Go figure.
Richard Cohen tells Obama to be like LBJ
Richard Cohen advises Obama to read Robert Caro’s latest biography of LBJ and learn how to make friends and influence people like Johnson did.
Dream on. In an alternate universe, maybe. In this one, a person can learn a few things and change somewhat as he/she goes through life, but change that basic virtually never happens.
Obama will never become a people person, like LBJ. Johnson relished pressing the flesh, and wheeling and dealing in the Senate for the many years he was a titanic figure there, persuading and arm-twisting and threatening and cajoling. Obama’s power is through the power of his silver tongue (I always saw it as tin, but I know a lot of people differ), his extension of executive power through czars and agencies, his reliance on a couple of leaders in Congress such as Nancy Pelosi (as long as Democrats were in charge, that is), and the assistance of his fawning allies in the press.
It’s hard to come to any conclusion except that Obama is a cold fish, as Cohen seems to recognize. Our current president is uncomfortable among people and crowds, preferring to stay with a small group of very trusted advisors, and only appearing for a short time at events and doing the bare minimum of schmoozing.
He’s never really had to do more than that. He looks down on people from his Olympian heights, removed and distant, above it all, seemingly calm and thoughtful. That’s what’s always worked for him in the past, and it’s suited his temperament, as well.
It’s ludicrous for Cohen to expect a man with that personality, and who spent only a couple of years of a single term in Congress before running for president, to have somehow amassed the skills and the knowledge base of LBJ, a master of power, people, and Congress. Very few people could emulate him, and Obama is probably the least likely person to do so.
How many pairs…
…of gloves can Obama take off and still have more to go?
I am so, so tired of reading that Obama is finally taking the gloves off.
And amazingly enough, Obama seems to be asking people to keep hoping. It’s a bit like Lucy and the football—this time it will happen:
“If people ask you what this campaign is about, you tell them ‘it’s still about hope.’ You tell them ‘it’s still about change,'” he told a cheering mass of supporters at Ohio State University in Columbus, six months and one day before the election. “I still believe in you. And I’m asking you to keep believing in me.”…
The embattled Democratic incumbent also laid out his answer to the question Ronald Reagan posed to devastating effect in the 1980 election: “Are you better off now than you were four years ago?”
“The real question, the question that will actually make a difference in your life, in the lives of your children, is not just about how we’re doing today. It’s about how we’ll be doing tomorrow,” Obama said. “Will we be better off if more Americans get a better education? That’s the question. Will be be better off if we depend less on foreign oil and more on our own ingenuity? That’s the question. Will we be better off if we start doing some nation building right here at home? That’s the question. Will we be better off if we bring down our deficit without gutting the very things we need to grow?”
Obama must sell belief, because he can’t point to action—that is, he can’t point to action that people want. Obamacare, the pinnacle of accomplishment of his first term, has been rejected by the majority. He can only talk about killing Bin Laden so often; even Obama knows that people want to feel hopeful because there’s a reason to hope. Promises are all he’s got now, and the force of his personality. It worked well enough last time, so maybe he can keep stringing the public along till November.
It’s more like a religion or a personal cult than politics or leadership.
I think…
…that this story can only redound to Romney’s credit.
But maybe that’s just cause I’m such a rebel. Question authority! Power (boats) to the people!!
Looking at the French elections
I don’t pretend to be an expert on internal French politics, but here’s a little summary of what winner Hollande stands for:
He’s a Keynesian (although the article doesn’t mention that word) who favors stimulus as the answer to France’s problems.
He wants to tax the top tier at 75%.
He proposes that some illegal immigrants would be given residency, on a “case-by-case basis.”
It should be fascinating to watch.
Even conservatives in France are a little bit socialist compared to conservatives here. That’s what happens with a welfare state; it’s very hard to turn it back when people get accustomed to the perks. As Michael Barone writes:
It is obvious that voting for one’s living is a great deal easier than working for it. It is easier to blame someone else who is wealthier for a reduction in the standard of living than to look in the mirror and ask hard questions about the nature and effect an expansionist government has on the quality of life in a society in general.
The driver of this process is at its most basic level envy…Countries that choose this path see that, rather than all the boats rising on the incoming tide of massive government expansion in the name of goodness and light, the boats actually start to wallow and the wealth of the society as a whole begins to erode significantly.
