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)

Please follow us on twitter @SyncPol

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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Picking Pareto's Losers

Picking Pareto’s Losers

I was having an interesting conversation about inequality and political corruption with an economist (I know, it sounds like the start of an esoteric joke) when he said, “(the) economist’s gold standard is Pareto improvement or loss.” 

What, I hear you cry, is a Pareto Loss?  At the risk of disappointing my friend (who is very likely on to me anyway) I freely admit that I had to look it up.

“Pareto” was Vilfredo Pareto (Vilfie, to his friends?) a 19^th and early 20^th Century Italian economist who later turned to sociology.  A “Pareto Efficiency” is a essentially a state of equilibrium, an allocation of resources in which it is impossible to make anyone better off without taking from someone else.  A “Pareto Improvement” is when reallocation makes at least one person better off without taking from anyone else.  And a “Pareto Loss” occurs when the aggregate loss to others exceeds the benefit to the person or group benefitting from the reallocation. 

To return to the conversation, I posed the following hypotheticals:

My town government owns a building in a prime location that it offers to the public for $10M cash, thirty days.  The appraised value is, say, $15M, but the government has a bond coming due and needs cash quickly and can’t wait for an extended appraisal, due diligence, and bidding process. 

I know it's a great deal, but I don't have $10M.  Jim, the richest man in town, has the money and can do the deal  He reaps the benefit of the below market price.

Or, suppose a new Mayor and Town Board are elected, and Jim is their major campaign contributor.  There is no financial crisis, but the new Mayor pronounces himself all about “privatization” and so before the new drapes are installed in his office, he calls Jim and as a thank you, cuts a secret deal with him—no outside bidding, and the same steeply discounted price ($10M for the $15M building.)

To me, as a citizen, the first example is just the way life is.  Jim is rich, I’m not, the town has an immediate need, and, as my late father used to say “money comes to money.”  I don’t see either a political or moral dilemma.  The second example I find outrageous.  High-roller Jim buys a few politicians and, in return, gets a huge gift of public assets that could have been used for roads, schools, sanitation and cops.

My economist friend, however, in viewing it purely from a professional perspective, didn’t agree.  Even a corrupt bargain was not, in and of itself, problematic. “So what? It's just a transfer. The city used to have the building, now the financier has it.  It doesn't change the level of output, just the distribution.”

As you might have expected, I reacted to this. I wondered if this was simply a public/private thing (and he was a good capitalist) so I reimagined the situation as my personal property company selling the building to Jim on the below market terms, after Jim bought a very expensive convertible for my supposedly loyal manager.  In an excess of understatement, I added I would be very irritated.

Again, while he understood the irritation, as a professional, he was unmoved: “Pareto improvement or loss. This is neither, it’s just redistribution.”  My problem was one of psychology and political science, not of numbers.

So, what do ostensibly soulless economists care about? “(T)he worst part of political influence by the rich is value destroying corruption.  For instance, suppose he's allowed to demolish the building and construct a 100-story condo where it doesn't belong. Then society as a whole is worse off--the benefit the developer derives is less than the social cost. It's Pareto loss.”

“Value-destroying corruption.”  Now we have a metaphor we can use.  He’s an economist.  I’m politically oriented.  From that perspective, I would argue that my friend, in claiming the politically motivated sweetheart deal doesn’t, per se, destroy value, may be missing something critical.  

Politics, by definition, creates winners and losers.  But governing shouldn’t be about reward and punishment.  We should expect those who lead us to improve things.  In short, if they are going to put their thumb on the scale in favor of one group, they should do no more than accomplish Pareto efficiency, and optimally, a Pareto Improvement.

Of course, that is (without the Pareto fetish) essentially what they claim they do.  When a Republican pushes for more for the wealthy, he couches it in terms of “job creation.”  Democrats speak more generally about redressing inequality, but the more sophisticated support better education, vocational training, and infrastructure which, in the long run, would give more people the ability to succeed, create and consume.  In effect, parties differ on approach but both are saying essentially the same thing, which roughly translates to “support my pals and it will be good for everyone.”

