Oratorical Animal

Bleah

It's been so rainy, gray and nasty that I feel as if I'm living in Seattle. The economy sucks. The Europeans are in a snit. Joe Biden may soon be doing GM commercials ("God help me but I LOVE the Chevy Malibu and so should you.") My wonderful, sweet friend has laryngitis. My dog's new pills make him fart. I'm doing too much real writing and not enough blogging. College basketball has worn out its welcome.

I would like some of that baseball now please. Next week cannot come fast enough. Baseball. Now. Please.

Duplicity/Trust

I've not worshipped at my local multiplex of late nearly as much as I used to, but spring break always seems to cry out for the movies, and so off we went to see Duplicity. We enjoyed it immensely. Then, we came home to a mediocre review from the usually reliable Lisa Schwarzbaum in my popular culture bible, Entertainment Weekly. Usually, the two of us get along like gangbusters, and so I wondered what the heck was going on here.

A couple of things, I think. The opening line of the review references Michael Clayton, the wonderful 2007 film by the same director/writer. Uh-oh. I admire Schwarzbaum because she usually gets genre. She does not expect every film to be the same and she generally understands that an action movie is different from a romantic comedy is different from an art film and that they need to be evaluated accordingly. For whatever reason (lousy Junior Mints?), she lost that ability here. She came to this film expecting to see Michael Clayton. She wanted the movie to reflect on our economic and emotional depression, to offer a mature consideration of corporate culture, and to provide "a more resonant despair" than it did. Yep, that's what I want in a caper comedy. Resonant despair. I came out of Ocean's Eleven thinking, "Great film, but where's the resonant despair?"

In a larger sense, though, her determination to see Michael Clayton blinded her to the serious point this "comedy" had to offer. As fun as it was, as beautiful as these two people are (Clive Owen and Julia Roberts are stunning here), this movie portrayed a world without trust. That's the reason for its title, Lisa. The director helped you all that he could; in a film filled with reversals, the title is Duplicity, so it's a film about...say it with me...trust. Or the lack thereof. Not to give anything away, but no one trusts anyone else. In fact, I'd argue that it's a pretty thinly disguised allegory about the morality and competence of our post 9/11, Dick Cheney-infused intelligence services. The two main characters are former officers for MI-6 and the CIA. The movie make a pretty simple but useful point--at a certain level of distrust, you can't get anything done. If you distrust everyone, then no one will help you and you will fail. Trust is necessary for competence.

Not an observation that will change the world, but, then, MC told us what we already knew as well. But it did so beautifully. Similarly, this is a lovely film with a pretty strong core. And you can look at Clive Owen/Julia Roberts. 

 

A Student of History

He knew W.E.B. DuBois and Barack Obama. There's a life. Rest in peace, Professor John Hope Franklin.

For the Sake of Change

On September 3, 1780, Alexander Hamilton, then a twenty-nothing aide to General Washington, wrote a long letter to Congressman James Duane delineating the "changes necessary to save us from ruin." The American Revolution was not going well ("Without a speedy change, the army must dissolve; it is now a mob, rather than an army, without cloathing, without pay, without provision, without morals, without discipline; we have become the University of Illinois on Unofficial St. Patrick's Day") and young Hamilton knew exactly what one and all should do to solve the problems. Seven thousand words made that clear.

Near the end, he confidently noted, "There are epochs in human affairs, when novelty even is useful. If a general opinion prevails that the old way is bad, whether true or false, and this obstructs or relaxes the operation of the public service, a change is necessary if it be for the sake of change. This is exactly the case now. 'Tis a universal sentiment that our present system is a bad one, and that things do not go right on this account." 

I think that's what Matt Yglesias nicely identifies here. I do not pretend to possess a level of expertise that would allow me to judge the Geithner plan for saving the financial system. As a good citizen, I've tried to read the debate and understand the issues, but they occasionally--more than occasionally--surpasseth my economic expertise.

