Tuesday, October 23, 2012
Election 2012 - The Campaign - Remembered
Wednesday, October 17, 2012
Election 2012 - The Issues
Since the start of Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign in
the Republican primary, he has sought to make this election a 1-note campaign
about the economy, jobs, and Barack Obama’s handling of our recovery from the
Great Recession. However, during the
primary Rick Santorum and the other Republican candidates introduced numerous
other issues also of concern to Americans.
And Obama continued to do the same after Romney sewed up the
nomination. This has been a good thing,
because it has reminded us that the election is about more than just the
economy. When we elect a President, we
have to select our best choice, our best hope, our best strategist and
communicator over a broad range of topics about which Americans are
concerned. Let us then look at some
representative examples of this broad range of issues.
1. The Economy: The question is who has the most credibility in managing the government role and portion of our economy. The greatest cumulative growth in jobs has come under Democratic presidents. The greatest growth in budget deficits has come from Republican presidents. The principal cause of our Great Recession was the huge push in deregulation of business during the G.W. Bush Republican era. It led to unbridled fraud and risk-taking that ultimately collapsed the economy and sent much of the workforce into joblessness. It has taken this current administration its entire first term to turn around that collapse and achieve a consistent 3-year reduction in our deficit spending and unemployment rate, while also restoring the stock market and increasing total jobs. So which policies should be more entrusted to continue this recovery?
2. Taxation: Much is being said about cutting taxes by both parties. But I am mystified as to how cutting revenues makes much sense when you are in deficit spending. For all the talk against the supposedly high tax rate on wealthy people and prosperous corporations, the truth is that NONE of these people / corporations is actually paying that stated high rate on their income. If they are, they desperately need to find another tax accountant. Mitt Romney’s @12% tax rate on his millions of income exemplifies this falsity, and confirms the hollowness of the “high taxes on the rich” argument. Which is why reform of the boondoggle of special exemptions and tax treatment is so necessary. But does anyone believe that either party can deliver this reform against the onslaught of lobbyist power and negative taxpayer reactions to eliminating their favored deductions?
3. Spending Cuts: As I have noted before, everyone wants to cut government spending. But no one wants to reduce the payments going to them. No businessperson wants government contracts reduced to his/her company; no citizen wants their support payments reduced. Romney’s goal to eliminate the miniscule funding for Big Bird (the only cut he has been specific about) is contrasted to his goal to ADD billions for unneeded military spending. The bloodletting over spending will likely kill the patient, but Senator Tom Coburn (R-OK) is correct in protesting some ridiculous uses of our collective money. The question remains who do we trust more to make the rights cuts needed in a smart and targeted way, versus swinging a meat ax indiscriminately across the budget?
4. Supreme Court: Our Supreme Court is as politicized and badly divided as the rest of America. Which is why it now has its lowest public approval rating since such measurement started in the 1980s. Appointments are for life, and several vacancies are expected over the next four years. Considering the Supreme Court’s substantial impact on our lives, who do we trust more to nominate future justices to the court?
5. Women’s Rights: Abortion, proper health care without government interference, equal pay, opportunities for access in the workplace and government – these are all issues that have been actively on the docket for 50 years now. Yet there are still those who push back on these topics, attempting to recreate a “Leave It To Beaver” family unit/lifestyle that disappeared long ago. The positions of the two candidates and their Parties could not be more different on this topic. So who do you trust to continue the march toward enlightened fairness for women versus trying to turn the clock back?
6. Safety Net: Ditto on health care for the entire population, Medicare and Medicaid support, and Social Security. We have come so far, through so much resistance, over so many years, in establishing a basic floor for protecting and ensuring life’s most fundamental needs for all citizens. A floor above which people can then rise to express and achieve their individual potential to the best of their abilities. Republicans pledge to convert that safety net to the rollercoaster of the marketplace: vouchers, privatized social security, health insurance turned back to the insurance companies. It supposedly will all be cheaper due to “business competition.” Yet the last decade demonstrated the ridiculousness of putting your baseline programs into the stock market (versus added higher-level options). And the failure of the insurance companies to meet consumer demand with cost-effective programs at affordable prices is what led to the need for government intervention in the first place. So who do we trust more to lead America’s foundational safety net forward versus tossing it into the corporate board room?
7. Immigration: Republicans want to keep building a fence and send home the 10M+ illegal immigrants. Democrats want to increase border patrols and find ways to integrate otherwise-law-abiding illegals into society. We certainly should be penalizing employers who continue to create the illegal labor force that draws these immigrants to us in the first place. Who is going to finally step to the plate and find the “grand compromise” needed to move us past this stalemate?
8. Civil Rights: The old issue of achieving equality that has always been a promise of America is still a battle. Much has been accomplished over our 225 years, but we are not there yet across all kinds of race, religion, sexual and economic groups. Given what we have seen over the last decade, and even the anti-voting maneuvers attempted in this extended election process, who do we trust more to advance that promise rather than to continue to create obstacles?
9. Foreign Affairs: America is the most powerful nation on earth. But even with all that power we cannot control what happens across the globe. When we overly try to dominate and interfere with other nations, we inevitably get ourselves into deep trouble. The world is vastly different than post-World War II, the Cold War, the foreign domination of the Middle East, a new China. Who do we trust more to have the sensitivity, expansiveness, understanding and the humility needed to work within this wholly new world, and the wisdom to know that this different mindset is what is needed?
