All the Small Things

What is happening to our BIG election?  Our moment of truth.  The most important election of our lifetime? I thought this was going to be the knock-down, drag-out, intellectual brawl of the century. The moment Americans finally chose a path with clarity and purpose.

Instead the campaign is full of insipid drivel. Mitt Romney says 47% don't pay taxes and won't vote for him in illegally filmed hidden camera video. This is scandalous and unAmerican and sure proof of his superior skill at analysis and thorough grasp of truth. No one disputes 47% of Americans pay no income taxes and no one disputes 47% of Americans are sure to vote for President Obama. But dare to explain these two facts simultaneously off-camera and they suddenly become sinister.

Not to worry, we can talk about other things. We can talk about whether Mitt Romney paid 14.1% of his substantial income in tax last year and whether that means he voluntarily chose to overpay and what in the world he must be up to to overpay his taxes.

As an aside it is noteworthy that rich liberals who constantly caterwaul for more taxes and sacrifice have never been accused of overpaying their taxes. And so it stands to reason: when a conservative does it he must be up to no good.

We could also talk about the cash positions of the campaign. Whether Romney or Obama and their collective supporters PACs, Super PACs, and SUPER DUPER PACs have raised more money.

We can talk about Anne Romney's jet making an emergency landing in Denver due to a smoke invested cabin. Almost makes one pine for the days of yore when cabins were filled with cigar smoke.

We can talk about Tim Pawlenty resigning from the campaign to lead a lobbying group, as though looking out for his livelihood 40 days from now is a sure sign of the collapse.

Meanwhile, we don't talk about the abominable impacts the Affordable Care Act is already begin to wrought across the land. With insurance companies pulling out of states, merging or employers preparing to drop retirees as soon as they qualify for the public dole.

We don't talk about the looming tax hikes and spending cuts that both parties agreed to and no one claims.

We don't talk about the incineration of 1/3 of the world, the killing of an American ambassador, and the loss of the Afghan war.

We are, by Romney's incompetence, Obama's brazenness and the media's fecklessness sliding toward an election without purpose, poise, or promise.  An election so small we hardly notice it at all.

While that may seem a blessing to those poor television viewers in a handful of swing states, the rest of us were hoping for rather more.

It is time to get big and get loud. Go hard or go home. Find a voice or leave a void. The time for small things is over.

The Saccharine of Sacrifice

Aztec sacrifice in portrait

Nothing warms the blood of a political contrarian quite like convention season, yet this does not necessarily equate to actual bloodlust. With conventions there are all the deliciously choreographed speeches and sloganeer banners and base banality that have come to make up our modern political spectacle, there are also real nuggets of note.

My assumption is that all Democrat conventions are orchestrated by Broadway directors and all Republican conventions are produced by on-loan corporate communications departments. But both end up with roughly the same mix of carefully scripted pablum. When they don't, inquiring minds take notice.

In this case my objection is to Governor Chris Christie's "keynote" address at the Republican convention. I know it is by now conventional wisdom that the address missed the mark, focused too much on Christie and too little on Romney and otherwise failed to find the G-spot of political pundits. Fine.

My objection is with what he actually said and what they predictably ignored. Somewhere near the end and perhaps lost in disappointment was Gov. Christie's admonition that America demanded "shared sacrifice." I may have said before and undoubtedly will say again: I find the entire notion of national shared sacrifice anathema to the entire American project.

Imagine a football team behind at half-time. The score is 35-3. The coach takes them into the locker room and says, "Look, only a few of you are getting hit play after play. We need to go out there and share the hits, distribute the tackles. If only all 11 men on the field could take an equal measure of the punishment, we might pull through this thing."

Imagine a good Samaritan who comes across a grisly car crash. Upon finding a victim with a badly crushed leg which is trapping her in a burning car, he says, "don't worry, I'll cut off my left arm so that our suffering is equal."

The entire letter, spirit and motivation behind shared sacrifice assumes impending doom. Nobody voluntarily shares sacrifice unless the end is near. Up to that point any rational human being shares concern, cooperates on solutions and contributes effort.