But I am a student of rhetoric. I know that "novelty even" is a powerful rhetorical device. A "general opinion prevails" that our present system is bad. On too many levels, from the outline of the plan, as Paul Krugman notes, to those who staff the Obama Administration's economic positions (Fed hands, Clinton hands) to those "private investors" who will price the "legacy loans" (see below), this plan is more of the same. 

Most Americans, including this one, are going to have significant problems entrusting our economic system to the boneheads in NYC who created the crisis we're now bailing them out of--and helping those "savvy investors" realize a nice guaranteed profit besides. Again, I possess only the economic expertise of a Lake Wobegon child, but I know rhetoric. President Obama has not powerfully shown his understanding of the "'universal sentiment that our present system is a bad one" and that he won on "change." 

Or, to put it another way, clean out some moneychangers, Mr. President. Go into the temple, knock over some tables, and roust some hedge fund managers. Rather than, y'know, hiring them to start what is, in effect, a government-run hedge fund. I say that not just because it would make us feel better (although it would). I say that because a lot of Americans are going to keep their money in a nice, safe government insured savings account and continue the collapse of consumer demand until those people are running the prison laundry rather than the government's money. Seriously.

We're Supposed to be the HONEST Ones

In a Wall Street Journal op-ed this morning, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner redefined "toxic assets" into "legacy loans." Did I miss the announcement that Karen Hughes had accepted a job at Treasury? If we define "legacy" as "fat, drunk, and stupid is no way to go through life, son," then, yes, maybe these are legacy loans. But that's the only way.

This is just wrong. These are toxic assets. They are radioactive sludge. They are the sorts of things that live in the back of fraternity refrigerators. To try to call them "legacy" loans is absurd. It is the sort of rhetorical strategy that gets you laughed at for hours on blogs, at desks, at the Daily Show, Colbert, SNL, and elsewhere. More seriously, it causes people to doubt the honesty of your whole plan when you play with the parts. Why not call them "enhanced interrogation assets"? That worked so well. 

Here's a test. If you'd have laughed aloud (and then cried) if the Bush Administration would have done it, then you should do the same today. Honestly. This bit of dishonesty alone should cost Geithner his job.

BeagleMania

You probably wouldn't have noticed, but I've added a new readable and I highly recommend it: Fred and Hank Mark America. Andrew Sullivan referenced it and it's the story of two humans and two beagles and their trip across this great land, or at least the Gulf Coast. The profiles of the beagles alone are worth a visit. The dog at the top, the oratorical animal herself, is only part beagle, but I get it. Boy, do I get it.

Governor Patty's Day

I spent my lunch hour watching Governor Pat Quinn's Budget Address to the Illinois General Assembly. For those outside of Illinois, Pat Quinn succeeded Governor Felony Hair seven weeks ago and was given some extra time to work up a budget. Thus, the budget plan became public yesterday and he gave the equivalent of a state of the state speech today.

I like this guy. For the first time in a long time, I feel as if an adult is in charge of the Illinois Executive branch. He's not a great orator; he simply doesn't have the chops. But there were some nice lines in the speech and it was beautifully structured. I hope/suspect that one of his aides, a communication graduate of the UI, may be responsible for that. Several things to think about.

First, Quinn spoke as if we are reasonable adults. We face an $11 1/2 billion budget deficit and we've become famous across the nation, indeed the world, for the dishonesty and corruption in our politics. He took on both problems and came across as calm, measured, and decent. Most of all, he came across as decent. Here was a man who'd thought about the problems we face and proposed a clear, honest plan for addressing them. No more oily gimmicks.

Second, his plan may or may not pass but I give him credit for this: he was an equal opportunity offender. He risked the displeasure of his own coalition by proposing cuts to the state pension system (public employee unions will love that) and he risked the displeasure of Republicans and others by proposing an income tax increase. In other words, Quinn created a reasonable outline. I suspect there will be negotiations and I suspect that, if the legislature accepts his offer to act as adults, they can work something out. Some citizens won't like one aspect, some another. But the time has come to act as Quinn acted today, to act as adults facing a significant and difficult public policy problem.