There is no doubt that the economy and jobs are people’s great concerns. But they are not, and should not be, our only concerns. Despite the rhetoric, mistruths and position shifts occurring on the campaign trail, we all need to consider the full potential outcomes of this election – and at the federal, state and local levels. When the campaign noise is shut out, it still comes down to that instinct in our gut: who do we trust more to be honest with us, to be the most thoughtful, to do the right thing, and to be the steadiest hand when all the yet unforeseen crises arise to challenge us?
1. The Economy: The question is who has the most credibility in managing the government role and portion of our economy. The greatest cumulative growth in jobs has come under Democratic presidents. The greatest growth in budget deficits has come from Republican presidents. The principal cause of our Great Recession was the huge push in deregulation of business during the G.W. Bush Republican era. It led to unbridled fraud and risk-taking that ultimately collapsed the economy and sent much of the workforce into joblessness. It has taken this current administration its entire first term to turn around that collapse and achieve a consistent 3-year reduction in our deficit spending and unemployment rate, while also restoring the stock market and increasing total jobs. So which policies should be more entrusted to continue this recovery?
2. Taxation: Much is being said about cutting taxes by both parties. But I am mystified as to how cutting revenues makes much sense when you are in deficit spending. For all the talk against the supposedly high tax rate on wealthy people and prosperous corporations, the truth is that NONE of these people / corporations is actually paying that stated high rate on their income. If they are, they desperately need to find another tax accountant. Mitt Romney’s @12% tax rate on his millions of income exemplifies this falsity, and confirms the hollowness of the “high taxes on the rich” argument. Which is why reform of the boondoggle of special exemptions and tax treatment is so necessary. But does anyone believe that either party can deliver this reform against the onslaught of lobbyist power and negative taxpayer reactions to eliminating their favored deductions?
3. Spending Cuts: As I have noted before, everyone wants to cut government spending. But no one wants to reduce the payments going to them. No businessperson wants government contracts reduced to his/her company; no citizen wants their support payments reduced. Romney’s goal to eliminate the miniscule funding for Big Bird (the only cut he has been specific about) is contrasted to his goal to ADD billions for unneeded military spending. The bloodletting over spending will likely kill the patient, but Senator Tom Coburn (R-OK) is correct in protesting some ridiculous uses of our collective money. The question remains who do we trust more to make the rights cuts needed in a smart and targeted way, versus swinging a meat ax indiscriminately across the budget?
4. Supreme Court: Our Supreme Court is as politicized and badly divided as the rest of America. Which is why it now has its lowest public approval rating since such measurement started in the 1980s. Appointments are for life, and several vacancies are expected over the next four years. Considering the Supreme Court’s substantial impact on our lives, who do we trust more to nominate future justices to the court?
5. Women’s Rights: Abortion, proper health care without government interference, equal pay, opportunities for access in the workplace and government – these are all issues that have been actively on the docket for 50 years now. Yet there are still those who push back on these topics, attempting to recreate a “Leave It To Beaver” family unit/lifestyle that disappeared long ago. The positions of the two candidates and their Parties could not be more different on this topic. So who do you trust to continue the march toward enlightened fairness for women versus trying to turn the clock back?
6. Safety Net: Ditto on health care for the entire population, Medicare and Medicaid support, and Social Security. We have come so far, through so much resistance, over so many years, in establishing a basic floor for protecting and ensuring life’s most fundamental needs for all citizens. A floor above which people can then rise to express and achieve their individual potential to the best of their abilities. Republicans pledge to convert that safety net to the rollercoaster of the marketplace: vouchers, privatized social security, health insurance turned back to the insurance companies. It supposedly will all be cheaper due to “business competition.” Yet the last decade demonstrated the ridiculousness of putting your baseline programs into the stock market (versus added higher-level options). And the failure of the insurance companies to meet consumer demand with cost-effective programs at affordable prices is what led to the need for government intervention in the first place. So who do we trust more to lead America’s foundational safety net forward versus tossing it into the corporate board room?
7. Immigration: Republicans want to keep building a fence and send home the 10M+ illegal immigrants. Democrats want to increase border patrols and find ways to integrate otherwise-law-abiding illegals into society. We certainly should be penalizing employers who continue to create the illegal labor force that draws these immigrants to us in the first place. Who is going to finally step to the plate and find the “grand compromise” needed to move us past this stalemate?
8. Civil Rights: The old issue of achieving equality that has always been a promise of America is still a battle. Much has been accomplished over our 225 years, but we are not there yet across all kinds of race, religion, sexual and economic groups. Given what we have seen over the last decade, and even the anti-voting maneuvers attempted in this extended election process, who do we trust more to advance that promise rather than to continue to create obstacles?
9. Foreign Affairs: America is the most powerful nation on earth. But even with all that power we cannot control what happens across the globe. When we overly try to dominate and interfere with other nations, we inevitably get ourselves into deep trouble. The world is vastly different than post-World War II, the Cold War, the foreign domination of the Middle East, a new China. Who do we trust more to have the sensitivity, expansiveness, understanding and the humility needed to work within this wholly new world, and the wisdom to know that this different mindset is what is needed?
There is no doubt that the economy and jobs are people’s great concerns. But they are not, and should not be, our only concerns. Despite the rhetoric, mistruths and position shifts occurring on the campaign trail, we all need to consider the full potential outcomes of this election – and at the federal, state and local levels. When the campaign noise is shut out, it still comes down to that instinct in our gut: who do we trust more to be honest with us, to be the most thoughtful, to do the right thing, and to be the steadiest hand when all the yet unforeseen crises arise to challenge us?