Except, we all “know” that’s a lie.  These folk really don’t care about everyone, they only care about those people who pull the lever for them, or, more importantly, write them a nice check. Knowledge of that dirty deal that the Mayor did with big-bucks Jim can induce a sort of lawlessness among the general population.  People don't report income, they barter, they pay cash to avoid sales tax, they cut corners.  Instead of fearing moral opprobrium and worse if they are caught, they feel stupid if they obey the rules while everyone else isn’t.  So, that $5M gift to Jim of public assets, even if it’s just at first “re-distribution” can be amplified by a thousand small acts of non-cooperation and become a Pareto Loss.

That process seems to be accelerating. One of the real dangers of this constant lurching back and forth between the parties, with wave elections suddenly installing single party-dominance, is that there’s a pent up demand for special favors.   That demand is being met by newly elected politicians taking care of theirs first and always, swiftly and often ruthlessly.

Yet, the spoils system isn’t new by any means.  What seems to have changed is something larger, yet harder to quantify.  It’s a sort of willfulness to take and a deafness to the legitimate concerns of others. 

You saw a hint of this on Tuesday, when Ralph Hall, the 91-year old Texas Congressman, was defeated in the Republican primary by Tea Party candidate John Ratcliffe. Hall’s sins basically boiled down to age and a (perceived) unseemly tendency to be a little too much of a gentlemen.  His leaving closes the door on an era; in January 2015, there will be no more WWII vets in Congress.

If you think that kicking the old coot out the door is something to celebrate, I would suggest you might be wrong.  Because what Hall takes with him is a little bit of the mindfulness that Milton Glaser was talking about last week.  The Greatest Generation had a consciousness that came from shared experience and often painful sacrifice.  Pols and partisans they surely were, but they were also open to other ideas and collaborative solutions.

I’m not an economist, but I feel pretty secure in saying that the passing of their way of thinking will lead to a Pareto Loss.  I don’t think I need to point out who will be the losers.

May 30, 2014

Michael Liss (Moderate Moderator)

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I'm Certain You Are Wrong

I'm Certain You Are Wrong

This past week I heard some brief remarks by Milton Glaser, the graphics designer who, in 2009, was awarded the National Medal of Arts. You have probably seen Glaser’s work a thousand times over without knowing it; among other things, he designed the “I Love New York” and Boston Brewery logos, and the iconographic image of Bob Dylan for Columbia Records.  When not drawing and designing things, he took time to be a Fulbright scholar and to co-found New York Magazine.  A rich life, still going strong at 85.

Glaser was talking about art.  What it is, and why it’s created, and what it can do for people.  Art, more than anything else, is a point of commonality between human beings.  I had never heard him speak before, so, after returning home, I dug a little deeper, and found an article from ForbesIndia.  Glaser has a world-view that had a particular resonance for me personally. As each week passes, and I write another post for Syncopated Politics, I have been grappling with my own concerns about what it is to be a self-identified moderate Democrat in the age of Obama.  Government, which I think can be part of a modality in delivering a decent life for those willing to participate fully, isn’t working.  It doesn’t matter whose fault it is; all the dysfunction has created a seething mass of angry constituents and poorly executed services.  Glaser’s commonality between human beings is disappearing.

We have a tendency to think about this split as a regional thing-North vs. South, the two coasts vs. the heartland, but it’s not that simple a narrative.  The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel has a truly fascinating story about one of the most politically polarized places in the United States—the Milwaukee Metropolitan area. 

In four counties, Waukesha, Washington, Ozaukee and Milwaukee, Republican Governor (and possible 2016 Presidential aspirant) Scott Walker has a 91% approval rating among Republicans, and Barack Obama a 93% approval rating among Democrats.  Obama’s approval with the GOP? 8%.  Walker’s with Democrats? 10%

How is that even possible, that people who live in such close proximity to each other could have such intense political differences expressed with such an astounding degree of unanimity?  The author, Craig Gilbert, speaks of “a rising political segregation here, from a fiercely fractured electorate to the loss of competition to almost intractable urban-suburban divisions to the evolution of two parties that attract different kinds of voters, represent different kinds of communities and win different kinds of elections.”

