Missile Command

If I had to settle on the one problem I have with the political right in its current form, it would be the knee-jerk propensity to FREAK THE HELL OUT over every little thing without stopping to think the situation through (much less offer, you know, alternatives). This “perpetual campaign” crap was tiresome during the Bush years, and now that Obama’s in office, it’s like all reason has gone out the window. Instead it’s just OPPOSE OPPOSE OPPOSE!

The most frustrating thing of it all is that I am a conservative. Or was. Or something. I’ve articulated as much several times on this blog. Maybe one day I’ll write a post going through my perspectives on a range of issues. We’ll see. But the GOP in its current form, the anger, the fear-mongering, the knee-jerk reactionism, the placement of some fantasy culture war ahead of the good of the country and, in cases, human decency, I just can’t support it. That is why I voted for Obama last November and why these days, I generally land a lot closer to the Democrats.

But today, I wanted to touch on the latest knee-jerk to come down the pipe – the one surrounding Obama’s decision to abandon the Bush administration’s plan to install elements of a long-range missile shield in fixed locations in Poland and the Czech Republic.

The Fire Brigades of Crassus

Marcus Licinius Crassus is a prominent figure in the history of the Roman Republic. Contemporary of Sulla, Cicero, and a little-known character by the name of Julius Caesar, Crassus was the wealthiest man in the Roman world. So wealthy that his vast riches alone earned him a spot on the First Triumvirate alongside Caesar and Pompey, who would later engulf the Republic in civil war over the matter of a salad recipe (I kid…).

Crassus began to amass his fortune in the aftermath of another civil war, when enemies of the state were proscribed, and their property seized and sold at auction. From here he branched out and discovered all sorts of nefarious ways to accumulate wealth.

One such method involved tracking down the owner of a property going up in flames. Arriving on the scene, Crassus would offer said owner a trifling amount for the presumably destroyed property. Once the owner agreed, Crassus would then bring forward his private fire brigade, put out the blaze, and take ownership of the slightly damaged property.

Talk about a dick move.

This predatory practice continued until Augustus rose to power and established a public firefighting force. Fire was a very real threat in the ancient world. It could very easily gut a city. Against that peril, the investment in public firefighting seemed well worthwhile, as it still does to this day.

I bring up Crassus and his fire brigades as a way of maybe shifting the conversation about public versus private enterprises.

Our country is historically suspicious of government-run anything. There is a belief that government programs are inefficient, and that, by virtue of capitalism, matters should be left to the markets and private industry.

In most cases, I agree. When it comes to selling computers and clothing, car insurance and houses, supply, demand and competition tend to make things better for the consumer. If someone gets lazy and starts building crap products, you or I can always go elsewhere. Likewise if someone starts charging too much for too little. This is because the profit a company takes is directly tied to the quality and/or price of their product or service.

But there are sectors where providing a service can have a negative impact on profit, or where profits can be enhanced by unscrupulous means. Crassus’ fire brigades are a prime example, and one reason why private firefighting companies are a very bad idea. I would say the same for law enforcement, the military, and search and rescue operations.

If you thought this would eventually come around to health care, congratulations, have a cookie.

Profit-driven healthcare is, in my opinion, a dangerous thing. It can work to a point, and with proper regulation. For example, the employer mandate stipulates that health care insurers must cover an employees receiving benefits through their employers regardless of pre-existing conditions. They can’t drop them the moment things get hairy.

If you happen to work for a small company, or strike out on your own, that protection is gone. An insurer can refuse to cover a pre-existing condition, or charge a premium so high you can’t afford it, or employ rescission to drop you when you need care the most.

As someone who knows several people who have struck out on their own, and who may do so one day himself, this terrifies me. It is an anchor around the neck of every entrepreneur in this country, an anchor that keeps people working for “the man” and that stifles innovation.

Furthermore, given the perilous state of the economy, this is an issue that concerns each and every one of us. You may get pretty decent benefits through your job today, but what if your employer decides they are no longer worth the expense? Or what if you get laid off, and haven’t found another job by the time your COBRA benefits expire (or can’t afford the COBRA premiums)?