Thursday, October 11, 2012
Election 2012 - Barack Obama
In the left corner of our political boxing ring we have
the Democratic candidate for President in 2012: Barack Hussein Obama. Mr. Obama is the son of a mixed-race
marriage, raised by his middle-class single mother or her parents in diverse
settings as his mother pursued her anthropological research. He was a product of our public school systems
who took full advantage of student loan opportunities and a Harvard Law
education to become the first bi-racial President of the United States. By the very fact of his election he signaled
a milestone in the social and legal progress of America over his own 50
years. Now he stands in assessment by
the people of how well he has done with the opportunities given to him.
It seems that complaints against Mr. Obama center on three issues: 1) that he embodies a big government, if not socialist, agenda contrary to American individualism; 2) that he has not restored our economy or reduced the national debt; or 3) that he has failed to deliver on promises and expectations from his 2008 election.
1. Socialist: In reality, America is a far distance away from being, or becoming, a socialist state where “the means of production are owned and controlled by the state.” Certainly we could all point to some areas of regulation or tax burdens we might like to reduce, but I am still free to change jobs, start my own business, spend my money pretty much as I choose, pretty much the same as in 2008. No guns have been seized, no “death panels have pulled the plug on grandma.” The only area where the government has significantly expanded its services and engagement has been with health care – the very area that has long been broken, eating up our economy, and immorally inaccessible to much of the population – using the very model created by Republican candidate Romney. Considering that it was a Republican President and Congress that passed the No-Child-Left-Behind intrusion into our public schools, and the Patriot Act intrusion into our privacy, and the various limits on people’s right to live the life they choose, the yelling about “socialism and big government” against Obama rings quite hollow. As do all the protests against the new financial regulations needed to protect us against yet another financial Great Recession.
The “socialist” charge is an easy way to whip up the emotions of those who already feel frustrated by government intrusion into our lives. It has been used (with racial undertones) by corporate monopolistic business leaders for 100 years to discredit people who are opposed to their excessive economic control and ability to wield favored political power. But the substance does not work here. Not when the term comes from the very politicians who are themselves promoting intrusion and control over our lives.
2. Economy: There is no question that the Bush economic collapse of 2008 completely reprioritized Obama’s intended political agenda. Yet Obama managed to contain a consensus looming depression into a recession. Unemployment maxed out at 10% in October 2009 – not a desirable level, but way better than the 25% experience of the 1930s Great Depression. It has since been on a steady decline for three years, most recently standing at 7.8%, just three points above our typical 5%. (The unemployment rate would be lower if Republican budget cuts and anti-stimulus votes had not fired thousands of federal and state government workers.) Total employment in the private sector has been consistently growing for over three years; there are now over 500,000 net private sector jobs in place than when Obama took office. The auto industry is alive and well, and millions of auto manufacturing and supply chain jobs were saved by Obama’s investment decision – an investment that is actually returning a profit to the U.S. Treasury. And unlike Bush’s bailout gift to the financial industry, Obama extracted smart conditions for change in both management and labor, and added benefits to the public, from auto industry leaders. The stock market was tanking as Obama came into office, losing almost one-half of its wealth to a Dow Jones Industrial Average low of $6,547. That average has now climbed up to over $13,500, and most 401k retirement accounts have been restored. The budget deficit has been steadily reduced each year, from $1,509B for FY 2009 to $1,100B for FY 2012. All in all, not a bad track record for someone trying to bring the American economy back from the financial cliff.
Growth may be slow, but it is still growth; over 90% of Americans are in fact employed. They say “it could have been worse” is a lousy campaign slogan. But sometimes it is the exact truth. Frankly the economy would be doing great if Washington would end its stalemate so that businesspeople would know the future rules of the game and be able to plan accordingly.
3. Disappointments: As for disappointments from 2008, I have trouble understanding that charge against a President who has accomplished so much given so little to work with. Americans always start out with great hope and enthusiasm for each new president; most of the time the reality falls short. Ted Kennedy described his slain brother Robert as one who “dreamed things that never were, and asked Why Not?” Yet German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck said in 1867 that “politics is the art of the possible.” Hopeful vision in a leader is important to inspire effort and establish directions. Yet you must also inevitably pick your battles carefully, make progress where you can, and seek to come out ahead of where you were. The last four years have been a time of the near IM-possible. From that basis, a lot of those 2008 campaign promises have gotten done.
Healthcare was Obama’s #1 priority, and in the end he got it done. It was unnecessarily a too-big final package, and the decision to let Congress “work out the details” was a bad one because they made a mess of it. But in a country this wealthy, bankruptcy, pain and death due to a lack of access to healthcare is inexcusable. 20 years from now, most people will wonder what all the loud protest was about, coming from people who already have health care and who will not be negatively affected by the changes. Just as some politicians once protested Social Security and Medicare.
Immigration fairness has not been done due to the extreme “either/or” thinking in Congress. Working in the middle, Obama has supported increased border patrols and deportation of illegal aliens. But he also has supported some form of “path to citizenship” and a “Dream Act” for the children of illegal aliens that Republicans refuse to consider even as they refuse to round up the aliens they object to and send them home. So Obama unilaterally found ways to provide some access and security for these children by executive order.
To ensure equality of rights, the “Don’t Ask / Don’t Tell” law prohibiting equal opportunity to serve in the military has been repealed; Obama has refused to enforce the “Domestic Marriage Act” prohibiting social benefits to domestic partners; and he has signed a bill strengthening “equal pay for equal work” requirements. For some reason we still struggle with that “all men are created equal” thing.
