On the Contrary

For those of you who are repeat readers you know that I like to sum up the Sunday talk show chatter and see if anything besides the usual Washington echo chamber is on anybody’s agenda.  So I started with Meet the Press who had White House Chief Economist Christina Romer and House demagogue Eric Cantor (R-VA).  It was two interviews you could fast forward through.  Dr. Romer pitched the administrations way forward and Representative Cantor told us they had it all wrong.  Yawn.  Once again we had politicos pitching their politics instead of a reasoned discussion about the way forward.  Let’s face it, if Christina thought we ought to be more aggressive she would never say it since she must push the administration plan, and Cantor, while full of criticism, had no plan of his own.  This interview is a reflection of the chattering classes on cable.  No new ground or any rational look at the policies and the way forward, just the same old dueling political ideologies.  No wonder we never make any progress.

I then ran through (DVR) Reliable Sources (no transcript available) because I knew they were going to talk about John Stewart’s roasting of CNBC and Jim Cramer in particular.  The reason the Daily Show and John Stewart are so important to this country is that he takes the obvious, points it out, and makes fun of it.  Mainstream media is locked in their echo chamber and they are missing the real stories that are staring us in the face.  Enter John Stewart.

Well the panel discussion was interesting with most of panelists recognizing that Stewart was calling out mainstream media for not paying attention to the real story, how did all the experts miss the coming downturn.  Of course, there was Tucker Carlson claiming that this was just a liberal hack job on Cramer.  My how the Right continues to be blinded by their politics.  Sooner or later one would have to ask how this coming major catastrophe in our economic lives was so ignored by the financial community.  But Tucker can’t go there since all he sees is liberals ruining his perfect country.  Why do they have this guy on anything?

To me this story was the epitome of all that is wrong with our media.  The conventional wisdom is that nobody saw the economic disaster coming, but this is belied by a little research on the actual reporting which shows that there were financial journalists (and economists) who were warning of this coming meltdown.  But what became painfully obvious in the Camer interview is that most of the mainstream financial journalists were tools of the financial community.  Their reporting depended on access to the movers and shakers in the financial community and their access was dependent on their echoing what their masters were telling them.

Sadly this same dynamic is at work in the mainstream media as well and is why reporting is so much an echo chamber.  What we get are media talking heads who are tools of the political parties.  Their talking points, questions, and criticisms are part of the carefully crafted political dialogue that they just parrot.  So what we get for news is that same old arguments with no real factual or rational basis to judge them.  I guess the best way to say it is that our news has degenerated into a game of spin with the media nothing more that echo chambers for that spin.  Puppets driven by their puppet masters.  At least it is cheaper than doing real research and background.

Then there was Dick Cheney on CNN telling us that we are less safe today because of the Obama administration following the rule of law and even more important, that the administration is using this economic crisis as an opportunity to expand government.  I have a feeling that you need to watch John Stewart tonight, because the irony here is unbelievable and John King (CNN correspondent) just went along for the ride instead of questioning any of these highly dubious claims from a man who has almost destroyed law and order.  Is it just me or did waiving habeas corpus, rendition, torture, warrantless wire tapping, enemy combatants, and military tribunals not expand the power of government beyond anything we have ever seen?  Did attacking Iraq and now seven years of unending war while al Qaeda rebuilt in Pakistan make us more or less safe?  It is incomprehensible that we still give this man deference instead of challenging his “facts” every step of the way.

There was as usual a bright side and it was once again from Fareed Zacharia on GPS.  I cannot say enough about his approach to discussing important issues.  He rarely ever has on political flacks pitching their spin, but international subject matter experts to give their perspective on various issues.   I won’t bore you with the details, but this is one show where you can really learn something and question some of your own preconceptions.

Alas, this morning the news was all about public anger over AIG and the bank bail out.  Anger, anger, anger.  Although it is a real emotion that many of us are feeling, emotion is not what is going to solve this crisis and I have yet to hear (except on blogs such as the Baseline Scenario) what our real options are.  Do we have an option to public spending for stimulus and is what we have done enough?  What does history from the Great Depression or the Japanese lost decade tell us?  What are possible scenarios to bailing out the banks and what are the pros and cons?  What happens if we do nothing?

Oh, I agree we have heard these arguments, but only as political talking points.  Where are the economists (mainstream) and what can they teach us?  We are not being educated by our press.  They are failing as journalists.  How many of you know the real crisis in Europe that could make our problems infinitely worse?  The press once again are simply acting as an echo chamber of the political spin.  Oh by the way did I mention that the financial analysis and advice for our way forward is being giving by the same talking heads that missed the whole economic crisis?  When will it ever end? When will we ever learn?  Where have all the flowers gone?

This Sunday morning talk shows brought us some interesting interviews and once again an insight into our political choices and our press and their failings.  Here are some of the more poignant moments as I interpreted them:

