Saturday Night Live Every Night

Asked for her thoughts on the $700 billion financial rescue proposal, Ms. Palin responded, “But ultimately, what the bailout does is help those who are concerned about the health-care reform that is needed to help shore up our economy helping the – oh, it’s got to be all about job creation, too, shoring up our economy and putting it back on the right track. So health-care reform and reducing taxes and reining in spending has got to accompany tax reductions and tax relief for Americans. And trade, we’ve got to see trade as opportunity, not as a competitive, um, scary thing. But one in five jobs being created in the trade sector today, we’ve got to look at that as more opportunity. All those things under the umbrella of job creation. This bailout is part of that.”

I’m not making this up. Or even playing back the transcript of last week’s hilarious Saturday Night Live, whose writers must be daily on their knees giving thanks to the gods of comedy for delivering such a bountiful gift. Nothing doing. This is the real, unvarnished stuff, straight from the mouth of the would-be next but-one-heartbeat-away President.

Careful examination of this partial peroration reveals no less than six major issues all desperate for serious attention. And that’s counting tax reduction and tax relief as the same thing, which they aren’t necessarily.

Poor Sarah. Plucked up from relative obscurity governing a state with the population of a mid-sized lower 48 city, she’s parachuted into the maelstrom of the Presidential campaign and she hasn’t a clue. Coached by consultants, experts, minders, aides, and other hangers-on, she responds to reasonable one-topic questions with the whole laundry list of popular concerns in the hope that at least one will be taken as having some remote bearing on the matter at hand. If the question is of a more personal nature – her getting her first passport two years ago, for instance – the answer is simultaneously aimed at eliciting sympathy and stoking the fires of the culture wars. Hence: ” I'm not one of those who maybe came from a background of, you know, kids who perhaps graduate college and their parents give them a passport and give them a backpack and say go off and travel the world.”

But appallingly enough, this kind of gibberish is currently pervasive in what pretends to pass for political discourse. Shortly after the $700 billion bill of which Ms. Palin spoke so eloquently was defeated in the House and the stock market promptly cratered, Representative Virginia Foxx exalted, “The market may be down, but the Constitution is up!” No doubt shares in the document, were they available, would have soared on this endorsement. And one of Rep. Foxx’s compatriots, the logic-challenged Rep. Paul Ryan explained his vote in favor thus: “This bill offends my principles, but I’m going to vote for this bill to preserve my principles.”

Well said. Now try “Live from New York. . .”

What They Want To Hear

A Professor of Government I had in college once chided the class for what he described as our unrealistically idealistic view of American politics. This sage, one improbably named Reginald Bartholomew, proposed that the fundamental interest of any politician is to gain, and then hold office. Since the normal means (Florida excluded) to that end is winning the most votes, the politician will be unerringly guided by the majority will of the people, and therefore whatever he or she does, however dubious its apparent wisdom, is actually what most people want. And therefore the right course of action. QED.

This dusty memory was brought to mind by McCain’s remarkable selection of Governor Palin as his running mate. In the aftermath, it emerges that up until close to the last minute, McCain’s preference for a #2 was Joe Lieberman, he of dubious and somewhat confused party loyalties. Reportedly fearful that some of Lieberman’s more reasonable positions would so infuriate the Far Right that they would, instead of the Republican ticket, vote for Ron Paul, Ronald Reagan or Genghis Khan, McCain dropped Joe like a hot rock and offered the job to the Alaskan governor. Since then, of course, at least some of McCain’s fondest wishes have become realities as Obama, the press, and some of the rest of us struggle to find some non-misogynistic way of suggesting the good governor is perhaps not the most qualified person for the job.

Meanwhile, the Republican base is energized, and McCain has at least for the nonce pulled even with Obama in national polls. As Reggie might have said, “What’s wrong with that?”