Internationally and militarily, Obama has pulled that agenda off the usual Republican plate. The Iraq war is over; two more years to go in Afghanistan to end President Bush’s forgotten “other war”; bin Laden is dead; al-Qaeda, while still dangerous, has been badly crippled; Libya is free of Gadaffi. Guantanamo is still open due to Congress’ refusal to fund any alternate prison on American soil. Our standing and partnerships with European leaders have been restored; the Middle East remains a 65-year old intractable problem spanning 12 Presidents for reasons too many to delineate here, even as former Bush (and now Romney) advisors trumpet for new arrogant military responses with Syria and Iran. We do not seem to learn our lessons very well or easily. But the Obama/Clinton foreign affairs team has learned and done well.
As far as disappointments, the ugly and paralyzing partisan Washington rancor remains unabated. In trying to be the great bipartisan reconciler, Obama has been too slow to recognize the depth of the Republican commitment to achieving his defeat in 2012 by objecting to everything he proposed. Obama has held out too long for compromises where there was never going to be any, and valuable time and credibility were lost. A “my way or the highway” style of governing may be undesirable, but a leader has to know when to cut bait and fight for his/her goals with passion and force. For all his great talent at delivering an inspiring set speech, he and his team have been remarkably bad communicators in explaining the day-to-day level of decisions, actions and results. This has left Republicans free to run simplified (and generally inaccurate) bumper-sticker slogans, confusing the public discussion. Given his lack of hands-on business experience, Obama has still not found a supportive voice for the businessperson, especially the small entrepreneurs who drive jobs and our economy; the balance we truly need between economic and social agendas is lacking.
Are there some specific disappointments I have from the last four years? Yes. Do I blame Obama for not delivering? No. Blame is too widespread. Compromise and reconciliation are not 1-sided propositions. One cannot lead a nation when one side refuses to march together, and instead uses our struggling economy as a mask for all kinds of side issues of social destruction. The American people are notoriously short of memory and patience. To properly assess Obama, we need to clearly remember where we started from four years ago, where we actually are now, and realistically measure our progress against the really deep hole we are still climbing out of.
It seems that complaints against Mr. Obama center on three issues: 1) that he embodies a big government, if not socialist, agenda contrary to American individualism; 2) that he has not restored our economy or reduced the national debt; or 3) that he has failed to deliver on promises and expectations from his 2008 election.
1. Socialist: In reality, America is a far distance away from being, or becoming, a socialist state where “the means of production are owned and controlled by the state.” Certainly we could all point to some areas of regulation or tax burdens we might like to reduce, but I am still free to change jobs, start my own business, spend my money pretty much as I choose, pretty much the same as in 2008. No guns have been seized, no “death panels have pulled the plug on grandma.” The only area where the government has significantly expanded its services and engagement has been with health care – the very area that has long been broken, eating up our economy, and immorally inaccessible to much of the population – using the very model created by Republican candidate Romney. Considering that it was a Republican President and Congress that passed the No-Child-Left-Behind intrusion into our public schools, and the Patriot Act intrusion into our privacy, and the various limits on people’s right to live the life they choose, the yelling about “socialism and big government” against Obama rings quite hollow. As do all the protests against the new financial regulations needed to protect us against yet another financial Great Recession.
The “socialist” charge is an easy way to whip up the emotions of those who already feel frustrated by government intrusion into our lives. It has been used (with racial undertones) by corporate monopolistic business leaders for 100 years to discredit people who are opposed to their excessive economic control and ability to wield favored political power. But the substance does not work here. Not when the term comes from the very politicians who are themselves promoting intrusion and control over our lives.
2. Economy: There is no question that the Bush economic collapse of 2008 completely reprioritized Obama’s intended political agenda. Yet Obama managed to contain a consensus looming depression into a recession. Unemployment maxed out at 10% in October 2009 – not a desirable level, but way better than the 25% experience of the 1930s Great Depression. It has since been on a steady decline for three years, most recently standing at 7.8%, just three points above our typical 5%. (The unemployment rate would be lower if Republican budget cuts and anti-stimulus votes had not fired thousands of federal and state government workers.) Total employment in the private sector has been consistently growing for over three years; there are now over 500,000 net private sector jobs in place than when Obama took office. The auto industry is alive and well, and millions of auto manufacturing and supply chain jobs were saved by Obama’s investment decision – an investment that is actually returning a profit to the U.S. Treasury. And unlike Bush’s bailout gift to the financial industry, Obama extracted smart conditions for change in both management and labor, and added benefits to the public, from auto industry leaders. The stock market was tanking as Obama came into office, losing almost one-half of its wealth to a Dow Jones Industrial Average low of $6,547. That average has now climbed up to over $13,500, and most 401k retirement accounts have been restored. The budget deficit has been steadily reduced each year, from $1,509B for FY 2009 to $1,100B for FY 2012. All in all, not a bad track record for someone trying to bring the American economy back from the financial cliff.
Growth may be slow, but it is still growth; over 90% of Americans are in fact employed. They say “it could have been worse” is a lousy campaign slogan. But sometimes it is the exact truth. Frankly the economy would be doing great if Washington would end its stalemate so that businesspeople would know the future rules of the game and be able to plan accordingly.
3. Disappointments: As for disappointments from 2008, I have trouble understanding that charge against a President who has accomplished so much given so little to work with. Americans always start out with great hope and enthusiasm for each new president; most of the time the reality falls short. Ted Kennedy described his slain brother Robert as one who “dreamed things that never were, and asked Why Not?” Yet German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck said in 1867 that “politics is the art of the possible.” Hopeful vision in a leader is important to inspire effort and establish directions. Yet you must also inevitably pick your battles carefully, make progress where you can, and seek to come out ahead of where you were. The last four years have been a time of the near IM-possible. From that basis, a lot of those 2008 campaign promises have gotten done.
