he couldn’t lead his own party out of yesteryear, how would he lead the nation out yesteryear.  But the real question here is that if you are appealing to old tired out ideas, just exactly who is your base who thinks these ideas work?

Without the blinders of conservative philosophy, Timothy Egan opined in “The Party of Yesterday”  that the Republicans have focused their whole approach on the less intelligent and ignorant of our population. A recent study identified the most educated cities in our nation based upon percentage of college graduates:

“Among the top 10, only two of those metro areas — Raleigh, N.C., and Lexington, Ky. — voted Republican in the 2004 presidential election.  This year, all 10 are likely to go Democratic. What’s more, with Colorado, New Hampshire and Virginia now trending blue, Republicans stand to lose the nation’s 10 best-educated states as well.”

Is this the less American parts of the country that Sarah Palin refers to?  The point here is very simple.  The Republicans have a campaign focused on anti-intellectualism, jingoism, and a fear based appeal by claiming we are moving to socialism, elitism, and consorting with terrorists.  They have not argued effectively on the issues and have focused on character instead to appeal to our less educated citizens.  I think the conclusion is obvious.  When your conservative philosophy for our future doesn’t really address the challenges we face, all you have left is to try appeal to those who don’t think deeply about the issues and react to fear.  Hopefully this election will be  a referendum on that kind of thinking.

The other theme was about what kind of an economy will we have for the future.  With the nationalization of the banking industry are we moving toward a much more nationalized capitalism?  Although conservatives see the need for strong intervention now, they would prefer far less government control and say in how banks operate.  But after the bank failures in 1929 and the reforms that were instituted to prevent such a catastrophe again, we forgot those lessons in conservative pushes to get government out of the markets.  The real issue here is when does government intervention limit the necessary risk taking that is the hallmark of a vibrant and innovative economy.  Thomas Friedman opined in “If Larry and Sergey Asked for a Loan”  that we need to regulate but in a careful and thoughtful way:

“Bottom line: We must not overshoot in regulating the markets just because they overshot in their risk-taking. That’s what markets do. We need to fix capitalism, not install socialism. Because, ultimately, we can’t bail our way out of this crisis. We can only grow our way out — with more innovation and entrepreneurship, which create new businesses and better jobs.”

The point here is that the world has changed and even progressives see how the market place is critical to our recovery and we must strike a balance.  But note a balance is a far cry from the conservative dogma of laisse-faire capitalism.  But I think the most important comment about where our economy is going was made by Paul Krugman in his editoral, “Desperately Seeking Seriousness”.  In this piece, Mr. Krugman opined that the Republicans were running a frivolous campaign and it was working until the economy focused the voters on serious issues.  He closed his editorial with this:

“Will the nation’s new demand for seriousness last? Maybe not — remember how 9/11 was supposed to end the focus on trivialities? For now, however, voters seem to be focused on real issues. And that’s bad for Mr. McCain and conservatives in general: right now, to paraphrase Rob Corddry, reality has a clear liberal bias.”

The point here is that we can always go on doing stupid things if they don’t have consequences that are immediately felt.  But reality has focused us on our economy and the market system as it has been working in this country.  The market place of the future will not be the market place of the past if we are to regain our leadership in the world.  It will be a market place that does have a liberal bias, but also as Mr. Friedman points out, a market place with “smart regulation”.  This is not a world for slogans and conventional wisdom, but for well thought out policies for our future.  These are not the voters that the Republican’s have targeted and is why they will lose because they are not thinking deeply about where we are going or presenting policies that can address our challenges.

There are two classes in America (who vote) and they are the rich and the middle class, with some poor thrown in (many don’t vote).  There is a war for our future going on between them.  What this war is about is free enterprise in its present form, which has allowed for large profits and gains for the wealthy, but also has resulted in a shrinking middle class, job insecurity, and a growing split between the haves and the have-nots.  Because of the laissez-faire approach to our economy, the economy ran wild with greed and group-think which allowed for very risky investments to seem the norm and the resulting crash.  Clearly the old concept of markets that are rational; that markets will determine where value lies and make the appropriate choices with the invisible hand; and that these allocations are neutral and fair and to be preferred to any government solution needs to be rethought.

Now for conservatives like David Brooks, this will bring on socialism (‘Big Government Ahead‘).  Note that in conservative speak “Big Government” is code for socialism and in their dogma this idea of big government is anathema to their idea of freedom.  The question in this discussion is freedom for whom?  Yet in the last eight years the conservatives have grown government larger than any other administration.  It is not that they are hypocrites (although they are), it is that their competing dogmas don’t quite mesh.  Incorporating the religious conservatives into the party means injecting government into your life on your personal choices.  Being xenophobic means an ever-increasing military and border police, not to mention incursions into what we though was private.