• In Tom Brokaw’s interview with Colin Powell on Meet the Press, Powell indicated basically everything that is wrong with the Republican Party: that he is concerned about more conservative judge picks; That the Republican party had moved too far to the right; the poor judgment shown in the Sarah Palin pick;  the corrosive and divisive campaign that John McCain is running; and the need for real change as his reason for endorsing Barack Obama.  Most importantly he identified what most of us consider the root problem, that John McCain will continue the failed policies of the Republicans without any real change.  Did Brokaw follow up on any of this?  No he asked about William Ayers again, which Powell dismissed and wondered when the press is going to focus on the real issues and not the head fake called William Ayers.  By the way for another well thought out endorsement of Obama, read Fareed Zakaria’s endorsement in the Newsweek or read the transcript of his endorsement on GPS.
• In the same Meet the Press program when we had a forum of pundits, they all pined for the old John McCain and wondered which would show up for the last two weeks.  Instead of focusing on the real problems that Colin Powell had identified in the Republican Party, they longed for the good old guy they think they use to know.  What I can’t ever figure out is why pundits cannot distinguish between charm and substance.  John McCain is not what he says, but what he does.  And what he is doing tells you all you need to know about his character and who he is.  At least Collin Powell could see this reality.
• David Brooks has written an editorial recently that opined that John McCain just needs to establish a vision for the country and a plan to get there, that his policies were scatter shot and did not represent a cohesive whole in support of this vision.  It is the failure of pundits and intellectuals like David Brooks to understand that there is not a Republican vision other than low taxes, cuts in spending, and let the market place make us great.  Any other vision would mean that government “that is the problem” must be the solution.  This is not Republican ideology.  To do this would bring the whole Reagan legacy into question.
• On CNN’s Reliable Sources Lara Logan was interviewed about her trip to Afghanistan and her reporting on the war there that will be featured on 60 Minutes Sunday evening.  The discussion focused around how these stories of the war have lost airtime even though the war there is intensifying.  It occurred to me that there is a symbiosis between those reporting on the war and the war itself.  If you are reporting stories about how brave our forces are and the tough fight they are fighting there, do you buy into the story line that this makes a difference and your reporting is also critical?  Maybe the way forward in Afghanistan is not an escalating and continued military campaign.  In other words do reporters who are reporting on these wars have too much invested in them and thus we don’t get a realistic picture of a way forward?
• Also on Reliable Sources was an interview with fired National Review editorial writer and son of William Buckley, Christopher Buckley, after he endorsed Barack Obama.  What Mr. Buckley raised in this interview and that has been quite obvious to those of us on the outside, is that conservatives do not allow dissent.  Instead of a lively debate among conservatives on where the Republican Party has gone wrong, what we get is enforcement of ideology.  It is a glaring example of the “religious” tenor of conservatives today in that they are no longer willing to engage in rational examinations of their philosophy, only strict enforcement for failure to adhere to the party line.  One of the real complaints about fundamental Islam is that it does not brook any discussion of the “revealed word” and as such is frozen in time.  The same could be said for these conservatives.
• Her Majesty the Queen Rania of Jordan was on Fareed Zakaria’s GPS and she spoke eloquently to promote the voices of moderation in the Muslim world.  She stated that she did not believe that Islam in and of itself subjugates women, but certain people choose to interpret Islam in a way that does hold women back.  Although admirable, the trouble with this line of reasoning is that it doesn’t get to the root problem of the “revealed word”.  If each of us can interpret it as we see fit, who is to say whom is correct?  It is the whole problem of faith versus rationalism.  For my money, religion should be seen as a philosophy of life that is susceptible to rational evaluation and change.  But that is counter to very definition of religious belief.  Good luck Queen Rania.
• Finally there is the claim by John McCain in his campaign speech on Saturday (it is the fear card again) that Barack Obama is a socialist.  It is the old class warfare of the rich versus everyone else.  It was evident in the debate when McCain said, “this is no time to be spreading around the wealth.”  This is part and parcel of Republican mythology that protecting and growing the rich will mean more enterprise and raise up everyone, except it hasn’t worked in this global economy.  What the Republicans can’t seem to incorporate into their ideology is that a vibrant and growing middle class is critical to a vibrant and growing economy. Actually that is not quite true.  They believe that, but they can’t let go of the dogma that making the rich richer benefits everyone.  Numbers don’t lie and under the conservative economic policies, our middle class is shrinking and the poor are growing.  So what John McCain labels socialism is really looking at new ways to grow this middle class again for a vibrant economy.  It’s too bad that the “maverick” can’t see reality because he is blinded by his conservative glasses.

So there is a lot out there to tell you that there is only one real path for change.  It is amazing that with differences so stark, and the history of failure of the Republican policies, this election stays close.  But I heard an interview with an undecided voter that struck terror in my heart.  He basically came away from the debates feeling that he likes John McCain more because he related to him.  It’s a beauty contest and they have thrown rational thinking out the door if they ever had any.  I would say to that voter,” Judge not what he says, judge what he does”, and what he is doing is proposing old solutions to new problems and using the campaign strategy of intolerance and fear to gain their votes.  He is no maverick.  That is just wishful thinking.

This is from an interview with Fareed Zakaria on GPS last Sunday. JEFFREY SACHS, PROFESSOR OF ECONOMICS AND DIRECTOR, COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY’S EARTH INSTITUTE:

“I do think the era of big tax cuts, whether for stimulus or other things, are over. We’re going to have to grow up and understand that we need taxes to pay for basic government services. We’ve been neglecting that for a long time.

We’re going to have to come back to reality. We’ve been in fiscal unreality even before the crisis. Now the crisis is going to make all of this more dramatic. We’ll have large budget deficits, as Fred and Sebastian have said.

The scope for big tax-cutting – the McCain ideas are absolutely surrealistic. They are completely outside of anything sensible.  Rich people are going to have to pay taxes again. That’s just going to be part of America once again.

We’ve been trying to run a government on about 17 percent of national income in taxation ever since the Reagan era came in. It’s been a myth all the way along. We’ve been borrowing heavy amounts all through the period.

You can’t squeeze government when you take into account Social Security and Medicare, Medicaid, military, the interest on the debt – things that have to be done. When you see all the other things that we care about, the quality of our lives, all squeezed into a tiny little amount, which is what’s happened for almost 30 years now, we’ve run out of that game.

So, this is not only a financial crisis, it’s the end of the Reagan era. It’s time to grow up again and understand that we’re going to have to pay taxes – rich people first – and that from there, we’re going to have to use those revenues for the things that count: health, education, infrastructure, energy.