Healthcare was Obama’s #1 priority, and in the end he got it done. It was unnecessarily a too-big final package, and the decision to let Congress “work out the details” was a bad one because they made a mess of it. But in a country this wealthy, bankruptcy, pain and death due to a lack of access to healthcare is inexcusable. 20 years from now, most people will wonder what all the loud protest was about, coming from people who already have health care and who will not be negatively affected by the changes. Just as some politicians once protested Social Security and Medicare.
Immigration fairness has not been done due to the extreme “either/or” thinking in Congress. Working in the middle, Obama has supported increased border patrols and deportation of illegal aliens. But he also has supported some form of “path to citizenship” and a “Dream Act” for the children of illegal aliens that Republicans refuse to consider even as they refuse to round up the aliens they object to and send them home. So Obama unilaterally found ways to provide some access and security for these children by executive order.
To ensure equality of rights, the “Don’t Ask / Don’t Tell” law prohibiting equal opportunity to serve in the military has been repealed; Obama has refused to enforce the “Domestic Marriage Act” prohibiting social benefits to domestic partners; and he has signed a bill strengthening “equal pay for equal work” requirements. For some reason we still struggle with that “all men are created equal” thing.
Internationally and militarily, Obama has pulled that agenda off the usual Republican plate. The Iraq war is over; two more years to go in Afghanistan to end President Bush’s forgotten “other war”; bin Laden is dead; al-Qaeda, while still dangerous, has been badly crippled; Libya is free of Gadaffi. Guantanamo is still open due to Congress’ refusal to fund any alternate prison on American soil. Our standing and partnerships with European leaders have been restored; the Middle East remains a 65-year old intractable problem spanning 12 Presidents for reasons too many to delineate here, even as former Bush (and now Romney) advisors trumpet for new arrogant military responses with Syria and Iran. We do not seem to learn our lessons very well or easily. But the Obama/Clinton foreign affairs team has learned and done well.
As far as disappointments, the ugly and paralyzing partisan Washington rancor remains unabated. In trying to be the great bipartisan reconciler, Obama has been too slow to recognize the depth of the Republican commitment to achieving his defeat in 2012 by objecting to everything he proposed. Obama has held out too long for compromises where there was never going to be any, and valuable time and credibility were lost. A “my way or the highway” style of governing may be undesirable, but a leader has to know when to cut bait and fight for his/her goals with passion and force. For all his great talent at delivering an inspiring set speech, he and his team have been remarkably bad communicators in explaining the day-to-day level of decisions, actions and results. This has left Republicans free to run simplified (and generally inaccurate) bumper-sticker slogans, confusing the public discussion. Given his lack of hands-on business experience, Obama has still not found a supportive voice for the businessperson, especially the small entrepreneurs who drive jobs and our economy; the balance we truly need between economic and social agendas is lacking.
Are there some specific disappointments I have from the last four years? Yes. Do I blame Obama for not delivering? No. Blame is too widespread. Compromise and reconciliation are not 1-sided propositions. One cannot lead a nation when one side refuses to march together, and instead uses our struggling economy as a mask for all kinds of side issues of social destruction. The American people are notoriously short of memory and patience. To properly assess Obama, we need to clearly remember where we started from four years ago, where we actually are now, and realistically measure our progress against the really deep hole we are still climbing out of.
Wednesday, October 3, 2012
Election 2012 -- Mitt Romney
In the right corner of today’s political boxing ring we
have the Republican candidate for President in 2012: Millard Mitt Romney. Mr. Romney’s father, George, was president of
American Motors Company, Governor of Michigan, and unsuccessful candidate for
the Republican nomination for President in 1968. Given his father’s financial and political
success, Mitt Romney was able to receive an excellent private school education
and a good head start on life. He had a
highly successful career in the private investment industry, making him one of
the wealthiest candidates ever to run for president. His public service life includes an
unsuccessful U.S. Senate run against Ted Kennedy in 1994; one term as
Massachusetts Governor from 2003-2007; an unsuccessful run for the Republican
presidential nomination in 2008; and now this bid in the general election. But even after all of this public exposure,
what are we to make of this man and his candidacy? Three core issues call out for examination.
1. Core Principles: There is an old anecdote about Hollywood that says, once you strip away its layers upon layers of tinsel and glitter, what you find underneath it all is – simply more tinsel. Such can be similarly said about Mr. Romney’s apparent lack of any consistent core beliefs. Over his nearly 20 years of running for public office, he has held almost every conceivable position possible on almost every political and social issue available, shifting as needed to fit the expediency of the office, the campaign, the times, or the audience. Which is why his own Republican base is so suspicious and un-enamored of him. I personally admire people who learn lessons from their lifetimes, and who evolve their thinking based upon rational input, personal experience, and thoughtful reflection. But Mr. Romney’s such evolutions are too conveniently done. Changes in public statements and positions can occur within months, if not days, with seemingly little regard for past utterances documented on camera or in print. Watching the subsequent awkward and near-irrational explanation for each new epiphany of thought is torturous to any rational-thinking human being.
Voting for a candidate is the vehicle by which voters express their collective beliefs and goals through their elected surrogate. When someone thinks so little of his/her personal beliefs that they are unwilling to state and defend them, rather than shift those beliefs from audience to audience, they obviate the whole concept of what a vote stands for. We should not give away the sacred privilege of our vote so easily. As with John McCain in 2008, watching a good person throw away their very soul for secular political gain is painfully disheartening to see. Did not someone once point out to us that, “For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?” The lesson for us all is that when you continually act without your core principles, over time it catches up with you. Mr. Romney is faltering because all the various versions of him are now colliding, leaving him a man now without definition.
