Grabbing The God-mike

Grabbing The God-mike

There is a wonderful theatre-tech term, the God-mike—the microphone that the sound engineer (or, occasionally, the director) uses to talk back to the performers.  The God-mike isn’t some marvel of fidelity—it is in no way like those tiny miracles that they tape to the star's faces to allow them to soar over chorus and orchestra with perfect pitch.  It's purpose is to communicate. The God-mike doesn't mess around-it booms over every other sound in hall, cuts through the chaos, and commands attention, and obedience.   

We could use a little attention and obedience right now.  A group of lunatic amateur murderers, apparently armed by a cold-blooded professional murderer, blew nearly 300 innocent people out of the sky.  The Arabs and the Israelis are at it again, for the 871^st time.  There are thousands of kids barely qualified for middle school pouring over our borders.  Congress is about to go on a restful and relaxing vacation, having punted on every single piece of legislation imaginable, including even a highway bill that pretty much everyone agrees we need (but won't vote for.)

And the world is supine, stunned by the ferocity of events, unable to come up with a thoughtful response other than ritual denunciations.  The horrified Europeans (who are, let’s admit, a lot closer to the Bear than we are) are acutely aware... of the economic damage that being beastly to the Russians might cause back home.  So, while its positively dreadful to see, a few (ok, a few hundred) corpses are one thing, but profits are entirely another.  Hence the struggle.  Some choice, but diplomatic words should do the trick. Back here, the only person who is being criticized more than Putin is Mr. Obama, who seems to have been personally responsible for pushing the button on the anti-aircraft weapon.  Except, of course, that he’s too weak and unmanly to do anything like that so he invited the separatists to do it.  

Down at the border, Mr. Obama isn’t a very popular figure either.  The GOP has been floating a “blood is on his hands” trope.  The story goes that he took time out from a fundraiser (or golf, or lawlessness) to create a holographic image of himself, translated into Spanish, inviting all those children to come to a party with piñatas, ice-cream and free cell-phones.  Various luminaries, some packing heat, have visited the border to see for themselves (sounds bold, doesn't it?) and Rick Perry (not out of any Presidential ambition, mind you, but just because he cares) has strapped on his own sidearm and called out the Texas National Guard. 

Back in Congress, absolutely nothing anyone proposes is getting any traction.  Mr. Obama’s $3.7 Billion plan to shore up border security is being slammed because it spends money (um, yes, that’s what it will do, so Speaker Boehner calls it a “blank check”.) It also doesn’t include a giant transporter from Star Trek to beam up all the undesirables, and doesn't repeal a Bush-era statute designed to protect children from trafficking by gangs and other criminals. That law, passed in 2008, set up a system to help provide humanitarian relief and possible asylum for children who can demonstrate they are victims of trafficking and who would face continuing threats if they returned home.  Interestingly enough, even then Congress feared Mexican children above others, and made an exception for them (allowing Border Patrol agents to just turn them around.)  But kids from Central America were given more of an opportunity.  Therein, says Republican Senator John Cornyn, lies the problem, and he wants to eliminate the distinction, treating Central American children the same kindly way Mexican children are treated.  Frisk them and shoo them. The good Senator (and he has a Democratic co-sponsor in the House, Texas Democrat Henry Cuellar) calls his legislation the “Humane Act.” 

Moving our attention briefly to the Middle East, Hamas and the Israelis are trading shots, missiles, kidnappings, and casualties.  If anything demonstrates the absolute vapidity of absolutely everyone’s approach, it’s the Israeli-Palestinian situation.  Hamas specializes in provocation without care for the value of human life (anyone’s life.) The Israelis excel at over-reaction. The Europeans see an occupation and want the Israelis to follow their fine example when they were occupying powers, with courtesy, and culture, and a genteel empathy. The French are particularly insistent,  having demonstrated such kindness in Algeria. That’s why they are behind an international boycott and divesture movement.  We Americans are better intended, we try for more balance, but just equally inept.  We can't help ourselves stop the persistent but futile efforts at restarting the peace process when the parties just aren't ready to make peace.  Let’s face it; if the sepulchral demeanor of John Kerry doesn’t frighten the parties into it,  this is a fire that has to burn itself out.

Depressing, isn’t it?  Right now, you just want to grab the God-mike and yell:  Hamas and Bibi—knock it off, you are only making your collective lives more dangerous and less tolerable.  Wouldn’t some imperfect peace be better than this? Vladimir—stop playing dress-up in Czar’s clothing and call off your murderers (um, dogs.)  Barack—get out of your pity party, forget the showcase oratory without substantive action, and start being a President again.  Republicans—remember you have a loyalty greater than to your own ambitions and the next election cycle.  Try something, anything, beyond ritual criticism. Ideas actually matter.

And yet, ideas, particularly fresh ones, are valued least.  We have the greatest leadership deficit since the 1920’s, and I don’t see anyone stepping up to the plate. It’s just easier blaming others. 

Which leads me to one more theatre-tech phrase: “Luchtklampen”, or, in English, air clamps.  Air clamps are what you use to rig a truss to any structure where there’s nothing to grab on to.   In case you don’t have any at home, try your neighborhood hardware store.  They might direct you to Congress.

Luchtklampen.  Can you think of a better metaphor?  I’d get them in several sizes.  You never know when you will need one.