This is not an invitation to ignore our future. It’s an invitation to start thinking seriously about it again.”

Well there it is.  The party is over and we have to pay for what we want in the future, not to mention pay for what we have already consumed when we embarked on the great Ronald Reagan free ride.  Dr. Sachs went on to say that in reality, there should be no tax cuts for anyone.  We have to embark on a whole new direction and we need to start responsibly paying for it.  I totally agree.  Tax cuts usually just fund additional purchases (and not effectively) of foreign produced goods and like the last tax rebate, many people just saved it.  It’s time to start spending on things that build our future.

I can hear it now from my conservative friends who have bought the low tax mantra that all we need to do is to reduce waste and abuse, and cut wasteful programs, and my taxes are already too high.  But when you touch one of the programs that they benefit from they squeal like pigs.  Every study ever done says that at best you could cut maybe 3%-5% out of the budget in real waste.  Like earmarks, it makes a good story but the reality is we want more than we are willing to pay for.

The bottom line here is that conservatives are just very, very selfish.  The present system has work well for them and has made many of them rich and they fail to feel any responsibility for the majority of our citizens who have suffered under their economic policies.  They will hang on to their beliefs to the very end because it has served them so very well.  Here is a real email conversation I had with one of them I had on Wednesday that emphatically illustrates my point:

HE: Double standard is applied to us.  I am voting “white and my wallet”.

ME:  And making the same mistake you made voting for George Bush.

HE:  Wrong!  I made a fortune and kept it.

Me:  While the rest of the country atrophied

The rest of the rant was about how we established two democracies in the Middle East, won the war against Al Qaeda, and that water boarding works.  Do we live in two different worlds?  You bet, but in mine reality has finally hit home with the market crashing to demonstrate the bankruptcy of Republican economic promise of low taxes, no regulation, and making the wealthy wealthier will make us all wealthy.  There is a level of selfishness here that is the hallmark of conservative thinking.  I am glad their time is almost over. They have almost destroyed our dear country. Or as Dr. Sachs put it:

“This is not an invitation to ignore our future. It’s an invitation to start thinking seriously about it again.”

What to do about Pakistan?  Everyone will tell you that we have to solve the Pakistan problem before we can solve the Afghanistan problem.  Here, I think, is the challenge:  Pakistan is a nuclear-armed country in a continuous conflict with India, based upon primarily religious and border disagreements.  Add to that it has a large portion of its population that basically lives as tribes, are fundamentalist Muslims, and are closely allied with the Taliban.  In other words Pakistan stands astride two different worlds, tribal 7th century, and a nuclear power in the 21st century.  And then pile on that we know very little as a society about their society.  In the past we have paid them exorbitant amounts of money to pacify their tribal areas, much of which may have been diverted to buy weapon systems to deal with India.  None of this has been effective as the problem in the tribal areas worsens and the stability of the country degrades.

We have to care because they have nukes, a rising internal  instability due to radical Muslim terrorism, and the safe haven provided for the Taliban in the tribal areas of Afghanistan.  So what should our Presidential candidates be telling us?  Our history there has not been sterling with us perceived as keeping Pervez Musharraf in power as our best bet, but an unpopular ruler who ran rough shod over their democracy.  Our incursions into Pakistan from Afghanistan have been deeply resented throughout the country.  In other words, anyone tied to us may have problems forming a government or ruling.  On the other hand the Pakistanis have taken a hands off approach to the tribal areas to calm down the situation, and this just allows the radicals more room to maneuver in.  In order to calm the country, they may be sowing the seeds of their own destruction.  The border between Afghanistan and Pakistan was an artificial line drawn by the British so that the Taliban are closely related to the Pakistanis along the border.  So what to do or said another way, what can we do?

There is no easy answer and even if you want Osama Bin Laden dead or alive, barging in there to get him could cause more trouble than we bargained for.  We could ask India who are their neighbors and have some insight into the problem.  You, know, consult the international community.  Rory Stewart, an ex-British diplomat who has walked across this country offered the following in an interview with Fareed Zakaria on CNN’s GPS:

STEWART: I think we need to contain and manage the situation. I don’t think there’s a solution. There’s no silver bullet out there.

What you can’t do is try to remodel a whole society and imagine those people don’t exist.

If a Presidential candidate said that, they would be perceived as weak.  But I have the feeling that Mr. Stewart has described the situation and our approach to it in the best possible terms.  It is a very complicated situation with no 30-second sound-bite answer and being more aggressive could considerably worsen the situation.  It will be interesting to hear what the candidates have to say about this in the debate.  I wonder which one will pander to the “bring’em on crowd” and which one will paint a more complex and difficult road.   Said another way, I wonder which one has the courage to explain the limits of our power and what we can really control in the world?  Who ever that is, that would be my candidate for President.

I don’t think the American people have any idea how much trouble we are in yet.  Right now the high priests of “let the market place decide” and keeping government’s hands off the tiller are jumping in to control the market place and have government take over the market with assets and regulations.  This ought to give you pause, not in their perceived hypocrisy, but on how bad and how dangerous things are.  I personally think Secretary Henry Paulson and Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke are working as hard as they can to try and keep the system in operation.  They are doing what really good mangers do in a crisis;  they throw out the conventional wisdom and do whatever it takes to keep the ship afloat.  There will be a lot of Monday morning quarterbacking and falling back on old dogma, but right now you have to make decisions on the fly, right or wrong.