2. Invisible Agenda: In 1968, presidential candidate Richard Nixon announced that he had a “secret plan for ending the [Viet Nam] war.” Of course if the North Vietnamese/Viet Cong knew what the plan was, they would maneuver to negate it. So Nixon cleverly refused to tell the American public what the secret plan was. Instead, he boldly asked America to simply trust him to do the right thing. Given how sick Americans were of the war and related domestic turmoil, they voted him into office, trusting for a change of direction. The result: new secret bombings and ground incursions into Laos and Cambodia; 2/3rds of the nearly 60,000 Americans killed in Viet Nam happened under Nixon, not Lyndon Johnson; we lost the war anyway.
Mr. Romney now seeks to follow the same “secret plan” strategy to revive our economy. He says he has an economic plan, but he won’t tell us what it is until after the election. “Just trust me, I’ll make it work,” he seems to say. He has given us all kinds of endgame markers that sound good (does anyone really believe “12 million new jobs in the next four years”?), but not a word about how he is going to accomplish these. He intends to cut taxes for everyone and spread more of Reagan’s long discredited “trickle-down prosperity for all.” He intends to cut many programs he thinks we supposedly do not need in order to reduce the budget deficit, but will not tell us which programs those are. Similarly, he will cut tax loopholes, but will not tell us which loopholes he is targeting. He will do all of this cutting while nevertheless increasing our military budget hundreds of billions of dollars over what the Pentagon wants or the nation needs or can afford. He has muzzled his own Vice Presidential partner and disavowed Paul Ryan’s detailed budget proposals, saying only that he “will have my own budget” – but he will not reveal that to us either.
Just being “against Obama” is not a valid campaign. At some point, a true leader has to stand and say what s/he would actually DO, in more specifics than just high-school platitudes and clichés. We do not need a hidden candidate with a “stealth economic program.” We got taken for our naiveté in 1968. Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me.
3. Business Experience: Mr. Romney has tried to make the economy his whole focal point against Mr. Obama. He states his prior business experience at Bain Capital as his credentials for achieving the same wealthy end result for the country. I do not begrudge for one minute Mr. Romney’s achievement of wealth for himself and his family, which by all accounts he made within the existing rules of the game. However, while that may be a good track record for his business career, it is an exact DIS-qualification to be President. A deregulated financial services industry led us into this recession, and has proven itself to be a mindset totally incapable of reforming from the inside. It is an industry that sees businesses as simply “inventory” to be bought and sold as commodities, not as employers and producers of quality and safe goods and services. This success is not about actually running a company; it is about selling off its assets and getting out. Mr. Romney is a product of that industry, an industry that does not think about sharing its success among all those who truly create that wealth regardless of their employment position. This business background, for an endless list of reasons discussed across several prior blogs, is totally unsuited for one who would be President of this country of widely diverse Americans.
I have no concerns about the personal integrity of Mr. Romney, no fear of a John Edwards-styled skeleton lurking in any closet. Yet I listen and watch Mr. Romney’s surprisingly amateurish campaign unfold day-to-day; his embarrassingly insensitive forays into international politics; his inanely stupid comments about everyday things one after another; or his attempt to explain away one ill-thought statement after another (“47% victims”?). It leaves me feeling that I am watching someone who views the Presidency of the United States as simply one more corporate acquisition, the last and biggest “deal” of his career, with the American people just data points on a spreadsheet, from one who has lived his life completely cocooned from the reality of our people’s wide diversity and experience.
This track record is perhaps fine preparation for heading up Bain Capital and making it financially successful for its small cadre of partners. But the United States of America is not Bain Capital or just another corporation. So that same track record is a lousy preparation from which to represent and govern all of the people of the country with equal consideration and respect. Including the simplest and most humble of our people.
“Managerial leadership is not the same as political leadership. Some of Romney’s business skills might be helpful, but business is not politics, and politics is not business. Otherwise, we’d have the same word for it.” (Jody Baumgartner, presidential scholar, East Carolina University)
1. Core Principles: There is an old anecdote about Hollywood that says, once you strip away its layers upon layers of tinsel and glitter, what you find underneath it all is – simply more tinsel. Such can be similarly said about Mr. Romney’s apparent lack of any consistent core beliefs. Over his nearly 20 years of running for public office, he has held almost every conceivable position possible on almost every political and social issue available, shifting as needed to fit the expediency of the office, the campaign, the times, or the audience. Which is why his own Republican base is so suspicious and un-enamored of him. I personally admire people who learn lessons from their lifetimes, and who evolve their thinking based upon rational input, personal experience, and thoughtful reflection. But Mr. Romney’s such evolutions are too conveniently done. Changes in public statements and positions can occur within months, if not days, with seemingly little regard for past utterances documented on camera or in print. Watching the subsequent awkward and near-irrational explanation for each new epiphany of thought is torturous to any rational-thinking human being.
Voting for a candidate is the vehicle by which voters express their collective beliefs and goals through their elected surrogate. When someone thinks so little of his/her personal beliefs that they are unwilling to state and defend them, rather than shift those beliefs from audience to audience, they obviate the whole concept of what a vote stands for. We should not give away the sacred privilege of our vote so easily. As with John McCain in 2008, watching a good person throw away their very soul for secular political gain is painfully disheartening to see. Did not someone once point out to us that, “For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?” The lesson for us all is that when you continually act without your core principles, over time it catches up with you. Mr. Romney is faltering because all the various versions of him are now colliding, leaving him a man now without definition.