But back to the topic at hand:  Conservatives see the Democrats as the party that will bring us government intervention into everything and destroy the economic engine that has made them fat cats.  Well that belief is partly true.  What was freedom for them was enslavement for the rest of us. While the current policies of the Republican administration gave them tax breaks and a free reign to ignore regulations, it increased the wealth at the top and the poor at the bottom, and made most of us fearful for our jobs.  What most of us would like to see is a more controlled economy that works for all of us.  But ideology of the conservatives will get in the way.

That is because they don’t see a middle way.  In their world things are black and white.  It is either good or bad.  If they had their way the bailout would be minimal, and like Herbert Hoover, would have fiddled, while Rome burned.  It is interesting that the real direction of the bailout is being driven by better ideas from “liberal” Europe and specifically the English.  They are not wedded to conservative ideology and are unafraid of a more aggressive government action.  Conservatives cannot accept that Democrats also know the benefits of the market place and their fear knows no bounds.  Just pick up the paper and read the letters to the editor who are terrified of a Democratic approach to problems.

But there are some realities that have to drive the train and upset the apple cart of ideology.  Here is a sampling of what I think are the realties that conflict with that conservative economic ideology:

• The profit motive does not serve many basic needs and the most salient example is health care.  Making profits by skimming the healthy or denying coverage is expensive and is counter productive to a healthy population.  What is it about the success of Medicare and health care in other countries that we cannot learn from.  The objections are usually based upon anecdotal stories and fear of anything government.  There are two medical systems in the United States, the one that works really well for the wealthy, and the one that fails miserably for the rest of us.
• The market has not been a good decision maker for public policy.  We have let the market place determine our energy policy for the last 30 years since the first oil crisis and it has served us poorly.  Had we put a dollar tax on gas, set tough mileage standards on new cars, and focused on getting off oil back then, we would not be in the fix we are in today.  Now the choices are more dire.
• Public spending has been equated with big government and we have to get over it.  In order to replace and replenish our infrastructure, only government with a grand plan for our future is going to be able to manage such a program.  We need to set priorities and this is not going to get done without federal government planning.  Did it ever occur to conservatives that this is one of the best ways to put money into the economy because it provides jobs, spending money for those employed, and increases equity for the country?
• In this time of large deficits, conservatives (who created these deficits) are going to try to leverage the bad times to reinstitute some austere spending plans and cuts in government.  It is exactly the wrong thing to do.  Even though it seems counter-intuitive, we are going to have to spend our way out of this problem we are in.  We have gone so long ignoring our problems that they only way to start turning around our country is to invest in our future. This investment will pay great dividends in the future in a robust economy and tax revenues, but in the short term will worsen our deficit.   This also has large implications for cutting military spending and our adventures in Iraq and Afghanistan.
• Being secure may have little to do with our military and everything to do with our ability to project our economic strength.  This will have to be addressed in what are the real limits of military power, and what are these implications on moving budgets from the pentagon to our infrastructure education, health care, and other investments in our human capital.

All of this is best summed up by Bob Herbert on Tuesday in his column, “Amusing, but not Funny”.  While John McCain and Sarah Palin appeal to the anti-intellectual Joe Sixpacks, with small town simplicity, racism, fear, and appeals to character and conservative ideology, Barack appeals to looking at new ways of doing business and thinking about our challenges.  What we need is a leader who is not tied to ideology and will do what works and be flexible to change.  If you listen closely to John and Sarah, they are creatures of the true faith of Republican cronyism and the interests of the old guard.  It is time for a new direction that will terrify the old guard, but will be the only path to our salvation.  Hopefully Barack will be elected and have the courage to take us down this road.

I have been reading some of the columns written about the Vice-Presidential debate and I am wondering if they saw the same debate the rest of us saw.  That would include columns by David Brooks (Palin Rebounds), Kathleen Parker (Sarah Palin’s Bridge to Somewhere), and even David Broder (Finally and Fine on Her Own). Comments like she held her own, she was cool as a cucumber, or showed she could handle and respond coherently to questions were, to be kind, wishful thinking.  Maybe you guys need to watch the video a couple of times.  She responded to each question with talking points memorized before the debate that were mere sloganeering and catch phrases without any underlying analysis or nuiance.  There was no spontaneous moment that demonstrated she had any command of the issues or could think on her feet.  In many cases she didn’t even answer the question she was asked as she blurted out a scripted line that was non sequitur to the content of the question.  Watch her closely as she searches for the script before she answers each question (or doesn’t answer it).  Had there been follow-up questions to force her to answer the question that was asked or to question many of her falsehoods, we would have seen a repeat of the Couric interview.  It is amazing to see some conservatives totally gloss over this and see possible redemption.  I wonder what part of their brain is not functioning.  Maybe they are so desperately clinging to the remnants of their conservative philosophy, they can’t see the rats deserting their ship and believe it is clear sailing ahead.  I will leave you with this wonderful video that is on YouTube called “Hey Sarah Palin“.  It says it all.

I am working on Vine/Wine Friday for the three people who read it.  Be Patient.