June 22, 2014

Michael Liss (Moderate Moderator)

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Eminently Awful

Eminently Awful

Consider the following.  You are sitting on the screened in porch of your home, enjoying the gentle warmth and the scents of springtime.  Your garden is in bloom, the gracious elms shade the back lawn, and your kids are planning a tree house as their summer project.

Suddenly, your reverie is broken by the sound of a pickup coming up the gravel driveway at high speed and going directly on to your property.  Earth (and your rosebushes) go flying.  A very large, bearded man in bib overalls jumps out of the truck, shouts a few incoherent things about you being on his land, goes to the rear, pulls back the tarp, where lie a variety of earth-moving tools, and a gun-rack.  He appears to have a holstered pistol as well. 

Quickly, you call the kids into the house, and lock the doors.  The man ignores you, looks for a likely spot, and plunges a boring tool into the soil.  Within a few minutes, your yard looks like it's been infested by gophers. You swiftly call the local police, two patrol cars are dispatched, and short time later, order is restored, the scary man led away, and the only evidence of your trauma are a lot of tire-tracks.

Life begins to return to normal.  But, a month later, another pick-up truck arrives, this time with a logo on the side.  Once again a very large man emerges, this time clean-shaven and wearing a pressed button down oxford and khakis.  On the pocket of his shirt is the same logo, and this time, what he’s got on his belt is a laser-measuring tool. He very calm, very polite, and hands you a sheath of papers.  You can either let him survey for the oil pipeline company he represents, or he will be back another day with a court-order, and a lower offer for the right of way they need. 

Once again, you call the cops.  This time, however, just the deputy shows up.  Apologetically, since he used to deliver the Sunday paper to you, and you always gave him a cold drink and a piece of pie, he tells you that, like it or not, the large-but-polite man with the laser-measuring tools will soon be back with earth-moving equipment, and your backyard, and the kids’ tree-house, will have to make way for an underground pipeline.  The young man with the earnest face will add, also apologetically, that when that time comes, you will get compensation, but the law is behind pipeline guy.  And he may also murmur, out of earshot, that his parents are pretty upset as well.

That’s the “beauty” of Eminent Domain.  Private land may be “taken” for a public purpose, with compensation, but without consent.  Property may be seized for something important, something that obviously advances the public’s interest, like roads, or schools, or a hospital. Eminent domain was used to build the railroads, massive public utilities, giant public works, and things like the interstate highway system.  Or, as in the highly controversial Supreme Court decision Kelo vs. The City of New London, it may be taken from private citizens, and handed to a developer who proposed an area of urban revitalization.  Or, as with pipeline guy’s employers, private industry may appropriate to itself massive swathes of private landholding, without the consent of the owners, and dig, pipe, frack and extract to their heart’s consent.

If this (all of it) seems unfair and “big government” that’s because it is.  It is inherently unfair to the people who didn’t want to sell (or give access) to their land.  The Kelo case was a cause célèbre for conservatives and many moderates when it was decided (5-4, with the conservatives in the minority) and several states rushed out legislation to limit its use, but if you want to look deeper, abolishing eminent domain isn’t really a concept that lends itself to any mainstream ideological framework.  If you read the Court’s decision you can see the inconsistencies. The majority opinion strains to justify what amounts to a taking that benefits private interests, and finds a public purpose in a (dubious) plan for urban renewal.  The dissent (written by Justice O’Connor) clearly sees this particular taking largely for what it is.  But the more conservative Justices can’t merely fall back on the “judicial activism” or “not what the Founders intended” arguments, because eminent domain predates the Constitution and is, in fact, acknowledged in the Bill of Rights.  Justice Thomas’ “Originalist” dissent lacks any credibility and was a solo work—even Rehnquist and Scalia didn't join it.

Not only is it difficult to come up with an intellectually consistent view towards eminent domain, it is also very difficult to come up with a scope of use that is, in any way, politically consistent.  Read Ann Neumann’s article in Sunday’s New York Times “A Pipeline Threatens Our Family’s Land”  and you wonder how anyone could defend the despoiling of such natural beauty.  But how do you slam the extraction industries for using eminent domain for private profit when New London took other people’s land to benefit a small number of private parties, with whatever “public good” there might have been speculative at best?  How can either thing be right?

What we have is a real-world situation that is growing in importance, is unpopular, but has Constitutional backing, and lacks both certainty from an intellectual basis and consistency from a political one.  That is what I would call an opportunity.

Wouldn’t it be marvelous to have an open discussion and find a truly fair and viable limit to “public use.”  Because who really wants to have their property taken against their will, “just compensation” or not? Could you possibly find a less partisan issue?  And, wouldn’t it be absolutely incredible if politicians were able to acknowledge that this is a problem that just doesn’t fit the playbook, and they determined to put aside their conflicts and put the needs of individual citizens first? If they could do this, maybe they could do other things as well.

So, whether the person outside your door is a man in bib overalls and a shotgun, or a lawyer in a suit with a briefcase, you could just offer him a cold drink and a piece of pie, and send him on his way.

You have to admit, it might be eminently naïve, but it’s an eminently wonderful idea.