Okay, we know we have a problem, but what is the cause of the problem?  The problem itself and the cause are two different things and until we fully understand the cause, solutions are hit and miss.  Right now Paulson and Bernanke are focusing and treating the problems to keep the system afloat, but the solutions will come later if they can plug the leaks for now.   Is capitalism basically flawed?  Is absolute faith in the market place misplaced? What should really give you pause is that the people who are answering these questions are the ones who got us into this problem, didn’t see it coming, and marginalized those who warned of the coming debacle. But now they are all talking heads telling us what our next move should be.

I will now use my PhD in Economics (I don’t have one) and my many contacts in the incestuous pool of economic/market talking heads (I don’t have any) to tell you what I think has happened.  The housing bubble is not the cause of this problem, just the vehicle that manifested the underlying problems.  Note problems, plural here.

First lets start with basic conservative economic belief, that has to some extent been co-opted by the Democrats.  The first element of this is that the market place is the engine that drives our well-being.  Yes it is and that hasn’t changed for us or the world.  The next element of this is that government interference just hinders the natural working and balance of the market place.  This one, which should now be obvious, is flawed.  Good capitalist are always gaming the system to gain an advantage.  It is government’s role to keep the marketplace a level playing field for all, including investors and workers.  The key is smart regulation, not necessary burdensome regulation, but you have to keep your eye on those who came to the party saying all regulation is bad. They will promise rules, but then will fall back into old habits.

Now the third element is the one that has gotten us in real trouble:  Greed is good and your goodness and success are measured by your accumulation of wealth, and the more wealth you accumulate the better it is for the entire economy.  These are perversions of the maxim in capitalist thinking that if everyone seeks their own your self-interest, the market will balance these for the benefit of all.  Self-interest implies that you look at the long-term effects of your actions and their results.  Greed and wealth accumulation as a measure of good and success means a short-term evaluation.  Once the focus is on short-term gains, long-term consequences are ignored.  We as a society have come to this short-term thinking if you look at the debt we are incurring as individuals.  The increase of wealth by the wealthy benefits all has been a failure that is obvious in the increasing reduction in the middle class.

So in an ideological atmosphere of low regulation, the market is always right, and greed is good, wealth for the wealthy makes us all gain, what happened?  The first hint was an interview on the Bill Moyer’s Journal last year with John Bogle, when he maintained that the financial sector of the market had become way out of balance, where wealth was being created through obscure financial instruments and not in the investing in goods and services that give people jobs.  In other words the investment in real industry was being robbed by the profit being taken out of the system in creating financial instruments that were highly profitable, but created no jobs, no products.  The system always needs capital, but when the creation of capital becomes the dominate factor, the system becomes self destructive.

You have this system that is looking to primarily create wealth through financial instruments, you have financial instruments created to be outside regulation of banks, you have a greed is good philosophy, managers and CEO’s compensated based on high rate of returns in the short term, no transparency of their financial institutions or their instruments,  low interest capital, no requirement for minimum capitalization, and what you get is massive leveraging to place bets on the latest income producer, and that was the instruments to finance mortgages.  If it hadn’t been mortgages it would have been something else.  Although the current feeling is that we need to go punish all those evildoers that participated in this system, the real culprit is the system itself.  It reminds me of steroids in baseball.  We want to go out and punish all those cheating baseball players but we don’t take a hard look at a system that looked the other way and athletes were left to compete with other athletes who were cheating.  Soon they are all cheating if they wanted to stay in the big leagues.  It is no different in the financial markets.

So not only do we need structural changes in the market to address all those problems identified above, we need a whole change in mindset.  The world is no longer the place we knew.  America has lost its place not only in world affairs, moral leadership, but now in financial leadership.  The challenges that we are going to face are nothing like what we think they are going to be. There going to massively larger.   Thomas Friedman, in his book “Hot, Flat, and Crowded”, describes our economy and our level of consumption of resources and energy in the United States as a unit he named an Americums.   He points out that there have been two Americums in the world, one in Europe and one, of course, in America.  But now China has created one, with another about to develop, with the same in India.  These levels of growing consumption of energy and resources simply cannot be maintained without disastrous consequences to our climate, our ecosphere, and our economies.  The approach to all these problems is not more regulation, lower taxes, or some other dogma driven approach that the marketplace will solve all these problems.  It is a comprehensive approach to our future that was best represented by Mayor Michael Bloomberg on Meet the Press on Sunday:

“There are two crises.  One is the crisis in the financial market, a lack of confidence that almost closed down the financial system this past week and that Hank has to address.  And it’s up to the Treasury with the acquiescence of Congress, but to do something quickly.  And nobody knows exactly what they should do, but anything is better than nothing.  You’ve got to restore the public’s belief and the market’s belief that we will go on.  And this is not just an American problem, it’s financial markets around the world that are all interlinked and they’re all collapsing.

The second problem, which is up to Congress, it’s a much longer-term problem and may be the genesis of the problem that we have today in the financial markets, and that is that people are losing their homes, deserted homes are destroying neighborhoods, people are losing their jobs.  We have some industries that Congress tried to protect, and instead of protecting them they’ve caused them to not keep up in a competitive world with new products.  We have an education system that isn’t preparing us for the future, and we have a retirement system that’s just not going to be there when we need it.  So there’s two things here:  One you got to do quickly; one you really need a lot more thought about and that Congress should spend that time debating.”

It is not pointing the finger at evil funds manager, send them to prison,  and create some rules for the future.  It is a comprehensive approach to our economy that includes, infrastructure improvements, innovation, acknowledging the limits of our power, and real energy solutions.  I strongly recommend that you click on that link and read his idea and vision of what we need to do.

Finally I will leave you with the words of Fareed Zakaria of CNN’s GPS last Sunday after a most enlightening interview with international economic experts and an interview with Singapore’s former Prime Minister,  Lee Kuan Yew:

ZAKARIA: “Thirty-three years ago this week, a young woman with a thin resume was elected leader of Britain’s Conservative Party. Thus began the remarkable career of Margaret Thatcher, who both spurred and symbolized one of the most dramatic eras of change in modern history — the rise of free markets, free trade, privatization and deregulation.