Rather than being lifted up through greater productivity and economic growth, the society becomes mired in finger pointing where the many, through their politicians, blame the few.
But although I agree with this analysis, there’s a lot more than that going on in the French election. A fair amount of the vote was backlash against Sarkozy, who has become disliked personally (and has always been seen as an outsider, an important factor in insular France), as well as the desire to try something different when the present administration isn’t seen as having been successful in fixing France’s problems. Even then, the vote for Hollande over Sarkozy was hardly overwhelming—the final tally was actually fairly close.
So whatever the trend is in France, it isn’t a strong one. Of course, that doesn’t matter except in terms of weighing the attitude of the French public, because the winners now get to set the policy.
Hollande sees his victory as a vote against austerity, which I think is correct. Austerity; who wants it? It’s like some bitter medicine a patient is prescribed: it better work, and fast, or a lot of patients will stop taking it. And it better not be too bitter, either, or the patient will spit it out the first time it’s tasted.
What’s more, austerity is not enough. A growing economy isn’t just a matter of tweaking one variable; cuts have to be balanced with something that stimulates growth, even if it isn’t an actual stimulus package. Sometimes it’s just a perception that things are going to get better, which changes attitudes and behavior and becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. And sometimes the problems are more systemic than that.
The left will now get its chance to try to fix the crumbling economic situation in Europe, and in a few years the electorate might turn on them—again. But there’s little doubt that the politics of envy are in control right now in France:
At home, Hollande has pledged to tax the very rich at 75 percent of their income, an idea that proved wildly popular among the majority of people who don’t make nearly that much. But the measure would only bring in a relatively small amount to the budget, and tax lawyers say France’s taxes have always been high and unpredictable and this may not be as much of a shock as it sounds…
[Ghylaine Lambrecht, 60, said] “I’m so happy…In the last few years the rich have been getting richer. Now long live France, an open democratic France.”
“It’s magic!” said Violaine Chenais, 19. “I think Francois Hollande is not perfect, but it’s clear France thinks its time to give the left a chance. This means real hope for France. We’re going to celebrate with drink and hopefully some dancing.”
Magic—hope, and change.
[ADDENDUM: Arthur Herman says, “Europe, R.I.P..”]
France chooses…
…another round of socialism, first in 17 years. Dominique Strauss-Kahn must be kicking himself: shoulda, coulda, woulda.
And Greece is confused, but it sounds like the voters might like more socialism, too, only with a different party in charge than the last one. The results are murky enough that there might be another election called if no coalition can be formed that controls Parliament.
I think the real message of both elections is, “throw the bums out. Let’s have some new bums!”
Once in a super moon
Did you see the supermoon last night? I was driving my car right around the time the moon rose, and I saw it without having read anything about the phenomenon beforehand. So I didn’t know what I was seeing, but it was quite obviously spectacular.
I kept trying to stop and get a good photo, but each time I did it eluded me by hiding. So I’m awfully glad other people got pictures, which you can see here and here, and plenty of other places, too.
Three of my favorites:
Fashion interlude
This dress isn’t as spectacularly awful as most I feature here. But it’s awful in a particularly odd way, I think. There’s a certain combination of Flash Gordon, Transformers, upholstery, 1950s apron, old antimacassars, and Octoberfest barmaid:
For those who don’t get the Flash Gordon reference, I’m talking about Ming the Merciless:
And for those who don’t get the Octoberfest barmaid reference (is there anyone who doesn’t get the Octoberfest barmaid reference?), here’s an example:
(Yeah, I know, I know. But I gotta get that traffic up somehow.)
And just to balance things out, here are some old antimacassars, in case you’re not familiar with the term:
The Khalid Sheikh Mohammed trial: starting over
Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, mastermind of 9/11, is now on trial along with four accomplices. And it’s in a military court rather than the civilian courts the Obama administration would have preferred.
Thank goodness. One of the worst excesses of the Obama administration was its effort to move this trial, which had already begun in military court and was moving along nicely but was abruptly stopped by Obama and Holder several years ago. Now it’s back where it started, after an enormous amount of wasted time and expense, and a few changes:
Barack Obama came to power as president promising to scrap the military tribunals and close the Guanté¡namo prison because they were “a symbol that helped al-Qaida recruit terrorists to its cause”, but Congress blocked the move.