Here’s what. (And why, perhaps, he saw fit to award me only a C+ in his course.) What McCain’s choice clearly tells us is that he is as cynical, as triangulating as any of the Senatorial colleagues he has recently come to hold in such low regard. McCain, or perhaps his advisors evidently concluded that running against change is a losing proposition – hardly surprising in view of the ruinous results of the serial calamities brought us by the current administration – and that for the faithful, Governor Palin is change personified. As Rick David, McCain’s campaign manager revealingly said, “This election is not about issues. This election is about a composite view of what people take away from these candidates.” Mangled syntax aside, this about says it all. It’s not the economy or any other damned thing. It’s the composite view, stupid. Change is now at the top of the needs pyramid and that McCain will deliver it in copious amounts is evidently the core of the new and improved McCain strategy. If enough people buy into this dazzling flimflam, it just might get him elected. Which will be OK because it will reflect the desires of the people for, altogether now, change.

But change, in and of itself, is a journey without a destination. We know where we are, and it ain’t so great. We know change, somehow or other, will be required to get us somewhere else. Identifying that place, and outlining with some exactitude what will be required for us to get there would seem the least we should ask of our would-be next Presidents. It’s called leadership. I think even Reggie might agree.


(Full disclosure: I am, and have been through numerous relocations, a registered Republican. My threadbare rationale for this apparent denial of logic is a desire to help move the party towards the center of the political spectrum and reduce its emphasis on the so-called cultural “wedge” issues. In this, I’m clearly demonstrating the form of insanity Einstein once described as doing the same thing repeatedly, each time hoping for a different result.)

Making Dan Quayle Look Good

Surely you remember Dan Quayle, the Good President Bush’s surprising choice to run, as it turned out successfully, as his Vice President in 1988? No? The young man from Indiana who, among other mis-statements, mangled logic, and pure mistakes once famously pronounced a mind a terrible thing to lose and opined that the future will be better tomorrow?

Well, no matter. Our subject today touches only incidentally on this worthy, who effectively disappeared from the public eye when he and his boss were emphatically denied second terms. No, today we pause to reflect on John McCain’s breath-taking choice of Sarah Palin as his running mate.

Turning his back on such relative political heavies as Governors Pawlenty and Ridge, Senators Bayh and Lieberman, bazillionare Mitt Romney, and the members of this year’s winning Little League World Series team, McCain has stunned the punditocracy, damped his opponent’s post-convention bounce, and given attendees at the Republican Convention something to talk about in addition to who’s wearing the cutest elephant-themed accessories. Not to mention tightened his grip on the title of Panderer in Chief.

Can anyone over the age of six seriously entertain the notion that a man with exactly Sarah’s experience and qualifications would have merited more than, say, eight seconds of consideration by anyone running for President on other than the American Monster Raving Looney Party ticket? McCain’s choice is nothing if not redolent with blatant sexism. In a monumental exercise of ends-justified means, he has pitched up a candidate intended to appeal not only to the right-of-Genghis Kahn members of his party but to those Hillary supporters so outraged by their hero’s rejection that they would vote for Lucretia Borgia before pulling the lever for Obama and Biden. That many of her loyalists could be gulled by this amazing bait and switch is political cynicism on steroids.

One needn’t have been a Hillary fan to perceive her as being more or less in support of the positions of many women on the issues important to them and, for that matter, anyone else giving a damn about the current parlous state of the nation. Had not the Straight Talk Express been abandoned off road in the weeds, one might have expected John to say, “Look, my friends, at the great thing I have done. A short quarter-century after the Democrats did it, I have elevated a woman to run for national office. For all you disappointed by my opponent’s unconscionable rejection of Hillary, I give you a Vice Presidential candidate who is clearly of the female gender. Now I know some may disagree with her on abortion rights, capital punishment, gun control, same-sex marriage, the theory of evolution, and other issues, but I wanted someone on my platform who could make my own positions look, by comparison, eminently reasonable.”

Well, what are a few policy differences among friends? And what does It matter that apart from some of the flashpoint issues in the culture wars we know essentially nothing about Sarah’s thinking or positions? On matters such as the Middle East conflict, immigration reform, terrorism, educational standards, nuclear arms control, the housing market, Russian belligerency, taxes, Sarah presents a slate free from any markings.