If you want some real-world examples of this kind of stuff, I highly recommend perusing the excellent “View From Your Sickbed” accounts Andrew Sullivan has been collecting and posting. It’s easy to spout platitudes about the uninsured from 40,000 feet, it’s another matter when you see how this system could very easily turn on you, your family, or your friends.

I’m typically not a fan of government intrusion, but in some cases Adam Smith’s invisible hand is not enough to keep private industry honest, and in those instances I DO feel it is the government’s role – as an entity that can act without hyperactive profit motive – to step in and set rules. Or, if need be, enter the fray directly.

And I feel that is the case with health care, which, though we may not often think of it as such, is a very real factor in American competitiveness and, it could be argued, is a matter of national security.

Musings on Health Care

The present health care debate illustrates – in my opinion, at any rate – the best and worst aspects of our particular republican form of government. Those who contend that the discourse has gone beyond the pale are both right and wrong. Right in that it has, in that certain actors are making bad-faith arguments, distorting the truth and telling outright lies. Wrong in the assertion that all of this somehow signals the collapse of civilized public discourse. If anything, I believe history has demonstrated time and again that civilized public discourse is the exception, not the rule. Change – and particularly institutionalized change – is always feared and resisted. It was by the Romans (to the dismay and death of many a tribune of the plebs). It was by monarchs and by slaveholders in the southern states.

Fortunately, for all the fear-mongering and heated words and personal attacks, I think we’re still some ways from outright armed conflict.

None of this means we can’t be mad as hell though. For my part, I’d love to put the nonsense about death panels and socialism aside and actually see a reasoned debate, and so I was pleasantly surprised to read Peggy Noonan’s latest editorial. Finally, amid all the static, a good-faith argument! Something I can sink my teeth into!

Below the fold I’ll take a look at Peggy’s column, and offer my own thoughts. Feel free to chime in with your own. My only request is that you keep things civil.

A Debate of Sorts

My good friend Blogger Mark recently posted his immediate post-election thoughts – and while I agree with some of his sentiments, I disagree with others wholeheartedly. Rather than confine my response to the rather limited comment field, I figured I’d offer a rebuttal here.

Good luck to Barack. I don’t agree with the vast majority of his policies, and I am scared shitless of his suggestion of playing nice-nice with Iran, but his eloquence will undoubtedly come in handy as long as he can write the speech beforehand and doesn’t have to deliver anything off the cuff, where he seems to struggle mightily.

For my part, I don’t agree with a number of Obama’s policies, either. That said, something in this country is seriously broken, and the Republican party in its present form doesn’t seem to have any coherent answer to the multitude of crises that we face. Which is why, in this election, I went with temperament and judgment over political ideology.

Regarding Iran, I have to disagree wholeheartedly. The idea of one country refusing to talk to another strikes me as petulant, and serves only to inflame the passions on both sides. Engaging in talks does not equal appeasement, it equals maturity and pragmatism. Now, if Obama begins to show signs of appeasing Iran, I will be among the first to call him on it, but I don’t see that being the case. 

I am conservative, but I realize conservatives can’t win every election cycle….and this was a landslide (and perhaps deservedly so). What’s more many of the so-called “conservative” Republicans in the legislature have not been acting according to the principles of conservatism, and have been spending recklessly. I am displeased with the Republican party, but hold steadfast to to fiscal (as opposed to social) principles of conservatism

In this, I echo the sentiments of the numerous conservatives – Colin Powell, Susan Eisenhower, Christopher Buckley, etc – who ultimately supported Obama. I didn’t abandon the Republican party. The Republican party abandoned me. The party of Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, Dwight Eisenhower and Ronald Reagan is all but unrecognizable today. The strains of social conservatism and anti-intellectualism, the corruption, the massive increases in government spending…they sicken me. After the last eight years, the Republican party deserved to lose, and lose big. Whether they can recover, in my opinion, depends on whether they use their time in the wilderness to get back to core conservative principles or, instead, double-down on far right, religious conservative base.