July 14, 2014

Michael Liss (Moderate Moderator)

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Losing Your Audience

Losing Your Audience

A few weeks ago, I was at Avery Fisher Hall to attend the high school graduation of my daughter.  The keynote speaker was Jed Bernstein, the President of Lincoln Center.  After a few of the usual pleasantries and congratulations, he aimed a challenge directly at the 600-odd graduating students.  The arts are under siege. In just two generations, the average age of the audience has gone from about thirty to about fifty.  These 600-plus eighteen year olds who were graduating from one of the country’s premier schools had an affirmative duty.  If they cared about the arts, they needed to be more than just performers, or even patrons.  They had to be missionaries.  And that missionary aspect meant something beyond just earning a decent living, or even going on to be a star. They had to make relevant the old and advance the new, to put their craft and passion on stronger legs for those who followed them.  In effect, it was their responsibility to be preservationists, conservationists, and builders. 

I am not sure how much of that message sank in (especially when tossing caps in the air and parties were soon to follow) but I think more than a few of them heard him, and will act on it.   They have to.  Regional theatre struggles and Broadway often gets by on stupendous blockbusters that are subsidized by the over 50 million tourists that come to New York City each year.  Governments, both strapped for tax dollars and hampered by ideologically motivated opposition, have cut back or eliminated their support for local cultural institutions.  Two important art collections, the renowned Corcoran in Washington D.C., and the Barnes in Pennsylvania, struggled mightily and had to seek stronger hands.   Classical music is in crisis.  The New York City Opera was forced to close after some catastrophically bad management decisions and some worse luck.  The Minnesota Orchestra just ended a 15-month lockout to force lower labor costs, and even the mighty Metropolitan Opera is looking for major givebacks in its latest contract negotiations.

You can blame local factors or poor choices, or even lush labor contracts, but the real problem is that fewer people are taking notice. For at least a generation we have cut back on education in the arts.  We have not found enough other ways to draw younger people in, nor to inspire an imperative to support art, or to make it appear relevant to the community.  It isn’t that Da Vinci or Beethoven have suddenly lost their genius, but even the most beautiful objects or sounds need to be seen and heard.  An empty house, or an empty gallery, eventually extinguishes the light. 

One could make the same point about government.  We live in the greatest nation on Earth.  We have done incredible things, and done it within the context of a high-functioning democracy that values individual decision-making.  Government has worked because we have made it work—we have squabbled, and threatened, and pontificated, and horse-traded, and sometimes earmarked and otherwise greased our way to solving big problems, but we have done it together.  And yet, the very idea of good government, effective government, collaborative government, is losing its audience as well.  It’s not the same benign neglect one sees with the arts; people argue vociferously, but they don’t seem to really care about making it work, and they walk away. And sooner or later, their withdrawal extinguishes the light as well.   

How do you turn these artistic and political cultures around and build their audiences? My daughter, who loves fiercely all music, but particularly classical, says you have to get them early.  She’s absolutely right, but I would go further than that.  You gain audience not merely by making new opera-lovers, but opera-moderates.  Look at the crowds in a museum, or in a concert hall, and you will see plenty of people who occasionally check their watches. They are there for the community, because someone asked them to go.

The same is true in civic culture.  To thrive, you can’t just depend on the unending loyalty of the passionate.  You have to bring in the moderates.  Of course, it’s always nice to have an ideologically moderate middle to find commonalities.  But with polarization increasing, what’s even more important are the “Temperamental Moderates.”  A Temperamental Moderate is someone able to listen to different (political) music without having a physical reaction or stomping out of the concert hall.  The Temperamental Moderate will be willing to go to your son’s middle school recital to hear some-not-entirely-pleasing-to-the-ear French Horn and tell you afterwards how great it all sounds.  Temperamental Moderates do this because a) their emotional makeup does not require continuous confrontation, and b) their parents brought them up to value community and social relationships and c) their daughter plays a mean bass guitar and her band has a gig next month.

What is interesting is that both ideological poles intuitively understand this, although they both reject the obvious solution.  The Pew Study displays some fascinating data about who identifies as a Democrat or Republican.  Included amongst all of the evidence of polarization and ideological silos, there was a startling tidbit that just jumped out at me. 70% of "Solid Liberals" said that America’s best days are ahead of it.  76% of "Steadfast Conservatives" says our past is better than our future.

Why?  Why would Liberals, watching a Democratic President falter under his own weight, and that of the tar and feathers that the opposition smears him with on a daily basis, be optimistic about the future?  And why would Conservatives, who pride themselves on their patriotism, and who very likely will control all three branches of government in January 2017, be so incredibly morose? 

The answer lies in their perception of community.  Liberals see the inevitability of a pluralistic society—more diverse, more multi-cultural, more tolerant, and more polychromatic, and are encouraged.  Conservatives see exactly the same thing, and it frightens and repulses them: our best days are behind us because we are moving away from the homogeneous communities that made us great.  We are going to have to bridge that gap, and face our fears and our hopes rationally.

 

That is the real challenge we face, analogous to the challenge Jed Bernstein laid out. We can hunker down with our friends, play the same tunes over and over, watch the river rise and hope it doesn’t flood.  Or we can use every ounce of effort and creativity we have to build our audience. To quote my daughter again, new staging is wonderful, but you can’t just only do the Met’s Rigoletto in Las Vegas. Be a preservationist, a conservationist, and a builder.  At the end of the day, staging is great, but it’s the Verdi that counts. Be open to change, but don’t disrespect the master, and don’t disrespect the dowager who has spent the last fifty years supporting the arts, and adores him as he is.