That's the third thing. Throughout the speech, Quinn addressed our identity problem. We make fun of what's happened, but we're also vaguely ashamed. That hair is what the Land of Lincoln has come down to. Yuck. On one level, Quinn constructed Illinois as a real community. In one instance, he used the trope of synecdoche, the part standing for the whole, when he invoked the response of Metropolis (yes, there is a Superman) to a terrible ice storm. That communal reaction becomes our communal act now. Nice. We care for one another. On another level, he proposed a kind of bargain to all of the legislators. This is an adult proposal, Quinn in effect said; not quite all the details are filled in yet, but they soon will be and they'll be difficult. Budget cuts and tax increases will happen. It's not ok now, he said, not now just to say no. Illinois has to balance its budget. So, let's begin a reasonable adult process of negotation. The time has come for responsibility. Made me feel pretty good about the state.

Until Mike Madigan oozed onto my television screen and began to mutter about evil tax increases and, believe it or not, open and honest government. Speaker Madigan knows about as much about open and honest government as Jack Abramoff. Madigan is a Democrat, but I don't have to like him. He made the Blago mess as bad as it was due to his unwillingness to take any responsibility for state operations for the past several years. If Blago wasn't going to be an adult, then Madigan needed to be one. Instead, he took his toys and went home.

The first few words that slid out of him made it apparent that Mike isn't sure whether his daughter the Attorney General wants the Governor's seat or the Senate chair for her birthday so Daddy's not going to let Quinn sit easily in the former. Madigan & Madigan need to grow up or go away. We're in too much trouble for these games. Enough is enough for all of those folks up there, Democrat and Republican. Stop it. Behave. Find a way to make a budget.  

Obama's Rhetorical Tasks

As I noted last time, there's been a blip in media perceptions of the president, regardless of the fact that his popularity and favorability ratings remain high. I don't think the MSM matter all that much. But they might be canaries in the coal mine. The president needs to address three persuasive challenges over the next few months.

First, he needs to get a grip on the financial crisis, AIG, and the rest. I'm not talking about the "bonuses" or "performance enhancements" or "longevity money" or whatever. He needs an overall plan and he needs to present it in a convincing fashion. Rightly or wrongly, it's becoming easy to compare Obama unfavorably with FDR; within a week, FDR adopted a plan, addressed the nation, and solved his banking crisis. Obama hasn't come close. Increasingly, it's looking like the president, faced with the need to sacrifice either Geithner or Daschle on the altar of populist anger, picked the wrong guy.

I emphasize this because incompetence on a president resembles fleas on a dog. They arrive, multiply, and never leave. Massive efforts, usually involving WMD, are required to get rid of them. Bush never recovered from Katrina; Carter never recovered from early mistakes with Congress; Clinton took years to recover from midnight basketball and don't ask, don't tell. Arguably, he never did. So, Obama needs to disperse the slowly gathering fog of incompetence from around his Treasury Department and he needs to do it NOW.

Second, he needs to persuade leaders of the G-20, particularly Europe (excepting Great Britain), that they need to live up to the IMF's call for at least 2% of GDP in stimulus. Right now, the Europeans seem convinced that new regulations will save the day. Yes, they are necessary--but the immediate need is to substitute government demand for the utter collapse in private sector demand around the world. China, Japan, and the US appear, at this moment, to be undertaking heavy doses of stimulus with more perhaps to come. The Germans, by contrast, want to be free riders. Allow those three countries to go into debt to raise global demand is their thought, and go along for the improving economy ride without incurring any debt. It's unacceptable. And we're unlikely to get an improving world economy nor are we likely to slow the collapse of world trade without much heavier European spending. Obama needs to persuade them to spend.