Another frightening aspect of Sarah being the proverbial heartbeat away from a 72-year old is that she admits to being clueless about the position. Early this month, she said in an interview, “But as for that VP talk all the time, I’ll tell you, I still can’t answer that question until somebody answers for me what is it exactly that the VP does everyday? I’m used to being very productive and working real hard in an administration. We want to make sure that that VP slot would be a fruitful type of position, especially for Alaskans and for the things that we’re trying to accomplish up here for the rest of the U.S., before I can even start addressing that question” (CNBC, 8/1/08).

One might be charitable and venture that such stunning ignorance can be excused as the result of lack of familiarity with the national government. After all, Washington for Sarah may be nothing more than the state nearest Alaska. And we need look back no farther than Spiro Agnew for a Vice President who hopelessly confused local and national interests. Perhaps eighteen months as the governor of a state with the population of Memphis, and a preceding run as mayor of a town with fewer residents than were turned away from Obama’s acceptance speech have, through some mystic means, so well prepared her that all she requires is directions to the Vice President’s office. But perhaps not.

Whatever his failings, Dan Quayle brought to the Vice Presidency sixteen years of experience in Congress, two terms each as a Representative and a Senator. We could have done worse and with Sarah Palin, probably have. Somewhere, Dan must be smiling.

Old White-Haired Dude Was Right

No, not that one. Not the guy busily selling out to any group under the tattered Republican tent claiming more than a dozen or so members. Not the guy who’s abandoned most of his previous positions – mostly the intelligent ones. Not the guy who’s given up the Straight Talk Express in favor of the Low Road Mobile.

No, the worthy elder of whom we speak is Adam Smith, whose impact on economic civilization can hardly be overstated. Adam Smith, he of the invisible hand metaphor, lived, studied, and wrote (The Wealth of Nations) in the latter half of the eighteenth century. Over two hundred years on, his analysis of the forces impacting commercial transactions is as cogent and insightful as they were as the ink from his pen was drying.

To grossly over-simplify, Smith ventured that self-interest in a free-market society, besides working to advantage of the individual, would also work for the good of the community as a whole. Check this out: It develops that Americans are driving fewer miles than they used to – a drop of some 40 billion miles over the six months to last May versus the same period a year ago. Hardly surprising when the costs of filling the tank and feeding the average-sized family for a couple of days are about equal. What we have here is the invisible hand busily at work. Sales of low-mpg vehicles have declined to levels rivaling the President’s popularity. And waiting lists for the fuel-efficient Prius are months long because Toyota can’t make them fast enough. The market, without benefit of any particular intervention, is reacting just as Smith would have predicted.

Not that intervention hasn’t been tried. The good folk at OPEC, distraught that sales of the stuff underpinning their economies may reverse their upward spiral are doing what would have been expected to any rational market participant. Or, for that matter, the nearest drug pusher, with whom the OPEC countries have more than a passing similarity. Demand down? Reduce prices. Maybe increase supply a bit. Just don’t let customers kick the habit.

Beyond actual attempts to manipulate the market we have, too predictably in this election season, any number of worthies proposing more-or-less painless solutions to the problem of high-energy costs. The gas and wind generated by these fulminations, could it be harnessed, would significantly ameliorate the original problem. But even according the government’s own figures, throwing open every available spigot to every known U.S. oil and gas field, environmental consequences be damned, would supply our energy needs for at most a year or two, and then only after a decade of field development (see McCain, John, --Pandering).

Probably not even that. Because while we’ve been sleeping, China and India have elbowed their way into the game and are aggressively bidding for the same energy sources we have our eye on. Ignore for the moment that this ability , which helps push the prices we all pay higher, is in large part due to their Scrooge McDuck swimming pools of dollars. Lenin famously said the U.S. would sell the Russians the rope they’d use to hang us. This is better: the U.S. deficit provides China, and others, with oceans of dollars with which they bid up the oil we need, proceeds from the sales of which flow to such bastions of democracy and stalwart friends as Saudi Arabia, Venezuela, Nigeria, Russia, and Libya.