To be overtly gruesome, when plane crash victims chronicled in the movie "Alive" were facing the end, no one said "I'll eat your arm if you eat mine." Instead they found the strongest among themselves and sent them out on a treacherous, last ditch mission to find help.

America doesn't need shared sacrifice. Sacrifice is for pawns. America needs champions. It needs those who succeed in spite of the system, the circumstances or the season. Those who bring others along through their sheer grit and determination. Americans know how to work, want to succeed and impulsively take risks. When the tax code, the regulators and the do-gooders stand aside, it is amazing what accidentally gets done.

I will not share sacrifice. I will share work. I will not ask someone else to sacrifice for me. I will ask for a chance.  No man should be asked to give more than the full devotion of his abilities. To take and not earn is a tempting sin. To willingly earn so that others may take is equally so.

Virtue is found in striving for the substantive, not sacrificing for the saccharine.

Ryan Over Spilt Milk

We've gone from a sad complain to a real campaign in the space of a name. Paul Ryan. He is we hear a wiz kid, a tone-deaf fool and the gift that keeps on giving. He has forced priorities on a Congress of such low regard and little principle that coherent sentences are considered controversial. Yet he is so tone-deaf that he will single-handedly scuttle every close race this cycle.

The internal division over the selection of Paul Ryan as the assumed Republican nominee for vice president has gripped both parties with equal vigor. Democrats are giddy about the possibility of running against his willingness to save their favorite entitlement. But they quietly worry that he might have out progressed them. Republicans are giddy about an energetic idea man giving direction to their ticket. But they quietly worry he might have out thought them.

I think the selection is brilliant and risky and no where in politics is that a good combination. Politics is supposed to be about caution and reaction even when it seems to be about leadership. "Hope and change" should have convinced us about that. President Obama's 2008 campaign was designed in reaction to the Bush presidency, not in anticipation of the future. All of the president's myriad gifts were lost on governance because his candidacy was built on opposition and vagaries. 

Mitt is the embodiment of caution and bad at reaction. Now he is the champion of calculation. The math was simple. A Republican will be saddled with the record of Congress and the bogeyman of MediScare, better to add an articulate and capable champion and multiply by enthusiasm.

People are excited by Ryan. Or they will be. He is young. Athletic. Smart. Articulate. And above all he is so bold he has forced his entire caucus to back his youth, intelligence and boldness.  Excitement leads to votes and votes lead to victory. 

Romney could have lost over Ryan, but Ryan was going to be a reality in the race regardless. 

Choosing intelligence and boldness is exactly the right choice. If the darker instincts of our national nature lead to defeat for the ticket, it will certainly lead to a new paradigm over time. It is always better to make the best of spilt milk. 

Wont to Want

I've experienced something of an out of body politic experience in the wake of Rick Santorum's recent announcement of his candidacy for President of the United States in 2016.  That is to say, his withdrawal from the 2012 primary race.  I was sort of disappointed to see him go.

The state of the race has been so frustratingly directionless that I've avoided commenting for a good long time.  So take that Process!  Yet now that it has ended with a whimper, I'm struck by a new perspective.

Why did I so loathe Mr. Santorum's positions and yet quietly champion his candidacy?  Why do I find the very idea of Mitt Romney so              ?  Mr. Santorum has been nothing if not an improbable candidate.  His tireless and Quixotic efforts in Iowa will be taught in political science departments across the country.  Unfortunately since they will all be taught by socialists the lessons will be pathetically wrong.  Regardless, it is impossible to overlook Mr. Santorum's passion and conviction.  He may be six kinds of crazy, but he fervently believes in seven of them.  

In contrast Mr. Romney has perfected the awkwardness of indecision.  It isn't that he doesn't make arguments while pointing his finger with vigor.  It is that this delivery seems like a badly learned lesson in a poorly taught acting class.  When it comes to Mr. Romney, few believe that conviction is distinguishable from convenience.  He will now almost certainly be the Republican nominee for president, and yet he can't even convince people he's certain.

So why the different effect?  Each of these men has realized meaningful electoral success. Yet their approaches are diametrically opposed.  The right question is, what do they want?  