Addressing herself to the core problems of the 1970s — inflation, stagnation, over-regulation, slow growth — Thatcher, and with her, Ronald Reagan, enacted their economic agenda. Initially highly controversial, as Britain and America prospered and the Soviet Union collapsed, Thatcherite ideas became mainstream, accepted by the likes of Bill Clinton and Tony Blair.

But the problems of today do not seem as easily solved by Thatcherism — tax cuts, deregulation, privatization. People are worried about widening inequalities of wealth, soaring health care costs, the competition from emerging market countries.

The next governing ideology is likely to be something that, while still friendly to markets and trade, finds a way to address itself to these problems and anxieties. Whoever captures this new ground will dominate the next era, as Thatcher did hers.”

I don’t think this person is  reactive John McCain who lives in the 80’s or the Republicans who are less likely to embrace real change than the Democrats, but if you select him and them, enjoy your poverty as they have no plan to deal the massive problems that face us.

In the last few blogs on the economy I have pointed out how conservative thinking on the economy is outmoded and as a result is the cause of many of the problems we are now facing.  The same is true for our approach to foreign affairs and that was on display during the Russian incursion into Georgia.   John McCain came out with a bellicose, “We are all Georgians” and Sarah Palin with her statement that we might have to confront them militarily.  It is vintage 1980’s stuff that is totally removed from where the world is today.

I have maintained in earlier blogs (”John McCain Experience?” and “Ticking Time Bombs”) that the reaction exhibited by John McCain and the conservatives is cold war thinking that has not evolved as the world has changed.  My contention is that Russia may find, as we did in Iraq, that these kinds of expeditionary adventures are extremely expensive and counter productive.  While the Neocons are seeing Russia as this big monolithic threat that must be met at the door, many others are understanding this will only exacerbate things when a more cool and calculated response will be much more effective.

First and foremost this was an exercise of Russian power near their borders on what they see as an ever-increasing United States threat.  How would you feel if Russia put missiles on our borders as we are doing in Turkey?  Oh, I forgot, they did and it was the Cuban missile crisis.  Secondly have you ever asked yourself what NATO does anymore and wouldn’t you be threatened by the expansion around your borders.  Of course Russia’s move was thuggish although goaded on by Georgia’s imprudent acts in that volatile region.  It is also funded by their oil wealth which we are contributing to.  But the reality is that it was counter productive.  Consider what Fareed Zakaria said on his show GPS:

“From Caucasian countries like Azerbaijan, to Poland and Ukraine, to the Baltic republics, everyone has been rattled by Russia’s behavior, and now seek stronger ties with the West.  Europe and the United States are more united than at any point in two decades. And outside the West, no country in the world has followed Russia and recognized South Ossetia and Abkhazia.

Moscow must be looking at all this and realizing that it has racked up huge costs for little benefit.

If there were to be another cold war, the outcome is preordained. The combined GDP of the West is now $30 trillion. Russia, meanwhile, has an economy that is just under $2 trillion, and that, too, artificially inflated by high oil prices.”

Consider what Tom Friedman (“Hot, Flat, and Crowded”) said in an interview on the same show one week later:

“For me, as someone who opposed NATO expansion at the time, because I felt that it was basically saying to the Russians, look, the Cold War is over for you, but not for us. We’re going to keep pushing our alliance in your face.

At the time they were weak. And at the time, you know, the administration told us, oh, don’t worry. The Russians — they’ll accept it. They’ll get used to it.

Well, guess what. They got strong, and they were never used to it. It was a humiliation. And so, it doesn’t surprise me to see what Putin is doing today.

It’s not an excuse. Putin’s got to get out of Georgia. I think the market’s actually going to punish him a lot more than he realizes and a lot of others realize.”

The bottom line here is that John McCain’s “experienced” response, reflective of the conservative’s view of world politics, is the wrong approach that will simply make things worse.  We need to understand that the Russians have real concerns we need to not just flip off.  Second we need to understand that in a world economy, Russia’s thugism will have negative consequences for the Russians.  The last thing we need to do is start another cold war to reinforce their thugism.  Even more important, we need Russia on our side.  As Tom Friedman put it:

“I looked at the world and I said, is there any problem in the world that we can solve without Russia? Any big problem, whether it’s Iran, Iraq — is there any problem we could solve without Russia?”

Our policy in the future is not reliving the past which is what the conservative Republicans will bring us, but looking for new ways to deal with aggression in a world where that aggression is becoming more and more counter productive as our economies and the welfare of our people are more and more entwined.  Or as Fareed said,

“A calm and deliberate policy toward Moscow is what the world needs, not hysterical overreactions.”

We are not all Georgians.

I turned on Meet the Press Sunday Morning to be presented on a silver plate, all of the things that are wrong with the coverage of the election.  The new polls had come out and they were driving the news.  Here is a sample:

Tom Brokow in an interview with Senator Chuck Schumer:

“The NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll, “Who has the strong leadership qualities needed to be president of the United States?” John McCain has jumped up to 48 percent from 42 percent in July.  Barack Obama has slid back, despite having a very impressive convention appearance.  He slid back to 26 percent.  “Who’s knowledgeable and experienced to be able to handle the presidency?” John McCain, again, has jumped up from 53 percent to 54 percent; and Barack Obama in that very critical issue has fallen back from 19 percent to 15 percent.

So many of our viewers and so many people who have been polled just don’t think that he’s ready to lead in a dangerous world even after going through some 20 debates and nine months of primaries.  Isn’t that the single most significant challenge that he has before him?”