But I digress. The all-too-real individual, community and national pain caused by ionospheric energy prices was at least largely avoidable. How, you might ask? By the simple, if altogether unlikely expedient of a gentle, timely government assist to Smith’s invisible hand. As has been clearly if belatedly demonstrated, gas prices north of $4/gallon have the effect of reducing consumption, both through fewer miles driven and a shift to more fuel-efficient vehicles. Suppose a couple of years ago, the government had raised gasoline taxes to the point where gas cost the same $4/gallon level whose salubrious effects we presently see. Suppose further – yes, this is fantasyland – that a goodly chunk of the revenues generated by this increased tax had been plowed back into the economy to fund new construction and repairs to the transportation infrastructure. Maybe even an alternative energy project or two.

This is not a new idea. John kerry and Tom Friedman among many others, have proposed essentially the same thing. No, all that’s lacking is, and has been a popular understanding of the problem coupled with a willingness to make the modest present sacrifices to avoid horrific long-term costs. Smith’s invisible hand can do much, but not all of the work.

An Exemplary Man, But the Wrong One

Imagine, for a moment, you’re a pilot landing a fighter jet. Instead of the typical runway a couple of miles long, let’s say the runway is 600 feet long and that you must actually touch down somewhere within about a quarter of that length. Now imagine that the runway is moving at, say, 25 miles per hour. And going up and down 20 feet a couple of times a minute. Oh, and it’s a moonless night.

Several words come to mind that might accurately describe those who actually repeatedly and, if one can use the word, routinely perform this maneuver. Among these might be “crazy.” Also “navy carrier pilots.” Having served aboard an aircraft carrier, I knew and can claim some familiarity with these guys, and can assure you that they are wholly unlike the rest of us.

All this comes to mind, of course, in connection with John McCain. Democrats appear to have some difficulty in criticizing Mc Cain – apart, of course, from many of his past, present, and outlined future positions. But criticism of McCain the individual is muted. His unimaginable experience as a prisoner of war seems a kind of Teflon shield, protecting against any ad hominim negativity, such as suggesting that having the right stuff to be a jet jock might not be the best qualification for running the country. And it hardly hurts that in this respect, among others, McCain is clearly the real deal, certainly in comparison to the all-hat-and-no-cattle incumbent.

But the hyper self-assurance, bravado on steroids that are the special province of McCain and his carrier pilot brethren will not serve him – or, selfishly, the rest of us – all that well were he to be President. While it may be that war is “merely the continuation of politics by other means,” as von Clausewitz famously observed, much in the long sad history of mankind begs for exhausting the latter before pursuing the former. It would seem prudent for the finger on the nuclear trigger to be more experienced in the nuances and subtleties of international relations than handling a joy stick. A foreign policy of “Bomb, bomb Iran,” no matter how jocularly offered, is hardly assuring.

One might dare hope that after eight years of a President so blinkered and so supremely self-confident as to be oblivious to any and all indications of failing, let alone already dismally failed policies that we could do better. Self-assurance by all means. But seasoned with the humility to accept that the complexities and consequences of the issues to be confronted rarely if ever lend themselves to the kind of solitary, split-second, seat-of-the-pants reaction required of carrier pilots. Land a jet on a carrier or help a family apply for housing assistance? The latter seems the better preparation for leading the country out of its pitiful morass.

Let Them Eat Cake In the Wine Tasting Room

A moment of silence, please, for Candy Spelling as she struggles with the difficulties of residence downsizing. Leaving her current 56,500 square foot house, with its separate silver and china rooms, gift-wrapping room and wine-tasting room, she’ll be risking claustrophobia in her new 16,500 square foot apartment. As the eyes glaze over, some perspective might be in order. Candy’s apartment – let’s draw the veil of charity over her soon-to-be previous residence – is the equivalent of about seven average houses, according to 2006 U.S. Census figures. Put under the plow, but respecting the downstairs neighbors’ fear of water damage, Candy’s third of an acre could produce a non-irrigated wheat yield of some twenty bushels, or about 1,200 pounds of grain. Refining procedures and baking recipes vary, but it seems safe to assume this amount adequate for more than several two- or three-layer cakes.