Mr. Gilbert could just have easily been speaking of the country as a whole.  There is no question that we have grown more estranged and nastier in our interactions.  You could see this vividly when the 9/11 Memorial opened in New York.  The comments in on-line forums and opinion columns were predominantly ugly accusations, defiling the memory of guiltless victims. People who profit from an open, filter-less mike deliberately stoke some of this crassness.  But much has just infused itself into the more vocal part of the electorate.  We have made a hobby of disdaining and sometimes even hating each other.   And we have made a virtue of willful ignorance of any fact that doesn’t fit our world-view.  We have become a nation of deniers. 

That has to leave us with a sense of unease and even dread.  You can find some of it echoed in David Brooks’ column in Tuesday’s New York Times.  “The events of the past several years have exposed democracy’s structural flaws. Democracies tend to have a tough time with long-range planning. Voters tend to want more government services than they are willing to pay for. The system of checks and balances can slide into paralysis, as more interest groups acquire veto power over legislation.”  Brooks goes on to ask, “Is democracy in long-run decline?”

Brooks’ solution is something I think he first learned at the feet of William F. Buckley: let the elites do it.  He wants Simpson-Bowles knock-offs where well-educated men and women get together (presumably over snifters of brandy) and discuss the great issues of the time and issue proclamations that, presumably, the rest of us respect and support implementation of. 

I’ve allowed myself that bit of snark to demonstrate two points.  The first is that Brooks is betraying a lack of trust in the general electorate that I find troubling, and, perhaps out of an unexpressed despair, he is drawing back from the communitarian conservatism that he has held as an ideal.  In short, he doesn’t really know what else to do. The second point should be obvious.  My snark is a substitute for any type of real solution.  I can tell you far better what the other side is doing wrong than how my side could do it better. 

It takes an artist to get to the point.  Glaser says “And so, we come to what I believe is useful in a kind of discussion like this, where you’re interested in the commonality of human beings: the suspension of belief. What people have to do is to stop believing and begin to observe. And the way I have been expressing that in relationship to art and design, is that attentiveness, in the Buddhist sense, becomes the way by which commonality, the observation of the real, is possible.”

That is a fascinating statement; stop believing and begin to observe.  Find the real.  Implicit in that is a sense that there is an objective truth that can be seen, if we only allow ourselves to see it.  To find commonality of purpose and approach, we have to discard our preconceptions.  “Once we come to life with an existing series of beliefs, the conception of commonality disappears. So, suspend ideology; suspend previous beliefs about what the world is. Attempt to experience it directly, by observation and attentiveness.”

Glaser isn’t talking about groupthink, or some state-imposed set of ideas.  What he is getting at is a sort of mindfulness, a persistent state of alertness and an openness to new information, even when it doesn’t fit into an ideology.  He sees it as an imperative; “I can’t imagine any other way to develop the sense that we are all in the same boat, experiencing the same needs and wants.”

How do we get life to imitate art, to think as if we were all in the same boat and experiencing the same needs?  

It would help if we had leaders who were courageous enough to both believe in, and repeat, Glaser’s words, “A certainty is a closing of the mind.”

May 20, 2014

Michael Liss  (Moderate Moderator)

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Benghazistein

Benghazistein

These are heady days for the GOP.  President Obama’s personal popularity and his job approval ratings are at low ebb.  The number of people who think the country is on the wrong track is double the number that thinks it is on the right track. The generic Congressional ballot shows Republicans with a lead portending a sweep of 2010 proportions.  At this moment, we can expect the GOP tighten their grip on the House and take the Senate.

Since it is all over for the Democrats except for the counting, the post-mortems, and the finger pointing, the Republicans have smartly turned their eyes towards 2015 and beyond.  My goodness will 2017 be fun!

Which, rather sadly, bring us back to the here and now.   Yes, the Democrats are going to get slaughtered in a few months.  And yes, on top of the endless policy disputes between Congress and the White House, that does mean that we will likely see impeachment proceedings in the House, and quite possibly a trial in the Senate, since many in the GOP will not be able to control themselves long enough to wait for salvation through the ballot.  But there’s eight awful months before they can really get going on that, and, there has to be something to distract them.