Well you say that is true so it is news.  Here is what I would counter:  Nowhere in the whole discussion except when Senator Schumer inserted it was there a discussion of Obama’s positions on issues versus John McCain’s that might change those perceptions.  In other words we are talking about the perceptions of the voters as though we were campaign strategists planning our next move instead of a news network that is suppose to inform us of how the candidates will actually act on each issue.  Once again what we are getting is the politics of the issues, not the issues themselves.  Keep in mind that these people thought George Bush was a good idea so perceptions can be totally wrong and we need facts to evaluate them.  But it gets worse:

MR. BROKAW:  “Here’s some of the internals in the Newsweek poll.  For example, white women.  John McCain has a commanding lead among white women, 53 to 37 percent.

We want to take you now to the AP poll.  This is the latest poll from the Associated Press and GFK.  McCain has a 13 point lead on senior citizens, and he has the same lead among males.  Among rural voters, he’s up by 23 percent. These are middle-class voters in rural areas, and a large part of the Obama strategy is to try to win in areas like North Dakota and Montana and the Rocky Mountain West, including the state of Colorado.  He has significant work to do–to be done there.”

Are you feeling significantly informed now about what John McCain would do for the economy versus Barack Obama or do you know that he has “significant work to do” with rural voters and how does that either inform you about each candidates stand on important issues or help you decide who could really lead us?  It’s a popularity contest.  Of course if you know the issues already you might wonder if rural voters need a brain transplant, but that is a blog for another day.

I would say that in order to lead the country and to change voter’s minds about their perceptions, you need to know where that person will lead us, i.e. where he stands on the issues, and if he has the skills to build a coalition to get us there.  So as voters we don’t need to know how the polls have changed, we need to know the difference in the two candidates on each of the important issues.  It does us no good to elect a President who we think is a better leader if he is leading us in the wrong direction.  And you have to keep this thought in the back of your brain:  These are the same people who re-elected George Bush in 2004 on the same sort of non-issue coverage that let a bumbling fool run the country.  Second if we are not talking about issues how is it possible to build a coalition behind a particular issue to move us forward?  What you get is an election about a guy you think has the right stuff and then when you find out the stuff he really wants to do is not right, you wonder what you were thinking.

But on it went.  Brokow then asked that with the popularity of Sarah Palin, did Barack make a mistake picking Biden over Hillary.  You know this is great stuff at a cocktail party, but we are talking about the future of our country and they can’t even ask one question about energy policy, the economy, the failure of Lehman Brothers, the take-over of Fanny Mae.  Our economy is teetering on the edge of a cliff and we are getting this fodder.  It is mind boggling that they are dumbing us down this way.  Where are these two guys going to take us in the future Tom?  Don’t you think that is more important than kibitzing about who has the best strategy and what the polls tell you? I don’t know Tom, why didn’t you ask Senator Schumer that if Barack had to come back as an animal, what kind of animal would he be?  That would really tell us who is the better candidate.  Then we could kibitz endlessly on the merits of various macho animals.

The only interesting or informative interview was the one he had with Bob Woodward on his book “The War Within”, but Bob was getting a little frustrated because Tom Brokow kept missing the point of Bob’s new book which is that the political leadership  is disconnected from the senior military leadership, and in the case of General Petraeus, they were making decisions directly with him and keeping the Secretary of Defense and senior military leaders out of the loop.  Tom once again pushed the surge has worked to counter Bob’s claims of major dysfunction and Bob gave one of the best answers to that and I am paraphrasing because I don’t have the transcript yet:  “ Tom you need to step back and look at this thing from an altitude of 40,000 feet.  We have the majority of our fighting force tied down in Iraq, we are spending roughly $10 billion a month and the surge has had no impact on that.  Even General Petraeus says that the situation is extremely fragile and could come unraveled.  There is no real progress on withdrawal.  So what have we gained?”  Finally someone beside a political partisan is pointing out the obvious.

There was one bright spot this Sunday and it was once again Fareed Zakaria on CNN’s GPS.   He interviewed Tom Friedman, three very interesting and knowledgeable (albeit divergent points of view) subject matter experts on the possibility of Israel preemptively striking Iran, and a gentleman who has single handedly started schools for girls in Afghanistan and Pakistan (Gregg Mortenson, “Three Cups Tea”) to change their society.  It wasn’t political gamesmanship, it wasn’t who had the best answer, it was about complicated issues of Russia, Energy, Iran, and changing politics in Afghanistan and Pakistan.  It was soul food for the intellectual soul and what news should be.  Maybe the rest of them will get it before it is too late and we elected someone who will take us in entirely the wrong direction because nobody really understood the direction he was heading, but gee, he seemed like a good guy.

During Meet the Press I watched as Tom Brokaw asked questions of Joe Bidden which were basically the talking points of the Republican Party. That’s okay for some if you assume he is going to ask Sarah Palin the talking points from the Democratic Party (assuming she would agree to show up) but it misses the more important issues.   These questions ranged from Joe’s stance on abortion (aren’t you glad this one is back?), his relationship with party switching Joe Lieberman, Hillary questions, and of course my favorite, isn’t the surge working.  Joe handled them all well, but none of the questions were important for our future.  None of them were really relevant to who we ought to be choosing for the next President.  That is why they are talking points for the Republican Party.  Brokaw thinks he is presenting the “issues” and instead he is a tool of partisan politics and it works both ways.  But on one question, the surge, Joe gave an answer that should have pushed Brokaw in the right direction.

Brokaw was trying to make a Republican point that the surge has worked, Joe countered that the violence is down, but there is no political resolution, we are still spending $10 billion a month and we have 140,000 troops tied up there with no end in sight.  Then he made the really insightful observation that we need to quit arguing about the success of the surge, it’s over.  We need to start talking about where we go from here in the whole region.