Finally, Obama needs to rein in the old bulls on Capitol Hill. For example, take my former Senator, Kent Conrad of North Dakota. He's been in Congress since 1986. He's a conservative Democrat (except on "free" trade) and a budget hawk. For most of his career, he's been in a defensive crouch. Make a populist statement or two, but always, always, always cover your flank by banging on, say, television violence, calling for deficit reduction, and saving ag spending even though you claim to be a deficit hawk. Now, finally, he's the Budget Committee Chair with a Democratic president. What's he doing with that power? Sitting in a defensive crouch, protecting ag subsidies for the rich from all comers, and always, always, always covering his right flank with very little recognition that he's living in a new Depression sort of time.

He's a good man. One of the great things about living in North Dakota--go Bison!--was the fact that there are only a couple of hundred thousand voters in the state. You meet your senators and representative; you talk with them. So, I know Conrad is a good guy. But he's spent nearly a quarter century as a fearful, crouching politician, always looking out for #1, completely in the bubble, never having to worry about the next paycheck, seldom meeting people who do, slowly coming to think that a person who makes 500k a year in farming is a "regular," "middle-class" sort of guy cause that's who Kent sees regularly and he's a "regular guy."

Except that he isn't. And neither are those rich farmers. Stand up, Kent. Take a deep breath. Stretch a bit. Start listening to your president. It's a different world. He knows it a lot better than you do. He was paying off student loans and having kids while you were enjoying the privileges of the world's most exclusive club. He knows more than you.

Convince us he has a financial plan. Convince the Europeans to spend. Convince the Senate bulls to become Americans. No biggie, right? Right?

Zombie Media

There's been a good deal of talk lately that President Obama has lost his "magical" relationship with the Mainstream Media (MSM)--that the honeymoon, such as it was, is over. I'm not sure that's at all accurate; Obama has a number of people he needs to persuade but as he has consistently shown, the MSM is not on that list.

Why do I say that? Contrary to many conservatives (and Hillary supporters), I don't believe the media was ever all that important to Obama. In the fall of 2007, he was widely dismissed by the MSM. In the winter of 2008, he was a genius, the one who sent chills up the legs of Chris Matthews. In the spring, he was limited in his appeal, an elitist who could never win the votes of Joe and Jane Sixpack. In the summer, he was a worldwide phenomenon. In early fall, he was Britney, a celebrity heading for a fall. By election day, he was a genius again.

Obama paid virtually no attention to all of this. In fact, he resembles George W. Bush most in his attitude of bemused contempt for the MSM and Washington, DC. He has never performed more than the minimum of press conferences, conversations, walkbys, whatever. Nor has he ever seemed to pay any attention to them. This is particularly striking because he listens to lots of folks and has formed, in my view, too many advisory boards and special offices in the White House. He cares about the opinions of too many people, but few, if any, are in the MSM. Obama politicos like Gibbs and Axelrod answer the MSM's questions, but openly acknowledge they don't think much of the MSM--and they formed the greatest internet outreach ever seen in a campaign. Obama's people go right past the MSM. 

Finally, of course, Obama can do so because the MSM is, well, dying. Newspapers are going out of business, nightly news ratings are steadily dropping, and niche shows, like Maddow, are filling the airwaves. Bigfoot, big money guys like David Gregory resemble no one so much as Bernie Madoff. They keep running the bluff: advertisers should pay for Gregory or Broder because they are IMPORTANT. But when cable news shows a better than 2-1 margin of Republican to Democrat before the stimulus vote--and the Dems win that and Obama's ratings stay in the mid-60's and Democrats in Congress see rising ratings and Republicans in Congress see ratings crater--well, it becomes clear how important those "big feet" really are.  

Who watches, say, "Meet the Press"? Old white people. Like me. Over 45. White. Generally, it's only white, relatively affluent MALES who talk about it. Heck, I don't even watch it anymore. This is a demographic no politician really needs anymore, unless he's from Alabama. 