If a Democrat had to win, I am happy it is an eloquent and non-vindictive one (Hillary, Reid, Pelosi, etc.), and I am much happier with Obama as president than Hillary. Obama’s policies are about as far left as this country allows…and they admittedly scare me. For someone who claims to reach across the aisle, he was arguably the most liberal member of the entire Senate, but give me him over Hillary any day of the week. I hope my sincere reservations about his policies prove false and our country can move forward.

I wholeheartedly agree. Thank God we escaped a Hillary presidency, for a multitude of reasons (dynasticm, vindictiveness, the Clintonian method of governance). That said, I don’t think Obama is so much liberal as he is progressive…my read on his policies and his stance is that he doesn’t so much see government as the solution to every problem, but as a means for setting the conditions that allow those solutions to arise organically.

On the other side of the aisle, McCain ran a horrifically bad campaign, and with the incumbant Republican with a 29% approval rating, it would have taken a monumental effort from someone with a presence like Ronald Reagan to have given the Republicans the remotest of shots. McCain is not Reagan, and so he, or any other Republican candidate, was doomed from the start.

The simple fact of the matter is that the Republican party has a seriously denuded talent pool. In my opinion it is going to take years, and a groundswell of new thinking, before the GOP will be able to put forward a compelling national candidate.

However I do think Sarah Palin was subject to an INCREDIBLY disgusting and unfair lynch-job by the media. I challenge you all to find any such instance in which a vice-president was scrtutinized as much as she has been. Compare it to Biden ?? We as a country seemed to be much more concerned about the “experience” of our potential vice-president and chose to conveniently gloss over the even less executive experience that our now incoming President has. It’s just ridiculous given how much more important the presidency is than the vice-presidency; it makes no logical sense, and thus screams of intellectual dishonesty….shame on us for that. 

I’m sorry, but the scrutiny in this case was self-invited. When one of the major cornerstones of your stump speech is a lie (“thanks but no thanks on that bridge to nowhere”), and proven beyond the shadow of a doubt to be a lie, and you keep trotting it out time and again anyway, well, that’s going to raise suspicion. What else might she be lying about? What else might she be distorting. The refusal to hold a single press conference, the frightening lack of basic political awareness…all of these things invited the press to take a closer look, and when the McCain campaign shut them out, it only hardened their resolve.

But to my mind, none of this was ever about Palin. It was about McCain, and his judgment in picking her as his running mate. Once her complete unpreparedness (and I’m not talking just about experience here) came to light, once it became obvious that her selection was entirely political, it brought into question all of McCain’s claims about putting country first and about preferring to lose an election than lose a war. Which is why, when McCain suspended his campaign, the reaction wasn’t “oh, how noble of him”, but rather, “are you f-ing kidding me?”.

In an election season when we broke through an incredible racial barrier and made history,it is unfortunate that, based on the way Palin was treated, we showed that the gender barrier is still alive and well. 

Sigh. Obama largely shyed from race, and only really discussed it in the wake of the Jeremiah Wright controversy. And even then, he never once used the fact that he is black as a crutch or as a part of his persona. Palin, on the other hand, used her gender for all she could, what with the “hockey mom” lines, the winks to the camera during the VP debate. When you trot it out like that, when you lean on it to make up for other deficiencies, in my opinion you deserve to be called on it.

Here’s hoping Palin remains a stalwart in Republican politics. One of my friends and I have a bet (a fancy dinner) over whether Palin will remain a prominent figure in the American political system during the next presidential term. 

Please God, no. Palin is a manifestation of what’s WRONG with the Republican party. She represents the worst elements of social conservatism and anti-intellectualism. If she remains a stalwart of Republican politics, all it will mean is that the GOP has learned nothing from this election, or from the damage they have done to themselves and the country over the last eight years.

Tested

This past Sunday, Joe Biden predicted that “it will not be six months before the world tests Barack Obama like they did John Kennedy”.

Now…I’m not entirely sold on this prediction. I have no doubt a President Obama would be tested…the state of the economy alone makes that all but certain. Whether he will be tested with a major international crisis on par with the Cuban Missile Crisis (or a repeat of 9/11) is another matter altogether. Could it happen? Certainly. Will it happen? Maybe, but I wouldn’t put money on it.