You might charitably think Candy’s spatial requirements have at least in part to do with a large number of children, but not so. Her progeny commendably lead their own lives, which include in the case of her daughter, authoring a tell-all book describing the difficulties of growing up Spelling. No, we’re told, Candy has her eye on her two grandchildren. If so, she may come to regret the move-related reduction in her household staff from its current count of 20 to 10, a number which may prove inadequate to keep track of the kids when they come to visit.

But hold. Our topic today has only tangential connection with the hardships of Candy. Her sad story recently appeared in no less an august vehicle than The New York Times. On the front page. Yes, featured among reportage of the mayhem, follies, triumphs and tragedies that constitute our quotidian lives, we’re treated to this brief distraction.

Houston – and all points east, north, and west – we have a problem. Quite beyond the snarky question of what could possibly justify such brobdingnadian real estate excess, even beyond why it should vie for our attention with more real-worldly issues of the day, the problem is: This public display of wildly excessive consumption in a season when the national economy is near flatline, and increasing numbers of good ordinary people are is desperate straits risks stoking at least two dangerous trends.

The first, hardly surprisingly already manifest on the right of the political spectrum, is an unshakeable denial of any responsibility for the current catastrophic circumstances, and an attendant accusation of others for the mess we’re in. One could also mention the rampant hypocrisy of calling loudly for fiscal and moral responsibility while, in a growing number of areas and instances, spectacularly demonstrating anything but.

The second, with depressing symmetry most evident on the left, is an increasing pandering to the ever-sinking lowest common denominator of public opinion. Asked the age-old question of whether ends justify means, Gandhi replied that the two should be consistent – a perception apparently lost on candidates for public office whose eagerness to please seems to preclude any honest assessment of the situation, let alone any realistic remediation.

Meanwhile, maybe Candy will find someone to bake some bread. Or is that Henny Penny?

Fixated

A couple of eons ago, before the eon of the just-concluded primary season, Fleetwood Mac’s “Don’t Stop (Thinking About Tomorrow)” was the leitmotif of the first Clinton Presidential campaign. At a level of irony worthy of Shakespeare, the same unrelenting fixation on the future that served her husband’s candidacy so well has helped doom hers.

Hillary’s chosen path, from the moment she and Bill struck their Faustian deal back in Arkansas, led straight to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Well, perhaps not straight. Along the way were some minor detours – Whitewater, bimbo eruptions, impeachment proceedings and the like. Through it all however, Hillary’s gaze remained tightly, unwaveringly fixed on the prize.

But focusing only on the future makes it difficult to either remember yesterday or take note of today. Having the nomination, in fact having been anointed the inevitable candidate, why pay attention to anything this side of the Democratic convention?

This might have worked if everyone else in the room had been reading from the same script. Oops. From out of the weeds comes this one-term Senator with a funny name, no record to speak of, and some crazy sky pie message of change. And starts winning, plowing through the rest of the contenders like the New York Giants playing the “B” team of Smithtown Elementary.

To which Hillary’s response is. . .pretty much nothing. Or close enough to it until it’s clear the S.S. Clinton is headed for the rocks at great speed, at which point ensues much confusion, and lots of the kind of dumb mistakes people make while running around like their hair’s on fire. Which, of course, only worsens Hillary’s standing in the eyes of many of those people not already enlisted in her army of the disillusioned, disadvantaged, and otherwise dissed.

Looking over the myriad lessons of history, Hillary could have picked up on the suspicion, if not outright antipathy commonly felt towards those who would don the crown before the coronation. The mighty brought low is not only a theme mossy with age, but exceeded in popularity perhaps only by the love triangle. Admittedly, there’s something of a schizophrenic view of ambition and humility as desirable traits. But all “I’m entitled” and no “Aw, shucks” is a foolproof recipe for failed dreams.

And as Hillary considers her options, she might modify the lyrics of “Don’t Stop” a bit:

Why not think about times to come,
And not about the things that you’ve done,
If your life was bad to you,
There’s always two-oh-one-two.