Bingo!  That is the issue that matters and neither candidate have given an adequate answer.  What we know from John McCain is that we will stay till we win, whatever that means, and Barack would set a time line and get out.  On the other hand both would send more troops to Afghanistan and the argument seems to be whose idea was that first.  Nobody is asking whether that will really help, and more importantly, what is the end game?  Is this going to be another Iraq?  What is the long-term strategy for success in Afghanistan?

Well there was a bright and shinning light in the world of media balanced reporting by partisan mud fights and that was Fareed Zakaria’s (CNN’s GPS) interview with Rory Stewart that shed some light on this question and gave us all some basis for a rational discussion of one of our most important issues facing us in the future, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan.  What made this interview so important and enlightening was first and foremost, Mr. Stewart knows his subject.  Secondly he had no partisan points to score, who was right, who was wrong, only an assessment of the region and a realistic look at what are possible outcomes and what is really achievable there.   This interview is so important for our discussion of policies for this region that I will provide a summary, but I really recommend you read the transcript in its entirety (Stewart Interview).

By way of introduction, Mr. Stewart is a Scotsman and British diplomat, and as Fareed Zakaria described him, part diplomat, part human rights worker, who was appointed a provincial official in Iraq,  has walked across Afghanistan, Pakistan, parts of India, and has set up a charitable foundation to try to save Afghan culture.  Mr. Stewart unlike most of our diplomats is fluent in Farsi.  Here is my summary of his salient points:

• Would not send more troops to Afghanistan because the Afghans are feeling increasingly resentful of foreign troops after little progress in six-and-a-half years and at best would do nothing to change the situation and at worst would make it worse
• The question in his mind is not what we can do, but what we ought to do that will work and putting in 20,000 more troops will probably not help
• Afghanistan is a much more difficult country than Iraq to control from its landscape to its borders with Pakistan
• He simply doesn’t believe we have the will or the resources to occupy Afghanistan for the foreseeable future
• There is no solution in Afghanistan without a solution to Pakistan and the Taliban’s safe haven
• Would like to see a creditable plan about what we would do with Pakistan instead of just putting more troops into Afghanistan
• These people (Iraq and Afghanistan) are highly nationalistic and resent our presence there regardless of the good we have done
• The solution in Afghanistan has to come from the Afghan’s government and the Afghan people, we will just be resented there
• There is no silver bullet out there for a solution; we have to work with the best we can find because they are the people who have the legitimacy.  If we start rampaging around trying to implement our own aggressive military policies, or even very independent political policies, we’ll stir up huge resentment

Here is what I got out of this interview:  If we continue on our present course, we could be tied down there for McCain’s purported 100 years.  The lesson of Viet Nam, and the lesson that is starting emerge from Iraq is that these wars are mostly internal matters that are very complicated and must work themselves out through their own people.  It is going to be messy and it is going to take a long, long time.  Our best approach is to support those in power where we can and provide aid and training, but our focus on large occupying forces is counter-productive.  But working with the locals means we have to work with some fundamentalists.  In the words of Mr. Stewart:

“But essentially you find the people who are powerful, effective, representative, and you try to work with the best of them.  What you can’t do is try to remodel a whole society and imagine those people don’t exist.”

Interestingly he found that our working with the Sunnis and the conventional wisdom that we should have done this much sooner might have been disastrous. Also interestingly al-Qaida never came up.  Maybe they aren’t the focus there, you think?

Probably one of his most insightful comments was to an answer to Fareed’s question, “Do you think Senator Obama is right to want a rather expeditious timetable for withdrawal?”

“Yes I do believe he’s correct.  I think there’s a real limit to how long we can remain.  The problem for Senator Obama is he’s a politician.  He’s not me.  He can’t say, “I don’t really know what’s going to happen when we leave.  Things could get worse.  Things could get better.  Nevertheless we still have to leave.”  He has to claim that he’s confident that things are going to go better.  Nobody can be confident of that.”

So maybe it is time to have an adult debate about what is realistically achievable in that region, what can we afford, and what is a long-term strategy for the whole area.  It is a very complex problem and simple solutions of more troops is just eye wash that may just make things worse.

Note that Roger Cohen in “Real Wars and the U.S. Cultural War” in his op-ed piece on Monday in the New York Times makes a similar argument if my small opinion doesn’t sway you.

I once heard a Republican in the Bush Administration say Republicans will define reality.  They may be right.  I found a web page by a Republican, Dick Bush, who said, “We Republicans need to remember our morals make us right.”   Apparently they really believe it because the Republican Convention was about an America that doesn’t exist and facts that weren’t facts.  It would appear that the truth doesn’t make any difference anymore*.  Just get your story out there, the 24/7 press will repeat it over and over, and by the time the truth is known, nobody cares anymore.  You have convinced whom you need to convince.  That was the Republican approach at their convention with most of speeches full of outright misrepresentations to lies.  They invented the liberal eastern establishment that has caused all of our problems even though they have been ruling the roost for 12 years.  The K Street project, a scheme by Republicans to force all lobbyists to be Republican, wasn’t a Democratic scheme.  Then they brought out Sarah Palin with a whole biography that is not holding up to examination.  But my point is it may not matter.  They made their point, although a fabrication, the mainstream press gave it a full airing without vetting, and now it is going to stick even when reality testing shows it doesn’t pass the test.  This is how they won the last two elections and it just may work again. Why do you think she won’t face the press?  The downside is what they propose for our future has not worked in the past.