In any event, John McCain quickly used Senator Biden’s remark as an opportunity to remind voters that he has been tested:

McCain recalled being ready to launch a bombing run during the October 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, which Biden said over the weekend tested a new President John F. Kennedy and was the template for the kind of “generated crisis” the 47-year-old Obama would face within six months of taking office.

“I was on board the USS Enterprise,” McCain, a former naval aviator, said in the capital city of Harrisburg. “I sat in the cockpit, on the flight deck of the USS Enterprise, off of Cuba. I had a target. My friends, you know how close we came to a nuclear war.”

As the crowd of several thousand began to swell with cheers and applause, he added with dramatic effect: “America will not have a president who needs to be tested. I’ve been tested, my friends.”

Now, that sounds pretty reasonable to…wait…WHAT?

Let me get this straight. McCain is saying he has been tested because he sat on the deck of the Enterprise on alert for a bombing mission that, ultimately, never happened?

It may sound good…it may rouse the base…but when you step back and thinkabout it, this claim is patently absurd. 

First and foremost, the bombing mission never took place…precisely because of Kennedy’s deft handling of the crisis. The only “test” McCain would have had to endure would have been a pre-flight check.

Second, McCain was a Navy pilot. The decision was never anywhere near being in his hands. He had no tightrope to walk and, as the mission never took place, he pretty much had nothing to do.

To my mind, this notion of being tested involves being thrust into a delicate situation and having to make decisions…decisions that could endanger thousands…or millions…of lives. Kennedy was tested. McCain, not so much. For him to claim he was, in my opinion, diminishes what Kennedy was able to achieve in what would become his finest hour.

Um, Excuse Me?

I’m not the biggest fan of Paul Krugman. Knowledgable though he is, I find him too partisan for my liking, and a in the past have found him a bit too willing to play fast and loose with certain facts in order to prove whatever point he happens to be making.

That having been said, his recent blog post on McCain’s health care plans is well worth the read. It offers little in the way of analysis, and instead contents itself with quoting from John McCain’s article in the Sept/Oct issue of some magazine called Contingencies (full article HERE).

In McCain’s own words:

Opening up the health insurance market to more vigorous nationwide competition, as we have done over the last decade in banking, would provide more choices of innovative products less burdened by the worst excesses of state-based regulation.

Krugman’s reaction:

So McCain, who now poses as the scourge of Wall Street, was praising financial deregulation like 10 seconds ago — and promising that if we marketize health care, it will perform as well as the financial industry!

A Very Good Question…

From Newsday:

McCain and Palin, in Republican-populist-reformer mode, both say in speeches Monday that they want to “stop multimillion-dollar payouts and golden parachutes to CEOs who break the public trust” — throwing an 80 mph fastball down the middle of the plate for Obama’s press shop.

Which asks: What about Carly Fiorina, one of McCain’s top economic advisers and most visible surrogates? The ex-Hewlett Packard chief executive cut 20,000 jobs, drove down the stock price by pushing a Compaq merger that didn’t pay short-term dividends, started an investigation of boardroom leaks that turned into a scandal. . . and was rewarded with a $42 million severance package when she was fired.

If you actually have a problem with golden parachutes, why would you bring her into your campaign?

Those Who Don’t Know History…

Came across an interesting article over at the National Review this morning about the importance of history and the tragedy of its declining role in education.

Money quote:

That doesn’t mean that lessons should not be drawn from World War II or Vietnam. But it does mean that we should do so within the context of the rest of history. We need the big picture. And that is just what is disappearing from our schools. No wonder, then, that current challenges like the war on terror are forcibly jammed into the mold of the last century’s wars. We simply don’t remember anything else. Could the ancient Roman experience with Jewish extremist terrorism have any lessons for Americans prosecuting a war against Islamic extremism? Could the Hellenistic Greek response to Roman hegemony help us understand European attitudes toward America’s position as the world’s lone superpower? Who knows? Who cares? After all, that’s “ancient history.” The Founding Fathers believed that an education grounded in the Classics (read in Latin!) was an essential foundation for good citizenship. Today that’s just trivia — useful for winning on Jeopardy! — but not much else.