If you do that, you might find the crowd just got a little bigger, and the applause a little louder.

June 9, 2014

Michael Liss (Moderate Moderator)

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The Supremes Put Their Fist on the Scales

The Supremes Put Their Fist On The Scales

This past Monday was the last day of the term for the Supreme Court.  They now pack up their robes and gavels and head back to whatever places they cherish to clear their minds before the First Monday in October. 

As is their wont, they saved some of the choicest and most controversial opinions for the end.  Last week they did the nation a favor by insisting, in a unanimous decision, that the police do need a warrant to listen to cell-phone conversations.  SCOTUS decisively spoke on behalf of all citizens to uphold and vindicate among the most personal of liberties—the right to have a private conversation.

This week, however, in two highly controversial cases, Burwell vs. Hobby Lobby and Harris vs. Quinn, they reminded us that they are more than just defenders of the ordinary person or deciders of arcane Constitutional points.  They also pick winners and losers, and 5-4 has the same force of law as 9-0.  And those five remind us that, in the era of a highly conservative court majority, more often than not, it will be corporations that are accorded more respect than people in general and labor in specific, and the exercise of religion, both in the public and private sphere, will be given special status, even at the cost of other liberties. 

Harris vs. Quinn was seen by both business and labor as a potential “kill shot” on public sector unions, and, perhaps the gateway to taking down the entire organized labor workforce, both public and private.  The core issue was whether a public union could collect dues from workers that did not want to join or pay dues (often for political reasons) but nevertheless enjoyed the benefits of the collective bargaining agreements that the union had negotiated. The goal of business groups was two-fold.  First, if you could keep the union from collecting dues, more and more workers would simply refuse to pay them, hence eventually draining the union of resources.  In a comparatively short period, the union would then become financially moribund, and eventually they could be pushed aside.  This would (naturally) lead to lower wages and benefits, and more dangerous work conditions.  The second was purely political.  Labor has been a backbone of the Democratic Party for generations.  Cut off their funding, and you elect more Republicans who can, in turn, press for even more favorable legislation and preferences for their contributors. 

I don’t think it’s fair to call SCOTUS partisan, although there is no question that their facially non-discriminatory rulings may often disproportionately help one group over another.  Citizens United is an excellent example of this, in allowing corporations to spend enormous amounts of money to openly purchase candidates.  McCutcheon et al. v. Federal Election Commission extended Citizens United to people (an unintentional irony, I’m sure) and removed the cap individuals may spend in a given election.  The Court didn’t say “only Republicans can spend” they simply removed the barriers to spending.  The Koch brothers can spend, and George Soros can spend.  The fact that Republicans had more rich people and control of more money one could look at as purely coincidental.

But Harris was fundamentally different, in that it went further, and aimed to use the power of the courts to punish one party’s supporters.

Just to be clear, as I have a number of conservative friends and readers, I am not defending labor as pure and good.  They aren’t.  But collective bargaining unquestionably helps the working person, both in the public and private sector, and unions give them a voice in the legislative process.  If they didn’t, Republican Governors and State Legislators wouldn’t spend so much time trying to bust them on behalf of their business contributors and personal political ambitions.

That’s why Harris is so important, and why Justice Alito’s ultimate, fairly narrow, ruling, that the part-time workers who were not regular government employees were exempt from involuntary paying of dues, could be seen as (temporarily) dodging the bullet.  Rest assured, business will be back, but for now, the ruling only hamstrings and does not entirely eviscerate Labor.

Of course, few people were really paying attention to Harris, even though an “all in” ruling could have had immense political consequences. Hobby Lobby was the glamour girl of the day.  In Hobby Lobby, the deeply religious and conservative family that ran the company refused to pay for four separate types of contraception, in contravention of the ACA. 

What SCOTUS had to consider was whether a private for-profit company (not a church or religious order, which was already exempt upon request) could impose its moral and religious values on its employees through the selective withholding of benefits.  As in Harris, the fear was that SCOTUS would go beyond the question presented.  Would they take such an expansive view of private religious exercise in the business sector as to legalize all types of discriminatory behavior?

Whether the 5-4 decision did exactly that is open to interpretation.  Justice Ginsburg, in a closely reasoned dissent, said the barn door was wide open.  The actual opinion of the majority (Justice Alito, joined by Scalia, Thomas, Roberts, and Kennedy) is a little more circumspect.  Justice Alito relied heavily on the 1993 Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) and said that the challenged HHS (ACA) regulations substantially burden the exercise of religion.  He went on to say that ‘Under RFRA, a Government action that imposes a substantial burden on religious exercise must serve a compelling government interest, and we assume that the HHS regulations satisfy this requirement. But in order for the HHS mandate to be sustained, it must also constitute the least restrictive means of serving that interest, and the mandate plainly fails that test.”

So, for Justice Alito, the regulatory scheme fails, and Hobby Lobby stores are free to express their owner’s religious opinions by restricting benefits to specific people (Hobby Lobby apparently has no problem with Viagra.)  Alito was sensitive to Ginsburg’s concerns.  He says it concerns only the contraception mandate. He goes on to add, “our holding is very specific. We do not hold, as the principal dissent alleges, that for-profit corporations and other commercial enterprises can “opt out of any law (saving only tax laws) they judge incompatible with their sincerely held religious beliefs.”