2. Invisible Agenda: In 1968, presidential candidate Richard Nixon announced that he had a “secret plan for ending the [Viet Nam] war.” Of course if the North Vietnamese/Viet Cong knew what the plan was, they would maneuver to negate it. So Nixon cleverly refused to tell the American public what the secret plan was. Instead, he boldly asked America to simply trust him to do the right thing. Given how sick Americans were of the war and related domestic turmoil, they voted him into office, trusting for a change of direction. The result: new secret bombings and ground incursions into Laos and Cambodia; 2/3rds of the nearly 60,000 Americans killed in Viet Nam happened under Nixon, not Lyndon Johnson; we lost the war anyway.
Mr. Romney now seeks to follow the same “secret plan” strategy to revive our economy. He says he has an economic plan, but he won’t tell us what it is until after the election. “Just trust me, I’ll make it work,” he seems to say. He has given us all kinds of endgame markers that sound good (does anyone really believe “12 million new jobs in the next four years”?), but not a word about how he is going to accomplish these. He intends to cut taxes for everyone and spread more of Reagan’s long discredited “trickle-down prosperity for all.” He intends to cut many programs he thinks we supposedly do not need in order to reduce the budget deficit, but will not tell us which programs those are. Similarly, he will cut tax loopholes, but will not tell us which loopholes he is targeting. He will do all of this cutting while nevertheless increasing our military budget hundreds of billions of dollars over what the Pentagon wants or the nation needs or can afford. He has muzzled his own Vice Presidential partner and disavowed Paul Ryan’s detailed budget proposals, saying only that he “will have my own budget” – but he will not reveal that to us either.
Just being “against Obama” is not a valid campaign. At some point, a true leader has to stand and say what s/he would actually DO, in more specifics than just high-school platitudes and clichés. We do not need a hidden candidate with a “stealth economic program.” We got taken for our naiveté in 1968. Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me.
3. Business Experience: Mr. Romney has tried to make the economy his whole focal point against Mr. Obama. He states his prior business experience at Bain Capital as his credentials for achieving the same wealthy end result for the country. I do not begrudge for one minute Mr. Romney’s achievement of wealth for himself and his family, which by all accounts he made within the existing rules of the game. However, while that may be a good track record for his business career, it is an exact DIS-qualification to be President. A deregulated financial services industry led us into this recession, and has proven itself to be a mindset totally incapable of reforming from the inside. It is an industry that sees businesses as simply “inventory” to be bought and sold as commodities, not as employers and producers of quality and safe goods and services. This success is not about actually running a company; it is about selling off its assets and getting out. Mr. Romney is a product of that industry, an industry that does not think about sharing its success among all those who truly create that wealth regardless of their employment position. This business background, for an endless list of reasons discussed across several prior blogs, is totally unsuited for one who would be President of this country of widely diverse Americans.
I have no concerns about the personal integrity of Mr. Romney, no fear of a John Edwards-styled skeleton lurking in any closet. Yet I listen and watch Mr. Romney’s surprisingly amateurish campaign unfold day-to-day; his embarrassingly insensitive forays into international politics; his inanely stupid comments about everyday things one after another; or his attempt to explain away one ill-thought statement after another (“47% victims”?). It leaves me feeling that I am watching someone who views the Presidency of the United States as simply one more corporate acquisition, the last and biggest “deal” of his career, with the American people just data points on a spreadsheet, from one who has lived his life completely cocooned from the reality of our people’s wide diversity and experience.
This track record is perhaps fine preparation for heading up Bain Capital and making it financially successful for its small cadre of partners. But the United States of America is not Bain Capital or just another corporation. So that same track record is a lousy preparation from which to represent and govern all of the people of the country with equal consideration and respect. Including the simplest and most humble of our people.
“Managerial leadership is not the same as political leadership. Some of Romney’s business skills might be helpful, but business is not politics, and politics is not business. Otherwise, we’d have the same word for it.” (Jody Baumgartner, presidential scholar, East Carolina University)
Wednesday, September 26, 2012
Election 2012 - The Political Parties
Almost
1½ years after the pre-primary Republican campaign began, and nearly five
months of de facto general election campaigning between each of the
“presumptive” candidates, Republicans and Democrats finally have their official
candidates for president. The farcical,
surreal, but always entertaining comedy that was the Republican primary season
is behind us. In exchange is the audio
torture of hundreds of millions of dollars spent on negative advertising and
untruths to buy the general election for one of the candidates. At a time of many new emerging democracies
across the globe, we the creators of “popular self-government” are certainly
proving to be a lousy role model for these global transitions in government.
Political parties were never envisioned by the writers of our Constitution. Certainly there were deep divisions of strongly-voiced opinions among those Founders. But they did not foresee those divisions manifested into formal organizations of political operations. Organizations that function as a virtual 4th branch of government, but were never defined or sanctioned in the Constitution. But this sub-government defines the reality and functioning of our government as much or almost more than the three branches that are legally constituted – much to the chagrin of our early leaders. As George Washington stated in his Farewell Address, “[The spirit of party] serves always to distract the public councils and enfeeble the public administration. It agitates the community with ill-founded jealousies and false alarms; kindles the animosity of one part against another; foments occasionally riot and insurrection.”
In the 150 years since the Civil War, the Republican and Democratic parties have thoroughly dominated our elections (with some occasional short-lived 3rd-party attempts). For the first 70 years of this period the Republicans held a virtual lock on the government. Then three successive presidents in the Roaring Twenties oversaw the country’s collapse into its worst economic depression and ushered in 12 years of Democratic President Franklin Roosevelt. Thereafter in post-WWII modern America, Americans have emphasized “balance” in their voting, automatically ceding their ballots to neither party: 6 Democratic presidents accumulating 32 years in the White House; 6 Republican presidents accumulating 36 years. One might conclude that Americans are a fickle lot, or instead that they simply like keeping both parties in check.