It is often asked, "Who would want to be president?"  Yet in selecting a president we rarely apply that logic.  And in this is my revelation: Take away all the form and substance and spin and simply ask, why do these men want to be president?

This, I think, is getting to the paradox.  Mr. Romney seems to want to be president because being president is prestigious and was denied his dad.  It is the highest achievement of someone of his breeding, education, and aspiration.  The presidency is itself a good worth attaining.  

Mr. Santorum wants--I intend the present tense-- to be president to champion underdog causes and press issues.  He fervently believes that the convictions of his heart are prescriptions for the nation.  It is the highest calling for someone of his feeling, faith, and inspiration.  The cause is itself worth championing. 

The tendency toward causes versus the tendency toward accomplishments.  This is the difference.  I have no doubt that Mitt Romney's leadership is better for the country than Mr. Santorum's allegiances.  Yet, it is hard to escape an uncomfortable truth: Santorum wants it for all the right reasons, even if he is wrong.  Mitt wants it for all the wrong reasons, even if he is right.  

This, I think, is why I say good riddance to Mr. Santorum while a bit verklempt.   

Retreat, Elite

You can't spend five minutes listening to conservatives talk without hearing someone invoke the word elite.  Rush Limbaugh rails against the Washington elite while Newt Gingrich has received remarkable electoral traction with his attacks on the elite media.  Meanwhile Mitt Romney has used his status as a Washington, DC outsider as a selling point against Messrs Santorum and Gingrich who are of course Washington insiders, and by extension elite.

Digging deeper it is difficult not to notice a chasm of discourse between bombastic populists like Mr. Limbaugh and the conservative punditry who write columns and appear on news shows.  I have been particularly struck at the reaction received by attention to social issues.  Not even a decade ago it was the top Republican operatives in Washington who used gay marriage as a rallying cry to turn out voters for George Bush's reelection.  Today none of the Washington crowd--including former Bush aides--want anything to do with Rick Santorum's firebrand stances on social conservatism.  Running against sex and college--as Mr. Santorum has--is not a message most Republican commentators and Washington insiders want anything to do with. Naturally this makes them elitists.

I have written before about the problems with the permanent political establishment.  This entire discussion about the elite is part of the same argument, and it is clearly a timely one.  Congress is wildly unpopular, economic times are tough, voters are frustrated if not outright angry.  It should be a good time to be anti-elite.  Which is why I think it is time for the entire Republican apparatus to disestablish itself.  I don't mean dissolving the party, I mean disassociating itself from anything elite.

Here are a few modest proposals:

Oh For Crayon Out Loud

You occasionally hear about art critics who laud works of art by unknown artists for their depth, emotion, nuance, and whatever else art critics look for in a work, only to find out that the artist was a juvenile elephant or a geriatric chimpanzee.  These reports are meant to be provocative inquiries into the objective value of art and the subjective tastes of critics.  Is art less appreciable when it is created by random acts of pachyderm than by tortured emotions of humans?  Another way of saying this might be, does the quality of the message depend on the quality of the messenger?

What if we found a story written in poorly formed letters of crayon:  Page after page of juvenile chicken scratch across countless pieces of construction paper that happened to be a work of Shakespearean quality?  Would the value of the work depend upon the value of the medium in which it was delivered?

I ask that in order to ponder this:  Do we emphasize the quality of the messenger and the clarity of the delivery too much in politics?

Mama He's Lazy

It isn't hard to read the headline: "Santorum Defends Satan Comments" and think, "oh boy, here we go again."  I've been pondering for weeks what exactly to say about Rick Santorum.  I even thought for awhile that I might avoid saying anything at all in the mistaken hope that he would fade away as a candidate--or maybe be forced out by a tragic sweater vest accident.  Alas it wasn't to be.

Therefore, my basic conclusion is that Rick Santorum isn't crazy, he's lazy. 

I admit that crazy is the more popular moniker, and it doesn't require an opposition research team to build the case.  I also allow that accusing a law school educated, eight time father, former congressman, former senator, and leading presidential candidate of being lazy is to risk appearing mentally unstable myself.  Nevertheless, that is what I'm going to try and do.

