Obama's Need to Give Assurance

David Bromwich, amateur Obama watcher, from his perch in the English Department at Yale, is always interesting and insightful, this time about the events of last month in the Middle East:

To say that our leaders covered themselves with shame would be melodramatic. To say that they were embarrassed by unforeseeable obstructions would be much too kind. They could not help speaking for democracy, because that is what the U.S. thinks it stands for; if our actions sometimes expose us to the charge of hypocrisy, our words have the single-mindedness of sincere belief. How then did American policy in February come so palpably untethered?

We have supported a succession of military strongmen in Egypt going as far back as 1952, when the CIA judged Gamal Abdel Nasser a plausible bulwark against Communism. The U.S. gives Egypt $1.3 billion annually in aid (mostly military). Of all our clients, only Israel gets more, at $3 billion annually. The view in Washington has long been that those two nations will oversee "the neighborhood" on our behalf. That is why a nonviolent insurgency on the West Bank, if it should occur, would meet as baffled a response from Washington as the February days in Egypt. The embarrassment is part of the situation.

A fair surmise is that Obama was no less confusing in private than in public; that when he spoke to Mubarak, his words were muffled and decorous: "You must begin leaving, but I will never desert you" — something like that. The difference between Mubarak’s shakiness in his first televised speech to the country and his evident composure in his second speech may well be explained by a signal that he took for an assurance.

I will never desert you, one recalls, is the message that Barack Obama conveyed to Secretary of the Treasury Hank Paulson (when Obama was still a candidate); to the banks and financial firms (in February 2009); to Dick Cheney and the torture lawyers (in his National Archives Speech of May 2009); to General David Petraeus (in the months preceding the 2009 administration review of the Afghan War); to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu via the Israeli defense minister Ehud Barak (in the summer of 2009); and to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce (in February 2011).

The need to give assurance seems to be an inseparable trait of Obama’s character. He deals with big decisions by first moving to cement a secure alliance with the powers-that-be, no matter how discredited they are, no matter how resounding his previous contempt for them may have been. Yet this is a reflex that often prematurely cedes control to the powerful over whom he might otherwise be in a position to exert leverage. That fight, however, is not for him.

To say it another way, Obama visibly hates crisis. He is so averse to the very idea of instability that he seems unable to use a crisis to his advantage. Seldom, to judge by the evidence thus far, is he the first, second, or third person in the room to recognize that a state of crisis exists. The hesitation that looked like apathy and the hyper-managerial tone of his response to the BP oil spill offered a vivid illustration of this trait. Egypt brought out the same pattern.

A Disillusioned Matt Damon

Matt Damon has come clean about what a lot of 2008 Obama supporters are thinking (but perhaps are unwilling to say):

Few of Barack Obama's celebrity supporters at the 2008 US presidential election were as committed to his cause as the Oscar-winning actor Matt Damon. Rather than merely support Mr Obama in an online video, Damon, one of Hollywood's highest-profile liberal activists, campaigned for the Democratic nominee in Florida. Not content with that, he provided one of the most cutting insults of the campaign when he described the Republican vice-presidential nominee Sarah Palin as "really terrifying... like something out of a bad Disney movie".

Damon, 40, star of the Bourne spy trilogy and two new films, The Adjustment Bureau and True Grit, is scrupulously polite and mild-mannered when we meet in a Manhattan hotel. But laying bare his disenchantment with the Obama administration, he doesn't hide how let down he feels. President Obama's record on the economy particularly rankles. "I think he's rolled over to Wall Street completely. The economy has huge problems. We still have all these banks that are too big to fail. They're bigger and making more money than ever. Unemployment at 10 per cent? It's terrible."

He is upset that Mr Obama, who promised to "spread the wealth around", has extended the Bush tax cuts and that the inequality gap has widened.

"They had a chance that they don't have any more to stand up for things," he says. "They've probably squandered that at this point. They'll probably just make whatever deals they can to try to get elected again."

Damon appears so disillusioned that, playing devil's advocate, I ask whether he is considering voting Republican. "Good God, no! I just got a 3 per cent tax cut. Do you think I'm going to start a small business with that money? You're out of your mind if you think so. I'm going to put it in the bank. So is every other guy that makes the kind of money I make. I don't think that's what's best for the country. I think a stronger middle class makes for a stronger country."