But, Alito’s disclaimers notwithstanding, there is considerable acumen in Ginsburg’s dissent, because Alito also makes clear that there is very little “free exercise” save racial discrimination that would unquestionably not survive a challenge.  He plays around with things like bans on immunizations, but merely says that different arguments (like public health) would have to be made by HHS.  And, by focusing on race only, he reminds us of what he’s not saying—discrimination against age, gender, gender identity, religion, etc. may be upheld.  If Hobby Lobby can refuse contraception coverage based on a “sincerely held belief” can it also make a policy of not hiring women of childbearing age, or requiring them to resign if they get pregnant?  Or, can it express a religious belief that a woman must be subservient to a man, and so therefor is ineligible for a managerial job?  The fact is that Justice Alito did not close the door on those things, and that is part of the reason why so many conservative and religious groups are exultant today.

For those who think I’m overstating, keep in mind two things.  The first is the bigger one: Justice Alito handed conservative and religious groups a huge shield to hide behind.  All they have to do is claim a sincerely held belief and it’s the employee who has to show otherwise, perhaps at the cost of her job.  The second is subtler, and can be seen in Justice Kennedy’s separate concurring opinion. He says,  “At the outset it should be said that the Court’s opinion does not have the breadth and sweep ascribed to it by the respectful and powerful dissent.”  I don't think I have ever seen that before.  It tells me that Kennedy felt he had to join the main opinion, but also the need to reassure his colleague, Justice Ginsburg, who’s intellectual arguments he acknowledges. He may be saying to her "that's not what I mean."

Justice Kennedy’s uncommon grace, however, has no precedential value.  It’s Justice Alito’s opinion that is the Opinion of the Court. 

And it’s Alito’s fist that is on the scales of justice tonight.  Good for business, good for those who profit politically and economically from weakening labor, and good for the faithful who wish to impose their beliefs on others.

Let freedom ring? Not exactly the cell phone case.

July 1, 2014

Michael Liss

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Cacophonous Concerto

Cacophonous Concerto—How Polarization Makes Everything Sound Bad

One of the truly wonderful things about being a parent is to see your child dressed up in a silly robe and an even sillier square hat, tasseled and sashed, looking painfully young and even more painfully half grown up. 

I had that pleasure this past weekend at Northwestern: a kaleidoscope of marches and brass, and orbs and scepters, and meetings and lunches and prizes and a thousand pictures and probably as many hugs (mostly of complete strangers.)

Ricardo Muti, the world-renowned conductor of the Chicago Symphony, gave the commencement address.  He was charming, speaking of the power of music to unite, telling a story of the time he coached a policeman on how to make fabulous riches wearing white tie and tails (mostly, move your hand one-two-three, trust the orchestra to know what they are doing, and try to look both impressive and enraptured) and finally talking about the human need for person to person communication as the only real salvation.  Less text, more talk, persevere, preserve, and nurture your relationships.

Muti’s words might have been chosen for a large audience, but the day before, in a far more intimate setting, Sandy Goldberg, Chair of the Philosophy Department, said something that struck me as the critical corollary to Muti’s words, and something perhaps even more important. Philosophy isn’t just about ideas or abstractions.  It does something more critical.  Philosophy teaches people how to talk to each other, and philosophy teaches how to disagree. 

I’m sure neither Muti nor Goldberg was thinking about politics, but they couldn’t have been more prescient.  Democracy works best when there is constant communication, vigorous but respectful disagreement, and a commitment to continued discussion. 

Unfortunately, we seem to be moving, rather rapidly, in the opposite direction.  The evidence of increasing polarization is stark. The Pew Research Center for the People and the Press has published the first of a five part series Political Polarization in the American Public.   Pew polled 10,013 people over a three-month period earlier this year.  It then went back and did more in depth follow up interviews with a representative sample.   What the Pew study found was fascinating, and a little unsettling.  There are two major trends that emerge—the growing uniformity of opinion amongst members of the same ideological group and political party, and the growing antipathy they feel for each other.    

Let’s dive into the numbers, but first, take a deep breath. 

92% of Republicans are to the right of the median Democrat, and 94% of Democrats are to the left of the median Republican.  That tells you that there is no real middle ground for consensus and deal making.  Instead, the parties have to take the next step—swap one priority for another. 

Can they do that?  Can they, in Sandy Goldberg’s construct, act the philosopher, agree to disagree respectfully and talk through issues?  Can they see the other side as anything other than antagonists?

First, many of them have to hurdle their own gut.  27% of Democrats see Republicans as a literal “threat to the nation” and 36% of Republicans say the same about their Democratic brethren. 

And, about that word “brethren” I would tread lightly. When consistent conservatives and consistent liberals were asked how they felt about one of their immediate family members “marrying the wrong kind” 30% of the conservatives and 23% of the liberals couldn’t cope. 

Well, maybe you wouldn't want your sister to marry one, but that doesn’t mean the place has to be fumigated if he visits, right?  Actually, no.  50% of consistent conservatives and 35% of consistent liberals want to live in a community where most people share their political views, 57% of consistent conservatives want those folk to be coreligionists (only 17% of consistent liberals care about that) and 76% of consistent liberals want racial and ethnic diversity while only 20% of conservatives do.