The Bay State Boys

It is not a good time to be competing under the banner of Massachusetts.  This February has provided a bruising reality check to two Bay Staters in two very different fields of competition.  Both are unusually handsome men.  Both have experienced phenomenal success in their careers.  Each was born out of state, but achieved his highest success in Boston.  Both lost four years ago, and both expected to win in 2012.  Yes, February has been unkind to Tom Brady and Mitt Romney.

Unfortunately, each might well have done better with the other man's playbook.  Messrs Brady and Romney might enjoy shared drinks and commiseration, but they would have done well to have swapped game plans before and forgotten hindsight and hand wringing now.  From this humble observer's perspective, each got it wrong in a way that would have worked for the other.

Sandbox Saturation

I suppose it is fitting that it is early February, because I find the ever-escalating Syria kerfuffle so irritatingly repetitive that it is rather like the old Bill Murray movie Groundhogs Day.  (Although I note CNN hasn't the good grace to play Sonny and Cher between segments.)  How long must we suffer through an endless parade of Middle East woes?  When is it one tinpot dictator too many for the dictates of conscience to decide? 

I admit to pining for the days before we spoke fluidly about Sunni's and Shiites, fundamental Islam and Fatwas. Before Iraq went south, Afghanistan went nowhere, and Iran went nuclear.  Alas, just as I was lamenting the dictator fatigue presented by Bashar Assad's ghastly reminder of the perilousness of anything so bold as civilization, I went dumpster diving through the archives of my parent's basement. 

There I found a yellowed newspaper--actually newspapers--which my 11 year old self had obviously kept to commemorate the Gulf War; it was dated January 14, 1991.  It wasn't the paper with the six inch letters spelling war, but one of the lead-up issues as the world was drawn into the inevitable.  I was struck by an article discussing none other than Syria.  There was some question whether then "president" Hafez Assad would back his Ba'ath party counterpart  in Iraq-- Saddam Hussein-- or join the rest of the Arab and Western world in resisting Saddam's push into Kuwait.  The short article lacked substance, but it got me to thinking: what is Syria's deal?

It seemed interesting to me that Syria backed the worldwide consensus then and is the ire of international will now.  From there I wondered like others about the surprising steel in the back of the Arab League--not exactly a poster child of democracy and liberalism.  What about Russia's willingness to incur the undiplomatic wrath of everyone from France to Qatar? 

And then I remembered the old saw that nations have no friends, but only interests.

Plural Potential

When I was in grammar school I learned a mnemonic poem designed to force me to memorize anything under the guise of making me memorize something about the tenses of the verb to be.  Allowing for variance over time, it went something like this:

An is is just a was that was and that is very small,
An is is was so fast it hardly was an is at all,
And as an is advances to become a was you see,
Another is must take its place and cease to be will be. 

I say this because I am somewhat proud of having remembered the ditty over multiple decades now, and to establish that I know something of the English language.

I also know this: while it may take two to tango, it certainly takes two to plural. 

Which leads me to an inevitable point about Newt Gingrich.  Newt was ridiculed and left for naught last summer when his campaign staff resigned en masse.  I know, I heard it on the radio.  At the time and many times since, the erstwhile Speaker has insisted that he would run a "campaign of big ideas" all in open contradiction to the rules of presidential campaigns which are meant to be run by small minds.  This was and is a noble purpose.

Even a Blind Nut Gets Squirrely

Mitt Romney--a man of whom it might be said "He lacks the vision thing"-- had an interesting week.  He decisively won the Florida primary by carefully articulating no vision, while instead single mindedly focusing on the expensive evisceration of Mr. Gingrich. 

Heretofore nothing interesting about which to type. 

Fortunately, the world was spared the boredom of perfectly predictable politics when Mr. Romney rose on Wednesday morning.  Whether he'd enjoyed one too many celebratory appletinis, as has been suggested, or he simply felt a little squirrely remains unknown.  What we do know is that he came close to saying something relevant.  Close.

Who'll Stop the Reign?