As the president learned, frankly, from the last president, the MSM is simply not all that important, useful, or smart. Much of the MSM is, in turn, owned by dying or cratering corporations. Glance at the stock performances of even GE, much less Murdoch's crap, and you'll start to see Dead Men Walking. The NYT is mortgaging its prime real estate to ensure cash flow. There are many ways (Web, local media, opinion media, etc.) to reach folks. You don't have to kowtow to an incetuous Washington. So, he doesn't. No president has since roughly the 2000 election. But, like zombie banks, the zombie media continue to stagger across the land. But if Denver, Seattle, or Detroit are any indication, they may not do so for much longer.

The Cult of the Hard Choice

Over the past weekend, Republicans tried out a new anti-Obama line of argument: he won't make the hard call. Senator Richard Shelby of Alabama urged Obama to let big banks fail, but doubted he would do it (that worked so well with Lehman Brothers). Senator John McCain argued that Obama has refused to make the tough choices on banks and the economy.

McCain, in fact, fetishizes the Hard Call much more than any other contemporary politician. It's a virtual totem for him; he cannot conceive of a world in which politicians should not serve at the peril of the people's displeasure. He is a walking double negative. He's so determined to sail into the wind and swim against the tide that one wonders why he became a politician, an occupation that routinely demands the solicitation of votes, an activity clearly beneath this paragon of political virtue.

By so speaking, of course, McCain invokes a long political tradition in the United States. Since the Founding and even before, politicians have routinely denied their occupation and assured one and all that they sought only the common good. Of course, for these sorts, the common man and woman have no idea what is good for them, so it falls to the noble profile in courage to explain to the masses why slavery serves freedom, the poor deserve their fate, and Joe McCarthy makes sense. Oh, and remember that Social Security should be neither social nor secure because "we" can't afford it.

As the allusion above indicates, this is a bipartisan load of crap. Politicians as varied as Wendell Wilkie and Adlai Stevenson, John Kennedy and Eugene McCarthy, John Anderson and Paul Tsongas, John McCain and his lil buddy Joe Leiberman (and Tim Russert) have embraced it. I acknowledge that some of these men were, at times, truly profiles in courage. Wilkie's determination to support a draft in the middle of the 1940 presidential campaign and Kennedy's willingness to buck the Joint Chiefs and refuse military force during the Cuban Missle Crisis deserve our admiration. More often, however, the "hard call," "tough choices," and "difficult decisions" stuff is horse manure.

Generally, it's used to provide cover for decisions that are decidedly not in the common good. If you say "common good" loudly enough, the MSM begins to believe the act--I'm looking at you, Senator McCain. So, for instance, Social Security is "unsustainable" and only a chosen few have the "guts" to say so. But, of course, it's only "unsustainable" under a series of increasingly dubious assumptions, including the notion that income above $200,000 shouldn't be taxed for it. In other words, the claim obscures the conditions that give rise to the claim. So, now, given what are "clearly" unalterable conditions, the "true" statesman (somehow, they're always men) must tell the truth. We have to stick it to those who rely on Social Security. So that those with high incomes don't have to pay taxes.

As that example indicates, it's only a "hard call" if it hurts somebody. If you cut their Social Security benefits, send them to die in a war, destroy their business, put them onto an unemployment line, and declare ketchup their vegetable of choice, then you're making hard choices. If you pull troops out of a misbegotten, stupid war or authorize scientists to do stem cell research that could save lives, then you pander. Those are not hard calls.

Which brings me back to President Obama. Like the policies or not, Obama has, in his first six weeks or so, passed the largest stimulus package in American history, lifted the gag order, stopped torture, renounced Bushian signing statements, continued some Bush detention policies, authorized stem cell research, welcomed freedom of information requests, said he "screwed up," announced a deadline for withdrawal from Iraq, committed to withdrawing the first 12,000 by summer's end, committed 17,000 more troops to Afghanistan, opened negotiations with Iran and Syria, and appointed his fiercest rival to be his Secretary of State. And, horror of horrors, he occasionaly takes off his jacket in the Oval Office.

Yep, he has quite the time making hard choices, Senator McCain. Or is it that it's only a hard choice if you agree with him? Could that be it?