So, governing had become impossible, right?  If, on the most basic and visceral level, we can’t even abide living near people on the other side of the spectrum, how do we try to compromise with them to reach a governing consensus? Is democracy is doomed?

I would offer a qualified no.  There is no question that polarization has increased markedly since 1994, and that the two poles don’t even see the same reality.  Pew calls it living in “ideological silos” where joining the “club” means adopting a long list of constantly reinforced articles of faith.

There is also no doubt that politically opinionated people tend to be more motivated to vote and have a disproportionate impact on elections.  Pew found that, “nationwide, 21% are either consistently liberal or consistently conservative in their political values. But these people make up a larger share of the electorate – 28% of people who say they always vote and 34% of those who always vote in primaries.”

Yet, there are things to be encouraged about. Partisanship has grown markedly, but still only 21% of the voters are inflexible ideologues.  That means 79% are not.  The rest of us don’t have to let those 21% decide for us.  But there’s a catch. We can be pretty certain that the 21% is not uniformly distributed.  In some places, the concentration of the rabid is going to be much higher, given the propensity for like to want to live with like.  That places a far greater burden on the less doctrinaire to do something that they seem unwilling to do—step up to the plate and make their voices heard through the ballot box, starting with the primaries. 

And the responsibilities don’t end there, because the fringes are anything but marginalized.  Even if the 79% weigh in in the primaries, we are still going to have a substantial number of people in Congress who seem to have very little interest in either lawmaking or compromising.  A lot of them are angry, and truly loathe not only members of the other party, but any of their own who show the slightest deviation from revealed truth.  If you want to see something truly hair-raising, watch Chris McDaniel’s “non concession” speech after he narrowly lost to Thad Cochran in Tuesday’s Mississippi Republican Primary.   McDaniel is almost sputtering with rage, accusing Cochran of all sorts of irregularities. 

Just a few more thousand votes, and McDaniel would have been the nominee, and likely the next Senator from deep Red Mississippi.  He would join a Congress that is filling up with people just like him, always looking for someone to punch.  It would have been another movement away from the discussion, respectful disagreement, and the compromise that a democracy demands. 

Therein lies the paradox for the 79%. We want what Muti and Goldberg want--to start the orchestra working together, communicating with each other, arguing even, but within the confines of a team.  We expect that there will be false notes and dissonance, but it’s not going to improve if everyone goes off into their private practice room.  But we also don’t like our institutions or our elected representatives very much, and our very revulsion for how poorly they do and how ugly they are estranges us.  Instead of diving in and wresting control, and working at it until it sounds the way it should, we turn away and yield to it.

The next time you see some bill in Congress, perhaps imperfect, but largely a positive, being sabotaged by a group of absolutists, remember that.  It's not them.  It's us. There are way more of us then of them, and it’s only our inaction, and our silence, that enables them.

If you really want better, you have to open your mind, and open your ears, and, ultimately, you have to fight to have others do the same.

There is no other way to make beautiful music together.

June 25, 2014

Michael Liss (Moderate Moderator)

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Cantor's Lament

Cantor’s Lament

Eric Cantor fell last week.  He lost the Republican primary to David Brat, an obscure Economics Professor from Randolph Macon College, despite outspending him by at least ten times.  His incumbency, his position as House Majority Leader, his prodigious fundraising ability, and his power did him absolutely no good.

He fell alone, seemingly without friends.  Perhaps he had none.  Before his political corpse was cold, his colleagues in the House were scrambling to replace him as House Majority Leader. 

As of this writing, Kevin McCarthy, the affable chief House Whip, seems to have enough votes to replace Cantor, although Idaho’s hard right Raul Labrador (among the hawkish of hawks on immigration) wants to challenge him.  The machinery of party politics marches on.  But in the quiet offices where power is wielded and strategy set (and especially in the press that reports on them) there has been a certain amount of confusion and concern.

Cantor wasn’t Dick Lugar of Indiana or Bob Bennett of Utah, older Senators who were unexpectedly ambushed by Tea Party candidates, or even 72-year-old Thad Cochran of Mississippi, currently forced into a runoff.  The Teas haven’t had the greatest success in this election cycle, as older incumbent Republicans largely came forewarned and forearmed.  Yet Cantor, only 51, and in all likelihood the heir apparent to Boehner when he retires, will be looking for work in January. 

So, how the heck did this happen? 

Let’s start with the obvious.  First, the Tea Party might be a little bruised, but they aren’t dead.  This despite the fondest wishes of some of the GOP establishment (and, if they were smart, Democrats who are actually interested in seeing government work instead of just government.)  Given the right environment and the right candidate (or candidates) there’s absolutely no reason why they can’t continue to win, or at the very least, throw a scare into their opposition. Plenty of states remain fertile ground for their movement.  Texas has largely gone Tea, and several others, including Kansas and Oklahoma, are so conservative that it’s probably irrelevant.  Tea Party energy can still bring out the votes.

Second, gerrymandering really matters.  To measure partisanship, political scientists use the Cook Partisan Voting Index to see where any Congressional District lies politically in comparison to the rest of the country. You calculate PVI by comparing the district's average partisan share of the two-party presidential vote in the past two presidential elections to the nation's average share of the same.  To make that clearer, if Obama averaged a 52% share over his two elections nationally, but a particular Congressional District went for Obama by 57%, it would be a D+5.