As well as the economy, Mr Obama's record on education repels him. "They have to get people who actually know about educating kids in positions of power. Now they're trying to get business people to come and manage schools like they're factories. It's not going to work."

Well, if you're reading this blog, you know that I agree with Damon.

A Pathetic 9/11 Commission Report

This column by Robert Scheer shows clearly that our official knowledge of what happened on 9/11 is mostly based on hear-say evidence from the interrogators of tortured Al-Qaeda members. 

What the public has been led to believe about the events of 9/11 is most fully encapsulated in the report of the bipartisan 9/11 Commission, appointed by President George W. Bush. But the Bush administration denied the commission access to the prisoners whose testimony, elicited after torture, provided the basic narrative as to how Sept. 11, 2001, came to be. That fatal flaw in the investigation was clearly conceded in a box on Page 146 of the official 9/11 Commission report containing a disclaimer that the key chapters “rely heavily on information from captured al Qaeda members” and admitting that the commission was dependent on hearsay reports from the interrogators as to what those witnesses actually said.

“We submitted questions for use in the interrogations but had no control over whether, when, or how questions of particular interest would be asked. Nor were we allowed to talk to the interrogators so that we could better judge the credibility of the detainees and clarify ambiguities in the reporting. We were told that our requests might disrupt the sensitive interrogation process.”

In case you're interested, here are my past posts on this issue.

The Welfare State

I'm reading a book entitled 'Modern Welfare States' by two Scandinavian scholars, about the rise of the Welfare State in the Scandinavian countries.  I thought the following was a good definition (which is much different than the pejorative definition of 'welfare' you mostly hear in the U.S).

In general, those [welfare state] policies have been of three sorts: (1) the provision of social services and transfer payments that make up the welfare state proper; (2) the management of capitalistic, market economies to minimize unemployment and maintain optimal economic growth vital to finance welfare measures; and (3) the regulation of behavior by individuals, groups, and corporations to restrict the need for welfare and the costs of welfare programs. The aim was to guarantee a decent standard of living for those worst off in the society, and to increase the degree of equality among socioeconomic groups without undercutting the dynamism of the market economy. In the process, the Scandinavian countries have developed a security net of transfer payments--unemployment, disability, and sickness insurance; old age pensions; family allowances; rent subsidies; and special payments to those temporarily in need--and social services--medical and dental care; home assistance for the sick, disabled, and elderly; and child and after-school care--that provides a comfortable, solid floor to support living standards of anyone forced out of the labor market. In other words, if you have to be sick, disabled, or unemployed, the place to be is in Denmark, Norway, or Sweden.

As any one can tell from the current political debate taking place in Washington and around the country, we have been moving away from this kind of political understanding (formerly called New Deal Liberalism, now simply called--with distain--'socialism') for over 30 years, since the rise of Reagan conservatism.  Except for a few lone voices, what is now on the agenda is twofold: first, making sure that individuals have the right to strive for the 'American Dream' of becoming rich; and second, cutting back government spending at all levels, or in other words, trying to eliminate what 'liberalism' (aka FDR and LBJ) put in place since the New Deal.

In a discreet way in his TV special on restoring America the other night, Fareed Zakaria as much as said that we need to imitate the 'social democracies' of Northern Europe and restore the social safety net that is now being ripped to shreds.  But that is clearly not going to happen anytime soon, short of some sort of unforeseen political revolution.  And believe me, that is not what the Tea Party has in mind!

So, to paraphrase the last sentence of the quoted excerpt above, if you have to be sick, disabled, or unemployed [and I would add 'retired' and simply 'not rich' to this list], the place NOT to be is in the United States of America. 

Zakaria's Solution to America's Decline

I thought it was really interesting that Fareed Zakaria, on his TV special about 'Restoring the American Dream' that aired Saturday night, rather overtly recommended the mixed economies/welfare state that social democracies in Northern Europe have developed, including a social 'safety net' for the poor and unemployment.

But his biggest criticism was directed toward our 'inflexible, schlerotic, antiquated' political system, that was 'unsuited for the 21st Century' and 'unable to plan for the future.'