So, what to do for the rest of 2014?  You can block Obama’s appointees, but there’s only so much fun to be had with that.  You could try to repeal Obamacare, but a lot of juice has been squeezed from that lemon already.  You could lay out, in detail, what your plan is for America when you get in charge, but that would be ill advised, because then you might actually lose.

The base needs more.  Shoveling through the ashes of the perpetual denounce machine is really kind of dull.  Of course, everyone hates Obama-- at least the red-blooded non-taking native-born real Americans do, but if you are a party elder, you also know a scary little secret:  In 2016 Barack Obama will not be on the ballot.  Yes, you can campaign as if he was.  But he won’t be, and amidst all the measuring of the drapes, and the secret handshakes with your largest contributors, that is a very troubling fact.  Barack Obama might very well have brought new voters to the polls, but he also drove many others to vote against him, and more than a few of those were at least nominally Democrats.

I’m oversimplifying greatly, but there are basically two main types of Republicans these days.  The first includes the ones who have worked themselves into such frenzy over everything Obama that they embraced a world-view that sometimes seems out of touch with reality.  They actually believe the birther nonsense, the Saul Alinsky references, the Kenyan Muslim stuff and every wild conspiracy ginned up in every corner.  The second group sees Obama as a political problem.  They disagree with him on a philosophical level, they have (often quite legitimate) complaints about his performance, but what they really want is for one of theirs to be in charge.  Both groups might engage in the same tactics of obstruction and vituperation, but the truth is that most Republicans, even those in the gerrymandered House, are not in the least bit crazy.

You can see this shift over the last few months, as the outlines of the size of the potential Republican victory get clearer.  The sane people in the GOP don’t want to blow it.  Their spokespeople in the press are counseling calm, deliberate action.  Obstruct, criticize, condemn, etc. are all still useful tools, but the most important thing the GOP can possibly do is not kick it away.   So they are backing mainstream (very conservative, but supported by the party) candidates and incumbents against insurgent ultra-ideologues. 

There is a lot at stake for the GOP in the next two cycles.  Obama’s tepid performance and his personal issues give them the chance to hard wire control of Congress, and that means that no laws will be passed in the next couple of years without major concessions or outright capitulation from the Democrats.  And 2016 gives them the chance of a generation—to usher in a new wave of top-to-bottom conservatism.  There is also the money issue.  They will always have people like the ideologically and economically motivated Koch brothers, but the rest of their corporate backers from organizations like ALEC and the Fortune 500 set to the US Chamber of Commerce invest money for a return.  They expect results, and results can only come from winning.  Businesses will not perpetually throw good money after bad.

Still, one of the GOP’s biggest assets in the midterms, where turnout is always lower, is the passion of their shock troops.  That is very hard to manage, because you have to keep the pressure-cooker perking without having the top blow off.

There are two aspects to this, both institutionally and individually. The first is making sure you are right wing enough to keep control (or your job) from the farther right.  But the second, if you really have aspirations for high office in any place that isn’t deep Red, is to stay away from the fringe and the stupid.   That’s a high wire act, as Marco Rubio showed this past weekend, when he graded Hillary Clinton’s Secretary of State tenure an “F” (perfectly acceptable partisan commentary) and then plunged, unnecessarily, into the climate-change denial ritual baths. 

Fringy/stupid can cost.  Polling shows that on most issues, the public favors the Democrats but thinks them less than fully competent.  For the GOP to sweep the next two elections, they need to show they are able to govern competently and rationally.  And they need to keep those disaffected Democrats who weren’t going to vote for Barack Obama but might very well vote for a more conventional Democrat, such as Hillary Clinton or even Joe Biden.   

Blessedly, Judicial Watch, an ultra-right wing policy group that bills itself as non-partisan has come to the rescue.  They have uncovered, through a FOIA request, a White House email on Benghazi that appeared to show that the Administration was concerned about how to put the best face on the disaster.

Christmas arrived early for the GOP: the Benghazistein monster just got reanimated. And what makes this even better is that deep in the Libyan doo-doo is none other than Hillary Clinton.  The Ghosts of Presidents Past and Future. 