That doesn’t make election a certainty, you need to throw in additional idiosyncratic factors such as the value of incumbency and personal popularity, but the larger analysis still holds. A Congressional District that’s rated “D+5” would be expected to yield about a 5% edge over the national trend to the Democrat in the election.  He could still lose in a wave year, or because of a gaffe or some personal scandal, but the probabilities are in his favor.  Of course, politicians don’t like “probable” when it comes to job security.  They like certainty.  If D+5 sounds good, D+10 sounds better. 

That is where the mapmakers come in. Getting from swing to D+5 to D+10 is simply a function of the mapmaker’s creativity, and state legislatures control redistricting.  More accurately, the party that controls the state legislature is the one that controls redistricting.  Usually, redistricting is done after a national census, to reflect the changes in the state’s Congressional allocation, but it doesn’t have to be.  Texas did a massive redistricting in 2003 that flipped the delegation’s partisan tilt on its head. 

Politicians do this because it works.  Per Cook’s report, since 1998, the number of D+5 to R+5 Congressional Districts has dropped from 164 to 90.  Boehner owes his majority to redistricting (the Democrats actually won the aggregate national congressional vote)--but there is a potentially toxic side effect.  The “safer” your district is, the more insulated you get from any ideas other than your own.  And “safer” can be an illusion, because being “more Republican” or “more Democratic” may just mean you are enhancing the power of the ideological activists--the ones most likely to vote in a primary or show up in a caucus or convention.  They are also the ones most likely to demand fealty. 

Historically, incumbents didn’t care if zealous folk showed up on primary day, because the two-party system was the only game in town.  So, you pander a bit to the fire-eaters to make them feel good, and then, if you think you have any chance of being in an even competitive race, tack back to the center a bit.  Incumbents just were never considered endangered from within.  One of the few primary upsets of the order of magnitude of Cantor’s loss was in 1972 when Elizabeth Holtzman defeated Emmanuel Celler, a fifty-year veteran of the House and powerful Chair of the Judiciary Committee.  Celler never saw it coming.  Only in hindsight did some of the same issues that plagued Cantor (too much power, too little concern for the needs at home) emerge.

So, why worry?  Cantor apparently didn’t, at least initially.  He didn’t perceive the possibility of a viable challenge from the right.  In fact, his people were more concerned that his fairly safe R District could trend Bluer (or at least Purple, as Virginia as a whole was.)  So, at the time of redistricting, and looking at longer-term viability, they pushed to add even more conservative voters from an adjoining, very conservative county, while subtracting votes from more liberal Richmond precincts.   The plan worked--the district is currently rated R+10, which is pretty impregnable in all but the most extreme circumstances.  Provided, however, that you get the nomination.

In this, Cantor stumbled.  He had never been particularly good at connecting on a personal level.  Pretty much all the “professional” qualities that made him effective (although disliked) in Washington did him absolutely no good back at home among primary voters.  His power became a handicap because he was perceived as loving Washington and the game too much, and his District too little.  His connections to the financial services industry just showed him in the pockets of the bankers (which would have been fine for your father’s GOP, but is decidedly less attractive to the more populist Tea Party types.) Cantor had blocked immigration reform, but even the smallest hint that he was in league with Facebook and the tech industry to bring in highly skilled immigrants touched off the anti-immigration forces. David Brat suddenly became a little bit of a cause célèbre.  Fox loved him, as did the network of conservative talk-show hosts.  Laura Ingram parachuted in and wowed them. 

So, last Tuesday, when that thin slice of his constituency, all gerrymandered, radicalized, and distilled, looked at Eric Cantor, they saw a stranger, not someone to give their loyalty to.  It wasn’t even close.

There are few people who will mourn Cantor.  Certainly I won’t—his cold-blooded machinations sabotaged some efforts at bipartisanship.  But the idea that smaller and smaller segments of the voting population should be choosing a greater and greater number of the people who lead us—that worries me a lot. 

Government without accountability, whether from the Right or the Left, leads inevitably to abuse. 

That’s my lament. 

June 16, 2014

Michael Liss (Moderate Moderator)

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Bowe Bergdahl's Collateral Casualties

Bowe Bergdahl’s Collateral Casualties

It has been ten days since Bowe Bergdahl was released from five years of captivity and flown to a hospital in Germany, and for ten days I have wrestling with it, trying to marshal my thoughts and my emotions. 

Contrary to my usual “junkie” approach, I have deliberately been far more restrained in what I read and how I engage with others.  That takes effort, because it’s a 24-hour a day story, and the accusations and denunciations have reached such a screech that it’s hard to separate fact from fiction.

Are we less safe?  I honestly don't know.  The GOP and affiliated media have conjured up armies of terrorists walking our streets preparing to strike at freckle-faced children. Maybe we are less safe—these weren’t choirboys we released, and whatever the terms that were worked out with the Omani’s (who acted as go between) it’s at best hopeful thinking that these chaps will abide by them.  So, that means we are less safe? It depends on whom you ask.  Retired General James Mattis (Marines) appeared on CNN to say that US commanders in Afghanistan always lived with the fear that their attacks would spur the Taliban to kill Bergdahl.  With Bergdahl returned, they no longer had this constraint.  Who is Mattis, besides an obvious Obama-bot, and what could he know that a talking head in the media or empty head in Congress wouldn’t?  He was the former Chief of the US Central Command (which included Afghanistan) from 2010 to 2013.