On the surface, there is a primary contest raging in the Republican party between two very different men.  The casual observer might say that it is a difference of temperament or of philosophy or even of character.  The cynic will dismiss the whole affair as typical, mean-spirited, and the politics of personal destruction.  I think there is a lot more going on.

The two political parties that actually matter in this country have fought each other to an impasse.  For more than a decade now, we've been hearing about the 50:50 nation, epitomized most dramatically by the Florida recount of 2000. 

However, as each party has grown increasingly ideological and intransigent on the surface, they have each grown more entrenched and enamoured of Washington.  A 50:50 nation maximizes the split of spoils between each party, and guarantees the kind of see-sawing back and forth that keeps the coffers full and the plebes employed.  Gone are the days when Democrats so dominated capitol hill that the natural order was for surplus former staffers to fill the ranks of journalists and lobbyists and themselves move on to elected politics.  Here are the days when both parties churn out minions who have earned their horns in the halls of congressional office buildings.  For a large number of these minions, the electoral cycle is a fact of life and an acceptable cost of doing business.

In biblical terms it is seven years of plenty followed by seven years of famine.  Here today, gone tomorrow, back after that.  Each respective partisan takes the long view and realizes that some years will be spent "in power" and some years will be spent "out of power."  The respective troops to each cause thereby expect to profit some, lose some, but in the end do alright. 

Gratuitous Silence

Clique to Start

If we were going to set up a fake high school, what kind of people would we need?  This is the sort of question a screenwriter might ask before making a movie about life in high school.  Think The Breakfast Club. To write an entertaining movie, you need to draw sharp distinctions that accentuate differences and build conflict.  With variation over time, the list looks something like this:

Pretty:
These are the kids who have always gotten what they want, because they are really good looking.  They are homecoming royalty, captains of sports teams, and if they play football-- quarterback.  They don't think deeply because they never need to.

Tough:
These are the students who have been shaving since 5th grade.  They are too busy intimidating weaker students to bother doing anything productive in high school.  They drive big trucks or fast cars that they built themselves from recycled beer cans.  If they play football they are linemen.  They don't need to know stuff, they just need to stuff the know-it-alls in lockers. 

Smart:
These are the know-it-alls. They choose to sit at the front of the class.  They own at least one suit before graduation.  They participate in things like model UN and debate camp.  Sometimes the pretty kids let them run for offices like Class Treasurer so they can do the president's work behind the scenes.  They know more than most of their teachers, and are often frustrated that others don't appreciate them.

Devout:
These students participate in many activities, but are easily identified by their Christian devotion.  They have t-shirts that change popular slogans into praise for Jesus.  They organize prayer services around the flag pole.  They spend four years plotting to subversively conduct a public prayer at commencement.  They are nice, earnest kids who just seem so serious all the time. 

Crazy:
These are the kids who wear trench coats in August and drive old hearses.  They keep their hair out of style, never have a tan, and claim to be vegan by freshman year.  They don't talk much, but when they do it is usually to describe a conspiracy theory.  Even the tough kids leave them alone because you just never know what's in the hearse. 

Likewise, presidential debates make better television if you draw sharp distinctions that accentuate differences and build conflict.  Right now the list looks something like this:

30 Second Stretch

Fox News has really taken a dramatic step for tonight's presidential debate in South Carolina.  After careful consultation, focus groups, dry-runs, and approval from their attorneys, the powers that be have decided to add--wait for it-- a full 30 seconds to the standard responses allowed by candidates in the initial or non-rebuttal portions of the debate.  Whoah.  That's heady stuff.  After the previous 497 debates have held to the strict 60 second response followed by 30 second follow-up, Fox News has once again gone rogue. 

At least that is the conventional sarcasm.  But I think it is worth noting that 30 seconds is a 50% expansion in available response time.  I also note that after 497 previous debates, the candidates have gotten pretty darn good at looking smart for very short bursts of time.  If only enemies foreign and domestic were so accomodating of a 60 sec./30 sec. format.  "Mr. President you'll have 60 seconds to lay out your budget, and Mr. Reid you will have 30 seconds to respond." 

I'm hoping the longer answers advance the discourse.  It is hard to say anything in 90 seconds, but it is also harder to say nothing.