The president did oversee important changes to the conduct of the military trials including new rules that do not allow a defendant’s own confessions under torture to be used against him. But the statements of others who were tortured can be used which permits the interrogations of the five accused to be used against each other.
That being the Guardian speaking, the word “torture” is used to describe waterboarding, although whether it is actually torture or not is still controversial.
I’ve written about the case many times before; I’ve already made it clear that I favor military tribunals, and why. So there’s no need to repeat myself much, but here’s a little reminder, something I wrote back when the administration was first trying to transfer the case to the civilian court system:
If anyone is an illegal enemy combatant, it would be Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, and he should not be afforded the benefit of liberal rules of discovery designed to protect civilian defendants but which allow other al Qaeda terrorists to obtain valuable information about our methods of intelligence gathering: what we know, how we learned it, and about whom we know it. This decision also puts the entire city of New York at risk again by forcing it to house these terrorists and making their trial the proverbial three-ring circus, as well as giving them a bully pulpit for more attention.
I can hardly imagine a worse decision by the Obama Justice Department on these issues, except to let the terrorists go free and set them up in penthouses on the upper East Side.
So I consider this latest development an excellent one. However, it won’t stop people such as Anthony Romero, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union, from saying predictable things like this:
“The Obama administration is making a terrible mistake by prosecuting the most important terrorism trials of our time in a second-tier system of justice…Whatever verdict comes out of the Guanté¡namo military commissions will be tainted by an unfair process and the politics that wrongly pulled these cases from federal courts, which have safely and successfully handled hundreds of terrorism trials.
That “second-tier” system of justice is good enough for our military, and it was good enough for the conspirators who assassinated Abraham Lincolm as well as the German war criminals of WWII. But it’s not good enough for Khalid Sheikh Mohammed?
Just to refresh your memory, in addition to 9/11, KSM was personally responsible for the beheading of American journalist Daniel Pearl—meaning, he didn’t just mastermind it, he performed it (and no, that link is not to the video of the beheading, to which I will never link).
Elizabeth Warren, academia, and affirmative action
I can’t get quite as worked up about the Elizabeth Warren Cherokee flap as so many others have. That’s because I decided long ago (even before my political “change”) that however well-intentioned affirmative action may have originally been, it’s a bad thing in a host of ways.
So this particular incident doesn’t surprise me especially. The entire policy has long been subject to abuse, and if Elizabeth Warren was one of those who made a false or exaggerated claim of minority status she would hardly be the first. The drive for diversity in hiring has always been far less about the actual life of the actual person hired, and whether he/she (or his/her immediate ancestors) has in fact experienced any sort of meaningful discrimination, than in the numbers and the lists. An institution must prove it has enough minority hires or be under fire for discrimination. Equality of opportunity simply isn’t good enough; it can only be proven by equality of outcome.
But a person of privilege (which the young Elizabeth Warren actually was not) can be of any race. And even if Ms. Warren had been half Cherokee, instead of 1/32 or whatever miniscule fraction she’s supposed to be, so what? The far more important characteristics of any candidate for acceptance to a school or a job are what that person has accomplished—and yes, what they’ve overcome along the way. That speaks to brains, character, and drive. But mere membership in a race or ethnic group doesn’t tell you that; the person’s own history and resume tells you far more.
When it was instituted, affirmative action by racial or ethnic category quickly became a form of reparations, an attempt to make up for injustices done to a person’s group’s ancestors by a present-day favoritism to a person of that group, and a present-day injustice to members of other groups designated as privileged. Not a good idea. What’s more, the real focus of affirmative action became not the student accepted or the person hired, but the school or company itself, which needed to point to statistics giving a head count of their designated minorities and/or victim groups, and show that they’d racked up the proper count.
Thus, we get incidents like this one, where the Harvard Crimson claimed (in 1998) that Elizabeth Warren was a Native American hire (although Harvard is now refusing to say whether Warren is the one Native American professor they list in their diversity roster).