I don’t think there is any point in going over Sarah Palin’s resumé, the touted one or the real one.  It will come out in the next several weeks from the librarian she tried to fired for not being compliant enough in banning books, to her lack of credentials as a fiscal conservative and how she has lied about her accomplishments (the plane did not sell on ebay and it was at a loss, etc., but it sounded good).  The corrections will probably not matter with a public that only listens to what they want to hear.  What is really important is the politics she could potentially bring to the White House and how John McCain has compromised all of the beliefs we use to admire him for in standing up to the Republican Party in an attempt to win the White House.  The Republican’s strategy will be that with the pick of Sarah Palin, she is real change.  Well here is what we do know about her and her politics so far and I am not sure it is a change we can survive:

• We know she tried to have a librarian fired and that she had approached the woman about the potential for banning some books in the library.  Are they related?  You be the judge.  I would just tell you that anyone who thinks that they can judge what the rest of us can read is not a democrat (small “d”).  Note she also fired the police chief for purportedly not supporting her re-election.  First thing you have to think about is how many librarians do you ever see fired and second, can she work in a government that doesn’t agree with her on every issue?
• We know that she thinks creationism should be taught in the schools albeit along side evolution.  What this tells me is that she does not understand the appropriate separation of church and state, nor does she understand the difference between science and religion.  This mixing of religion and science simply dumbs us down and brings faith and dissention back into the classroom.  By the way, if we should teach creationism, what other religious beliefs about the origin ought to be given equal time?  From her view there is only one true view and that should worry you shouldn’t it?
• We know that she is being investigated for firing the Alaskan public safety commissioner as an abuse of power.  We don’t know if it is true or not but it does smack of good old boy politics which is what Alaska is all about.  So at the lowest level, this raises the specter of same old politics in Washington.  K Street project come to mind?
• She believes that life should be defined as beginning at conception and as a result of this believes all abortions should be banned period.  Joe Bidden also believes this but he understands that this belief is based upon his faith and he cannot and should not legislate his faith on others.  What does Sarah think?  We won’t know until she finally faces the press, which may never happen if they can’t rehearse her enough.  Does this make you nervous?
• She has said she supports a Constitutional Amendment to ban gay marriage.  The California Supreme court overturned the ban on gay marriage in California as being inherently unequal.  You have to wonder who would modify our Constitution to enforce inequality on some of our citizens because of their religion.  Certainly that wouldn’t be the Party of Lincoln would it?

More will come out about her claimed fiscal conservative approach in Alaska and the reality that Alaska is an oil welfare state that has received more federal aid than their population will justify ($4000/citizen in earmarks in her little town).  But one has to wonder why John McCain, the supposed maverick, would pick such a person who is so opposite to his original views on these issues and would bring the religious right back into government.  There are two highly probable answers here that should give you pause.  The first one is that it was not his choice.  And from that conclusion you should realize that he does not have the free reign to implement change and reach across the aisle as he claims and someone else may be pulling the strings.  The second answer is that it distracts the voters from the real issues and we are going to waste our time on all of the above identified cultural wars we thought we had put behind us.

And where are John McCain and Sarah Palin campaigning?  In the hinterlands in Middle America where people really do cling to their religion and guns.  Yes I know it was Barack’s impolitic remark, but that doesn’t make it not true.  These are the voters responsible for our last eight years of misery with their “small town values.”  It is easy to distract these voters with these cultural wars where the real issues of our economy, the mortgage crisis, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, our energy crisis, the climate crisis, Russia’s new found thugism, are all ignored or addressed with sound bites to dismiss them because all these crises happened under the Republican’s watch as part and parcel of Republican policies.  It’s smart politics, but it may be disastrous for our country.  It may even win an election, but will not move the nation in the direction we need to go.   I think on the issues, the real issues, the Republicans lose, but it remains to be seen if we will ever get to discuss them.

* There may be another reason that facts don’t inform reality for conservatives:  If you followed my blog, How Conservatives Think, then you will understand that they view the nation state and authority through the strict father family model.  Work hard, be obedient to the strict father (Authority), you will develop discipline, be successful, and most importantly moral.  Conservatives cannot believe that their philosophy (the rules) could be a problem which is why they truly believe that there is a liberal eastern establishment the wrecked their time in power and is painting a false picture of them.  If you just have discipline, be obedient to authority, and follow the conservative rules, success and morality are guaranteed.  In conservative’s eyes this is what Sarah Palin represents.  She is a conservative Republican therefore by definition she is moral, she is disciplined, followed the rules (in this case the religious right’s rules), and is proof their morality gets rewarded (her success and meteoric rise in politics), therefore she is the incarnate and embodiment of what they believe about truth and justice in the world.  In other words they are emotionally invested in her story and her success.  Facts that discredit that perception of her must be disregarded as untrue or in their mind are untrue.  Like I said it is very similar to religion where when reality denies their faith, it has no impact on their belief.

One note:  On the issues and one we all care about, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan, Fareed Zakaria had an interview with Rory Stewart, a Farsi-speaking British diplomat on his show Sunday (CNN GPS) who was appointed deputy governor of Amarah and then Nasiriyah, provinces in the remote, impoverished marsh regions of southern Iraq; who spent the next eleven months negotiating hostage releases, holding elections, and splicing together some semblance of an infrastructure for a population of millions teetering on the brink of civil war.  Here is a man who knows the reality of that part of the world and his discussion was about what is possible over there.  Our political discussion has been about whether the surge worked, who said we should put more troops into Afghanistan first, but not about a realistic endgame.  Whether the surge worked or not, and whether things in Afghanistan are deteriorating, the real issue is what is possible and what should we do.  Neither candidate has addressed our end game strategy and what we can afford or realistically accomplish.  This interview sheds a great deal of light on this subject and oh how I wish the candidates were discussing it.