Have we “negotiated with terrorists?”  I will spare people the distant past (during the Reagan years) when the Taliban were seen as freedom fighters as they squared off against the Russians.  Let’s go with a yes.  We have negotiated with terrorists, and just to be clear, we are continuing to negotiate with those same terrorists over a wide range of issues as we wind down our involvement there, something the American people very much want.  And, not to make an obvious point, but you are never negotiating with friends when you are talking about getting back a hostage.  We do not have to invite them over for tea and finger sandwiches.  If you want the job done, you put on your waders and rubber gloves.  That’s reality.

OK, so what about this 5/1 swap?  Outrageous, and demonstrates the usual Obama weakness?  I find this one bizarre.  The Israelis, perhaps the most tough-minded people among the democracies of the world, routinely swap dozens, hundreds, and sometimes into the thousands in return for one of theirs—including the dead.  One thousand for one dead body? They do this for two reasons—because they are hardheaded realists, and that’s what it takes, and because, in a tiny little country like theirs, they need to let every citizen know that they belong something bigger.  It's called looking after your own.

Was Bergdahl worth it?  Was he worth anything? That’s a hard question.  Clearly he was no hero.  Bergdahl is by all accounts a deeply troubled man, apparently refusing even to phone his parents, who haven’t spoke to him in five long years.  He’s not a hero, he’s not a saint, and he’s not even a villain.  Just as sad kid who got involved in things that were bigger than his emotional resilience could manage.  We can judge him all we want—he’s made himself the target of our opinions, and even our disdain, by his actions. 

So, he wasn’t worth it?  You don’t negotiate with terrorists, make us weaker, and give the opportunity for columns of Taliban to search for nearest Senior’s community to savage for a mental case and a “traitor?” 

That’s a very complicated question.  Consider the following.  In WWII, one in four casualties were for “battle fatigue.”  And that’s the Greatest Generation—men who grew up in the Depression, who perhaps had a far better understanding of what a little want and discomfort could mean.  The ratio of “mentals” to total casualties for those in lengthy and extended combat was one in two.  The Pacific theatre was particularly bad, with tropical weather, the creepiness of the jungle, and the threat of kamikaze attacks making fear an enveloping companion.  26,000 men were deemed psychiatric cases and had to be evacuated just in the brutal effort to take Okinawa.

Would you really have left 26,000 men in Okinawa because they went a little nuts?  Are you really so sure of yourself that, if you were put in harm’s way, you would never succumb to fear?  Imagine a society that would simply walk away from people of whom it had asked the highest sacrifice?

The fact is you don’t have to admire Bergdahl, or hold a parade for him, or shower him with medals.  The real tragedy of the Bergdahl affair isn’t that he’s back, or how he got back.  It’s whom he came back to.  We have acted in a way unworthy of our better instincts.  Or, to put it more directly, most of us ought to be a little ashamed of the last couple of weeks. 

So, and I would include myself in some of these, let me test-drive the condemnatory phrase “appalling.”

Appalling is the fact that Mr. Obama fail to comply with the thirty day notification requirement.  Constitutional or not (it probably isn’t) and like it or not, it’s still the law.  He didn’t comply and he should have.  Of course, we know why he didn’t.  He had a window of opportunity to make the deal, some emergent need, and he knew Republicans would never support it and run immediately to Fox to kill it. But to notify was his obligation, and he didn’t.

Appalling is the Congressional Republicans who claimed they knew nothing.  They were in fact briefed in detail both in 2011 and 2012, and they did express concerns then on prisoner swaps.  What they also did was continue to insist that Obama do everything possible to bring Bergdahl home, and made a point of complaining when it didn’t occur.

Appalling is the Rose Garden announcement by Mr. Obama.  Whatever else you might think of Bergdahl, he’s not a figure that inspires admiration.  Tasteless and bleh and tone deaf. 

Appalling are the efforts by both parties to quickly defend what they would have condemned if a fellow named Bush was still in office, or condemn what they would have defended.

Appalling is the concerted effort by Republicans to erase their past demands on Mr. Obama to get Bergdahl released and highlight their own efforts on his behalf. So many of them are doing their very best to emulate the old Capo Frank Pentaglia in “The Godfather II” who claimed no knowledge of the Corleone Family.  Yes, in the old days, he was in the olive oil business with Vito Corleone, but “Corleone Family?”  Never heard of it. Rather than review the last five years and list every bit of Republican hypocrisy on this (we have a word count at Syncopated Politics) I would just like to refer you to the timeline published in the Washington Post by Jamie Fuller, and her excellent follow-up pieces.    Be forewarned.  We aren’t taking about general statements made years ago.  Several prominent Republicans are even going so far to have recent tweets scrubbed.

I'm afraid that's the best I can do.  Just appalling.  All of us.  The shell of what is Bowe Bergdahl is going to return at some point.  Maybe we should be asking, are we even worthy of him?

June 9, 2014

Michael Liss (Moderate Moderator)

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