I would guess this has always been more about Harvard than about anything Warren actually got out of it. After all, if you think about it, merely being a women would have been enough diversity back in the days when she was hired. Harvard Law and other schools have long been under great pressure to hire more minorities and/or other groups that have been defined as victims of discrimination, such as women, and the head count is a very serious matter and continues to this day.
There is something so profoundly ironic about the whole thing, isn’t there? Combating racism with more racism, sort of like curing a hangover with the hair of the dog that bit you.
[NOTE: I probably need to make it clear that, if Warren had falsely claimed Native American status in order to be hired, that would be a serious issue. As a voter I would consider it an important strike against her (although I wouldn’t be voting for Ms. Warren in the first place). But the nature of affirmative action as a whole is what interests me far more than anything Ms. Warren did or didn’t do.]
It’s the economy…
…stupid.
I noticed something worth mentioning: according to this memeorandum roundup of articles, this time around even many of the liberal and leftist newspapers and blogs are reporting this as bad news, and not ignoring the fact that a lot of people have dropped out of the workforce.
Interesting, no?
The living together conundrum
Living together may sound like a good idea, but in practice it seems to lead to a higher percentage of break-ups and divorces. And this appears to not just be because those who live together are pre-selected for characteristics that make it more likely that they’ll part, but because there seems to be something in the act of living together itself that helps to foster break-ups.
One thing that is not in dispute is that the percentage of people living together before marriage has skyrocketed beyond the growth in population over the same time:
In 1960, about 450,000 unmarried couples lived together. Now the number is more than 7.5 million.
Another fact is that, whatever the reality, the perception (at least among young people) is that living together before marriage makes it less likely that a split will occur:
In a nationwide survey conducted in 2001 by the National Marriage Project, then at Rutgers and now at the University of Virginia, nearly half of 20-somethings agreed with the statement, “You would only marry someone if he or she agreed to live together with you first, so that you could find out whether you really get along.” About two-thirds said they believed that moving in together before marriage was a good way to avoid divorce.
The phenomenon of living together causing more breakups is called the “cohabitation effect”:
Researchers originally attributed the cohabitation effect to selection, or the idea that cohabitors were less conventional about marriage and thus more open to divorce. As cohabitation has become a norm, however, studies have shown that the effect is not entirely explained by individual characteristics like religion, education or politics. Research suggests that at least some of the risks may lie in cohabitation itself.
Why? Here’s one idea about the explanation, and it makes a certain amount of sense:
Women are more likely to view cohabitation as a step toward marriage, while men are more likely to see it as a way to test a relationship or postpone commitment, and this gender asymmetry is associated with negative interactions and lower levels of commitment even after the relationship progresses to marriage.
I have little doubt that these differences can work the other way; there are lots of women who use living together as a way to avoid commitment, as well. For both sexes, it can happen that, “I felt like I was on this multiyear, never-ending audition to be his wife [or her husband],” as one of the article’s interviewees says.
Doesn’t that sum up the essence of it? Doubt and questioning can become a habit. If we enter a relationship constantly evaluating it, we can keep on evaluating it on a moment-by-moment basis. That’s a recipe for trouble in a marriage. To always be on trial means to be always found wanting, because who among us is so perfect that someone else would want to be with us every free minute of every day?
Some people would chalk up these problems to a lack of religion. And although that may be part of it, it’s certainly not the whole explanation or anywhere near it. My parents, for example, were not religious, and yet they would never have lived together before marriage, nor would they have divorced except under the most egregious circumstances, and maybe not even then. It just Wasn’t Done by nice folks. You leapt into marriage and that was that, because that was where you tended to stay and you knew it at the outset.
I don’t think we can go back, either. We’ve become used to freedom, and social ostracism does not follow divorce the way it used to. And that’s not likely to change, either.
[NOTE: I’m fairly certain that some commenters will bring up the idea of the unfairness of some divorce awards, and the fact that many people—particularly men—avoid marriage because they perceive (rightly or wrongly) that they will lose everything in a divorce initiated capriciously by the other party. I left that whole discussion out of this post because I don’t think it explains the cohabitation effect, which is the topic at hand. Those risks of unfair distribution of assets after divorce would be true whether or not a couple lives together before marriage.]