Sounds to me like Zakaria is rather pessimistic about America's future, given the unlikely nature of either a restoration of a decent 'safety net', radical and courageous fiscal reform, or radical political change.

A College Degree Guarantees Very Little, Except Possibly For Student Debt

I have believed for some time now that the panacea of a college education for everyone was not going to solve the problem of jobs or a higher standard of living.  So I was glad to see Paul Krugman arguing the same thing in his column today in the NYT.  Here are the last couple paragraphs:

But there are things education can’t do. In particular, the notion that putting more kids through college can restore the middle-class society we used to have is wishful thinking. It’s no longer true that having a college degree guarantees that you’ll get a good job, and it’s becoming less true with each passing decade.

So if we want a society of broadly shared prosperity, education isn’t the answer — we’ll have to go about building that society directly. We need to restore the bargaining power that labor has lost over the last 30 years, so that ordinary workers as well as superstars have the power to bargain for good wages. We need to guarantee the essentials, above all health care, to every citizen.

What we can’t do is get where we need to go just by giving workers college degrees, which may be no more than tickets to jobs that don’t exist or don’t pay middle-class wages.

It seems that the revolt of the Wisconsin public unions against the attempt by their governor to destroy them is stimulating some new thinking about the importance of a strong labor movement in saving the middle class in America.

The Deceit Built Into 'GDP Per Capita'

In a review in the WSJ of Tom Geoghegan's very entertaining book Were You Born On The Wrong Continent, which tries to make the case for the superiority of the 'European Model', economist James Glassman writes:

Photo by Sarahbeth Lindquist

Europe's economic story in recent years—well before the current crisis—has been one of sluggish growth and high unemployment. As a result, a wide gap has opened up between Europe and the U.S. in the most revealing indicator of economic well-being, GDP per capita. For the U.S in 2008 (all statistics from the OECD), the figure was $47,200; for Germany, $35,400; France, $33,100; Italy, $31,252. In other words, the average American produces 43% more than the average Frenchman. The economist Mark Perry has noted on his blog Carpe Diem that citizens of America's poorest state, Mississippi, have a higher GDP than Italians; and Alabamans beat the Germans, French and Belgians.

Question: does anyone really believe the average citizen of Mississippi (with its numerous and very poor racial minorities) is better off than the average citizen of France or Germany?  I would say that is simply a crazy statement, written by a enthusiastic free-market economist trying to persuade his readers, against all the on-the-ground evidence, as to why the American economy is SO great and SO much better than Europe's social democracy.

The issue of course revolves around the question of 'GDP per capita', which Geoghegan addresses in his book, and which Jeremy Rifkin debunks in a detailed (and persuasive) way in his 2004 book The European Dream: How Europe's Vision of the Future is Quietly Eclipsing the American Dream.  Here are a few relevant paragraphs from the latter (p. 72):

Althought the EU economy is running almost head-to-head with the U.S. economy, the numbers don't tell the whole story. That's because the comparisons between the EU and the U.S. are being made by looking at their respective GDPs.  The problem with this approach is that GDP gives a false sense of real economic well-being....
The GDP was created by the U.S. Commerce Department at the height of the Depression in the 1930s and was used first as a gauge for measuring the nation's economic recovery and then to monitor wartime production capacity during World War II.  The fault with the GDP is that it doesn't discriminate between economic activity that really improves the standard of living of people and economic activity that does not....
GDP counts every economic activity as good.  So if crime rises because of unemployment and poverty, requiring an increase in police protection and enforcement, court costs, prison costs, and a beefing up of private surveillance and protection, the economic activity it engenders finds it way into the GDP....

The purchase of more missiles, airplanes, tanks, and bombs are all added to the GDP.  One would be hard-pressed to say that any of these activities actually result in a net improvement in our quality of life.  Here lies the rub.  So much of our GDP--and an increasing percentage of it every year--is made up of economic activity that clearly does not improve our well-being.

And then after a long description of his experiences in Europe, Rifkin makes this telling point:

The point is, there is a very real and demonstrable difference in "the quality of life" one experiences in much of Europe compared with that in most parts of the United States.

That corresponds with my experience at well, and as the crisis deepens in the United States, the difference becomes even greater. I'll tell you more in August, after my month in Europe this summer.