Swiftly, Speaker Boehner announced yet another investigation, to be headed by South Carolina Congressman Trey Gowdy.  Just as swiftly, the GOP has started to fundraise, showing, once again, that the best way to make money is by using taxpayer cash as seed-corn.  And, in lockstep, conservative commentators and Fox have been running round the clock coverage rivaling CNN’s on Flight 370. 

The Democrats really don’t know what to do.  There have already been over a dozen investigations into Benghazi.  Many Democrats don’t want to participate at all and are suggesting a boycott, a particularly dumb response, in my opinion, because someone has to be in the room.

What really happened there?  I am not going to pretend I know.  What I think might have occurred was an intelligence failure, a slow reaction, perhaps based on the poor intelligence, perhaps because of poor judgment, and a White House that did a little spinning.  There have been a lot of Americans that have died overseas under Presidents of both parties, and a lot of spinning that followed those deaths, and none of those past incidences have given rise to anything like Benghazistein.

But I’m not really sure, and I wonder who is and from where they are getting their information.  Appointing another committee of hanging judges isn’t going to get to the truth, and Gowdy, on Fox News (of course) has already shown in inclinations.  This will be, as he indicated before correcting himself, a prosecution, not an investigation.

Good for the Party? Probably yes, in the short term.  The lads over on the Tea Party side of the table will have a chance to work off a little energy, the money will flow in, and the White House and Hillary will certainly be embarrassed.  Longer term, I have doubts, if for no other reason than I don’t believe that Gowdy and his allies will really be able to maintain any sense of due process or dignity.

That’s the real danger of Benghazistein, for both parties.  Once the monster is loose, it will careen out of control, churning up plenty of mud, but very little clarity.

Really bad for the brand.  Both brands.

They deserve it.

March 12, 2014

Michael Liss (Moderate Moderator)

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Justice Thomas Make a Leap of Faith

Justice Thomas Makes a Leap of Faith

Let’s begin with a proposition.  New York City, sleek, slick, liberal, atheistic capital of hedonism, suddenly has an epiphany, and gets religion.  At long last, Staten Island finally opens its arms to its heathen brethren.  Everywhere pockets of devoutness spout up, from the formerly libertine Greenwich Village to the softheaded Upper West Side,  the hip sections of Brooklyn, all of Flushing (the Mets are in particular need of Divine help) and Riverdale in the Bronx.  From there the pull of faith begins to spread, and there comes a time that it is so great that even the ACLU is forced to close up shop and move to Oklahoma.

The conversion is not complete, because the pure contrariness of New York DNA keeps an irreducible, un-saveable 40% from seeing the light, but thanks to some savvy gerrymandering, everywhere the seculars are outnumbered.  The devout then turn their eyes to their alternate religion, politics, and take over every arm of government, every community council.

But, there is a problem with all this purging of sin and seizing of power. New Yorkers are a diverse lot.  The Catholics have an absolute majority in four of the five  boroughs among the self-identified, but, since that constitutes only about 60% of the population, they can’t run things on their own.  So, they cut deals with the Protestants and the Jews, where necessary.  Everywhere, there is a division of labor and power, and everywhere, at every governmental meeting of every type, large to small, they open with a twenty-minute religious service.

Crazy story, right?  Certainly, the courts, when alerted, will put them right?  That is where the Supreme Court’s decision, this last Monday, in Town of Greece vs. Galloway comes into play. In a 5-4 ruling (is there any other kind?) the Court held that a) some legislative prayers are Constitutionally permissible, and b) prayers that have specific religious content or have theological content specific to one faith (such as Christ or the Resurrection) are also permissible. 

The decision of the Court, written by swing vote Justice Kennedy, and joined by the conservative bloc, was fascinating in its delicacy.  Justice Kennedy said, "Our tradition assumes that adult citizens, firm in their own beliefs, can tolerate and perhaps appreciate a ceremonial prayer delivered by a person of a different faith.”  The decision implies but does not draw a line that prayers that denigrate or otherwise belittle other faiths might not be permissible, but it does express a certain noblesse oblige that the prayer any of the Justices in the majority might find on a Sunday morning in their place of worship should surely be acceptable to everyone.