Loyalty and Secrecy

The New York Times has posted a fascinating and amazingly well-researched article (or hit piece, depending on where your political affiliations lie) on Gov. Sarah Palin’s management style. Turns out things are not all sunshine and glaciers up in Alaska.

It’s a long read, so I won’t bother going through all of it here, though I must say this paragraph leapt out at me:

Interviews show that Ms. Palin runs an administration that puts a premium on loyalty and secrecy. The governor and her top officials sometimes use personal e-mail accounts for state business; dozens of e-mail messages obtained by The New York Times show that her staff members studied whether that could allow them to circumvent subpoenas seeking public records.

I said in my post last night that the character of a campaign often foretells the character of an administration, and I find the revelations in this article only support my severe reservations about a McCain-Palin administration. Loyalty, secrecy, personal vendettas…these are the hallmarks and wellsprings of the worst abuses of the Clinton and Bush administrations. 

The McCain campaign has insisted repeatedly that this campaign is not about the issues, but rather about the contrasting characters of the candidates. I couldn’t agree more.

The Triumph of Will

Last week, i came away relatively impressed by McCain’s convention speech. I dared to hope that perhaps that was a glimpse of the real McCain, but the events of this past week have seen those glimmerings of appreciation sour into disgust. 

I’m a conservative by nature, but for the life of me I can’t find so much as a hint of my brand of conservatism in the McCain-Palin campaign or in the larger GOP party. The level of disconnect is so severe that I can’t help but wonder if the parties are beginning to realign.

I find just about every aspect of the McCain campaign troubling, from its bellicosity and its insistence of victory in Iraq (I happen to prefer the more knowledgable and nuanced view espoused by General Petraeus earlier this week) to its absurd embrace of the “drill baby drill” mantra and its desire to overturn Roe v. Wade and outlaw abortion across the board. I find the gut-level, snap decision-making  tendencies and apparent lack of self-reflection of both McCain and Palin troubling to the extreme.

But two issues concern me more than all of these combined.

The first is the campaign’s increasing isolation from the press. Keeping Sarah Palin away from reporters for two weeks is inexcusable. So is insisting that the press show the proper deferrance. This isn’t a monarchy. This is America. If anything, the candidates should be deferring to us. But they aren’t. Instead they’re going in the opposite direction. I can only assume Charlie Gibson was too hard on poor Sarah, because her next interview is going to be with Republican shill and all-around-tool Sean Hannity. And McCain’s not much better. After the savaging he received on The View, he’s backing away from the press, too. I don’t care which party does it. This level of isolation is terrifying. 

My second issue of concern is the campaign’s shameless penchant for lying, from the sex ed attack ad on Obama to Palin’s bridge to nowhere and everything in between. This isn’t your typical political distortion. These are outright falsehoods. Blatant lies. And the campaign keeps trotting them out even after they’ve been refuted over and over ad nauseum. At the risk of going there, it’s as though they are taking a page straight out of the Joseph Goebbels playbook.

Why do these two issues concern me so greatly? It’s simple, really. A presidential campaign is a preview of a presidential administration. I’m not talking about policies here, or grandiose campaign promises. I’m talking about the broader dynamic. Look back to 2000. Look back to 1992. Hell, look back to 1980. The attitudes and dynamics of the victors – Bush, Clinton, and Reagan – largely carried through their administrations. With Bush we had the secrecy of Cheney, the “aw shucks” mannerisms, the destruction of opponents through less-than-honest narratives (of which McCain was a victim). With Clinton, we had the saxophone, the “I feel your pain”, as well as scandal after scandal that seemed to slide right off the Governor of Arkansas’ back. And with Reagan there was the sunny optimism, compelling vision of conservatism, and the preponderence of sound bites.

McCain and Palin promise reform, but their actions, their isolation, their insistence on telling and retelling blatant untruths, tell otherwise. And they are the exact sort of behaviors that would carry over to an administration.