Hell Comes Under Fire

One of the most popular of younger evangelical preachers is questioning the reality of Hell:

Tour of Hell by James Anderson

A new book [Love Wins] by one of the country’s most influential evangelical pastors, challenging traditional Christian views of heaven, hell and eternal damnation, has created an uproar among evangelical leaders, with the most ancient of questions being argued in a biblical hailstorm of Twitter messages and blog posts.

In a book to be published this month, the pastor, Rob Bell, known for his provocative views and appeal among the young, describes as “misguided and toxic” the dogma that “a select few Christians will spend forever in a peaceful, joyous place called heaven, while the rest of humanity spends forever in torment and punishment in hell with no chance for anything better.”

Such statements are hardly radical among more liberal theologians, who for centuries have wrestled with the seeming contradiction between an all-loving God and the consignment of the billions of non-Christians to eternal suffering. But to traditionalists they border on heresy, and they have come just at a time when conservative evangelicals fear that a younger generation is straying from unbendable biblical truths.

Mr. Bell, 40, whose Mars Hill Bible Church in Grand Rapids, Mich., has 10,000 members, is a Christian celebrity and something of a hipster in the pulpit, with engaging videos that sell by the hundreds of thousands and appearances to rapt, youthful crowds in rock-music arenas

Ah yes, this was inevitable.  It happened 200 years ago, as the Calvinists of New England were shocked by the 'heretics' in their midst in the environs of Boston and that damnable and veritable fountain of heresy, Harvard Divinity School.  And that led to the rise of liberal Protestant theology, which has lately been in decline.

And now that the dam of evangelical orthodoxy has once again sprung a leak, more 'heresies' will flood forth on all kinds of theological topics. It's as natural as the coming of the rains of spring, and as lovely, in that it renews the fields and soil of Christianity.

More power to ya, Rev. Bell!

Peter Gomes, RIP

One of America's great preachers is dead.  Rev. Peter Gomes, preacher at the Chapel at Harvard University, died last Monday of a stroke.  His book, entitled The Good Book, was one of those that you read and remember, because he showed that the Bible has been used to support slavery, the domination of women, and the suppression of homosexulity.  Therefore, how one interprets the 'Good Book' is very important and must be done carefully and reasonably. 

Incidentally, Gomes was gay.  RIP, Pastor Gomes.

Higher Education in Decline

Bob Herbert's Saturday column on higher education is provocative concerning the sinking standards of our colleges and universities:

A provocative new book, “Academically Adrift: Limited Learning on College Campuses,” makes a strong case that for a large portion of the nation’s seemingly successful undergraduates the years in college barely improve their skills in critical thinking, complex reasoning and writing.

Intellectual effort and academic rigor, in the minds of many of the nation’s college students, is becoming increasingly less important. According to the authors, Professors Richard Arum of New York University and Josipa Roksa of the University of Virginia: “Many students come to college not only poorly prepared by prior schooling for highly demanding academic tasks that ideally lie in front of them, but — more troubling still — they enter college with attitudes, norms, values, and behaviors that are often at odds with academic commitment.”

Students are hitting the books less and partying more. Easier courses and easier majors have become more and more popular. Perhaps more now than ever, the point of the college experience is to have a good time and walk away with a valuable credential after putting in the least effort possible.

The authors cite empirical work showing that the average amount of time spent studying by college students has dropped by more than 50 percent since the early 1960s. But a lack of academic focus has not had much of an effect on grade point averages or the ability of the undergraduates to obtain their degrees.

Thirty-six percent of the students said they studied alone less than five hours a week. Nevertheless, their transcripts showed a collective grade point average of 3.16. “Their G.P.A.’s are between a B and a B-plus,” said Professor Arum, “which says to me that it’s not the students, really — they share some of the blame — but the colleges and universities have set up a system so that there are ways to navigate through it without taking difficult courses and still get the credential.”

It is still not clear to me that 'college for everyone' can be tied to economic growth and a better standard of living for everyone (as I tried to show in a previous post). What is clear is that a big part of our personal and public debt load is now college loans.

Industrialized society does not require a majority of young people to go to college, and in all reality, it is likely a majority of young people cannot really take advantage of college, due to lack of interest or ability.