Pondering Persia

This is only a thought experiment.  It's not even a decent conspiracy theory.

For many years now it has been de rigueur for politicians of (nearly) all stripes to condemn Iran’s alleged appetite for nuclear weapons, but lately we’ve been hearing a lot more about the pesky Persians.  Each new threat and counter-threat, accusation, warning, and denial seems to drag the Islamic Republic and the West inexorably closer to conflict.  It seems like bad timing.

A major criticism of the Iraq War argues that the resulting destabilization of Iraq serves to empower Iran.  According to this argument, Saddam Hussein’s genocidal regime served as a dutiful and well-placed counterweight to Iran’s hegemonic mullahs.  Removing Hussein upset a delicate balance by turning power over to Iraq’s Shi’a majority, and by creating a divided, tenuous, and above all weak government. 

A corollary to this criticism is that the protracted battles in both Iraq and Afghanistan have served to weaken the United States military and forever suppress the will to again make war in the Middle East.  This morale busting adventurism has therefore emboldened the Iranian regime at the worst possible moment—when it is on the cusp of nuclear weapons. 

But maybe that isn’t what’s happening at all.  Maybe the past dozen years have been in part about keeping Iran in the crosshairs all along.  Maybe the wars in Iraq and even Afghanistan were part of a much longer strategic arc only now approaching the ultimate target.  Maybe.

The Bain of Our Resistance

An old and predictable story hit the airwaves recently, and it wasn't from one of the thirty-five new fairy tale shows.  It was the shock the media expressed when Newt Gingrich and others started to question the business practices of Mitt Romney's old firm Bain Capital.  Mr. Romney had been a "vulture capitalist" angrily drawled Gov. Perry.  Yet by midweek Newt seemed to be walking back the line of attack and one of Perry's South Carolina supporters fled his campaign in protest.  Talk of backlash was all the rage.  Everyone should take a deep breath.

The standard headline and television teaser hued to the themes of: "GOP Attacks Business" and "Republicans Doing Democrats' Job".  Proof, the pontificaters said, of the cynicism among the candidates.  Regardless of the merits of Mr. Romney's tenure at Bain, the entire discussion has been far less than the process deserves.  Without delving into the economic weeds, it bears saying that this beautifully simple but horribly confused story begs for a rewrite. 

Beauty and the Beast

I've watched two speeches tonight and both were beautiful and both were beastly. The difference couldn't be stronger.

Mitt Romney's speech was rhetorical brilliance. I said in a text what I know is true: "they practiced this for a long time." It was replete with well placed alliteration and red meat attacks and conservative talking points. It had the rhythm of great poetry and the pointed momentum of great prose. It was obviously crafted with great diligence over time, rehearsed and preserved for just such a moment. Had Hollywood screenwriters written a script for George Clooney it would pale for tightness and want for delivery. It was the second best speech I heard tonight.

The other speech I heard was from Ron Paul. It was disjointed, fraught with grammatical missteps and plagued with awkward non sequiturs. Even the logical segues weren't obviously such at first blush. But it was pure. It was bold and brash and brave. He spelled out a vision so radical that it couldn't be serious until it was. I'm not a virile supporter of Dr. Paul, but his message is somehow right. It makes one uncomfortable and squirmy, but also patriotic and passionate. So much of what he says is so right that you can't help but overlook the disjointed delivery and embrace the patriotic beauty.

And this was only two in the second contest. If only we all got a chance.

Idol vs. Idle

It is the morning of the First In The Nation New Hampshire Presidential Primary.  (I hope that gives the critical contest its due. Should I boost the text size?)  There has been no shortage of ink spilt and breath wasted pontificating over every diner visit in Iowa and New Hampshire.  All for the news media to advance two opposing messages, 1) the nomination is a foregone conclusion, and 2) the votes are such pivotal moments in the history of the republic that you should tune in early and often for extended coverage.  Regardless of who wins, the country has already lost. 

That's why I am calling today for a bipartisan, blue ribbon Commission on Presidential Primaries.  My only criterion for the commission is that it be chaired by Simon Cowell.