The minority opinion (Justice Kagan, joined by Justices Sotomayor, Ginsburg, and Breyer, who wrote a separate dissenting opinion) found the majority’s ruling unpersuasive.  While they recognized existing precedent that a little non-sectarian praying before legislating could be Constitutional, they thought that the medium-sized town of Greece (population, 94,000) seemed to be leaning quite assertively away from the merely ceremonial.  Since 1999, when a new Town Supervisor was elected, Greece had moved from a moment of silence to prayers led exclusively by members of the Christian clergy.  Greece did not overtly select the clergy, nor did it either dictate or limit what types of prayers were uttered, but, as you might imagine, some clergy brought more passion than others. 

What the minority was worried about was impact of overtly religious symbols in a civic setting.  Would a non-Christian citizen, upon attending a public meeting, feel that her chance of fully participating in the governance of their town was limited because of her faith? 

That is hard to say.  One of the examples that Justice Kennedy cited and presumably found acceptable was “We look with anticipation to the celebration of Holy Week and Easter. It is in the solemn events of next week that we find the very heart and center of our Christian faith. We acknowledge the saving sacrifice of Jesus Christ on the cross. We draw strength, vitality, and confidence from his resurrection at Easter.”   That is a little stronger than the 23^rd Psalm.

Practically, and not necessarily as a matter of law, I think both Kennedy and Kagan got it half right. A short prayer, even one not in my liturgy, and assuming I am not compelled to join in, doesn’t offend my sensibilities.  I am not convinced, given the long history of legislative ceremonial prayer, that it is per se a gateway drug to theocracy.

But, clearly, there is some line.  What Kagan and Kennedy are both doing, whether they articulate it that way or not, is applying a “hall monitor” strategy.  Kagan, in effect, is saying that the language I just quoted above is the very type of thing a hall monitor would flag.  Kennedy (and Scalia, in a concurring opinion) think that the children really don’t need a hall monitor, a little religion won’t hurt them, and if the offense is really bad (egregiously sectarian to the point of interfering with civic life) then someone will rat out the teacher to the Principal (the courts) and the proper limits would be imposed.

There is logic in both positions. The portion of the First Amendment that deals with religion states “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof...” Traditionally, we have thought of the Establishment and Free Exercise Clauses as a type of macro rule.  Government can neither promote nor prefer one religion to another, nor can it prohibit anyone from exercising his or her religious rights.  To most people, that makes sense.  The skirmishes we have had have often been where the invisible line was crossed, such as putting a crèche in a public square, or in organized prayer in schools.  But the basic idea, that Big Government shouldn’t be putting its thumb on the theological scale, is intuitively logical and fair to most Americans.

What Kennedy’s and Kagan’s opinions represent is within the continuum of that debate—just where is the red line? For both, it remains peculiarly fact-specific and their opinions are oddly analogous to the famous Justice Potter Stewart test for obscenity “I know it when I see it.” So, in that light, Greece is somewhat human and comforting, even if I don’t completely agree with the result.  They did the best they could, while applying their own personal standards.

If that was where it ended, I think I would be somewhat dissatisfied, but content.  Then I read the concurring opinion of Justice Thomas.  Thomas, on his own, repeated his contention that the Establishment Clause should not be seen as incorporated by the Fourteenth Amendment against the States.  In his view, “Congress shall make no law” means only Congress shall make no law.  State and local governments are not so limited, and are free to promote, support (or, presumably interfere with) the exercise of religion.  Thomas allows that the Establishment Clause “probably” prohibits Congress from establishing a national religion. Parenthetically, the “probably” part is enough to chill one a bit.  But as to establishing a State (or city, or county, or town, or hamlet) religion, the sky is apparently the limit. 

Not to draw the logical conclusion, but if you can do it in Greece, New York, you can certainly do it in New York, New York.  Size doesn’t matter.

Justice Thomas is reportedly a man of faith.  But his opinion in Greece?  That’s a leap of faith.

May 6, 2014

Michael Liss (Moderate Moderator)

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