Over time, each party has changed its political posture in many ways, even while they retain their classic brands of “Republicans for the rich businessman” and “Democrats for the disadvantaged little guy.” Republicans freed the slaves and guaranteed voting rights to blacks and women by constitutional amendments, while Southern Democrats sought to extend de facto slavery. Yet today’s Republicans are shamelessly attempting to block eligible voters from voting, while Democrats are resisting these efforts. Republicans fought a war 150 years ago to hold the Union together against Southern Democrat attempts at secession; today’s Republicans speak incessantly in favor of “states’ rights.” Corporate and workplace regulation and anti-monopoly laws were instituted by Republican presidents Teddy Roosevelt and William Taft, and environmental regulations were greatly expanded by Richard Nixon. Today’s Republicans argue that deregulation is the savior step for economic recovery, even as stories of corporate corruption or dangers to the American public are reported weekly. Republicans continually vocalize about the interference of “big government,” yet it is today’s Democrats who are fighting against laws invading our privacy and encroaching against our civil liberties. And amidst all the pontificating about financial responsibility, it was the three Republican presidents starting with Ronald Reagan who exploded our deficit spending and national debt – leading us into this current greatest of recessions.
President Obama is absolutely correct that Election 2012 represents as distinctive a political choice as we have seen in decades. A choice not just for president and vice president, but for state and local governments and decisions on how we choose to live our lives. As much as Mitt Romney would like to talk only about jobs and the economy, the Republican ascendancy of 2010 has wreaked huge upheavals in the states with assaults on voting rights and redistricting, marital rights, religious rights, public education, and government infrastructure and services – all hidden under the umbrella of supposed “financial reform.” Financial reform is needed, yes. But that should not be used to hide a radical social agenda that marches us backward from being a progressive, just, opportunistic, and safe society in the 21st century. As president-wanna-be Newt Gingrich observed, Americans dislike radical social engineering from the right as much as they dislike it from the left.
For me personally, when I look at the Republican Party of today, all of these “policy” issues pale next to one overriding issue. Democrats are often rightly accused of bad messaging skills, undisciplined strategizing, over-reach and excess in government programs, and a knee-jerk instinct for a government response to solve virtually all economic and social shortcomings. But over these last four years, at a time of severe economic and human crisis potentially just one step away from a free-fall collapse, at least they have tried to DO something. Because some significant things have needed to be done, and done quickly, with the patience to allow those somethings to bear long-term fruit. In these moments of universal need, affecting in one way or another Americans of all income levels and situations, a collective response has been needed for the collective good. But instead, today’s Republican Party chose to turn its back on its proud traditions and to ignore the needs of the American public. It decided to simply become the “party against” for the sole objective of just being against. Politics and a grab for political power, wrapped in a willingness to say anything regardless of its truth, has been the openly declared priority of this Party. Even the term “conservative” has been tossed upside down to become something that would be unfathomable to the conservative heritage of Goldwater and Reagan.
That decision to conduct a self-serving revolt instead of to achieve solutions for the American people has been a total breach of public trust and a violation of ethical responsibility. For that failure to put the American people first, forgiveness is not yet warranted. But accountability is demanded now.
“If I could not go to heaven but with a (political) party, I would not go there at all.” (Thomas Jefferson)
Political parties were never envisioned by the writers of our Constitution. Certainly there were deep divisions of strongly-voiced opinions among those Founders. But they did not foresee those divisions manifested into formal organizations of political operations. Organizations that function as a virtual 4th branch of government, but were never defined or sanctioned in the Constitution. But this sub-government defines the reality and functioning of our government as much or almost more than the three branches that are legally constituted – much to the chagrin of our early leaders. As George Washington stated in his Farewell Address, “[The spirit of party] serves always to distract the public councils and enfeeble the public administration. It agitates the community with ill-founded jealousies and false alarms; kindles the animosity of one part against another; foments occasionally riot and insurrection.”
In the 150 years since the Civil War, the Republican and Democratic parties have thoroughly dominated our elections (with some occasional short-lived 3rd-party attempts). For the first 70 years of this period the Republicans held a virtual lock on the government. Then three successive presidents in the Roaring Twenties oversaw the country’s collapse into its worst economic depression and ushered in 12 years of Democratic President Franklin Roosevelt. Thereafter in post-WWII modern America, Americans have emphasized “balance” in their voting, automatically ceding their ballots to neither party: 6 Democratic presidents accumulating 32 years in the White House; 6 Republican presidents accumulating 36 years. One might conclude that Americans are a fickle lot, or instead that they simply like keeping both parties in check.
Over time, each party has changed its political posture in many ways, even while they retain their classic brands of “Republicans for the rich businessman” and “Democrats for the disadvantaged little guy.” Republicans freed the slaves and guaranteed voting rights to blacks and women by constitutional amendments, while Southern Democrats sought to extend de facto slavery. Yet today’s Republicans are shamelessly attempting to block eligible voters from voting, while Democrats are resisting these efforts. Republicans fought a war 150 years ago to hold the Union together against Southern Democrat attempts at secession; today’s Republicans speak incessantly in favor of “states’ rights.” Corporate and workplace regulation and anti-monopoly laws were instituted by Republican presidents Teddy Roosevelt and William Taft, and environmental regulations were greatly expanded by Richard Nixon. Today’s Republicans argue that deregulation is the savior step for economic recovery, even as stories of corporate corruption or dangers to the American public are reported weekly. Republicans continually vocalize about the interference of “big government,” yet it is today’s Democrats who are fighting against laws invading our privacy and encroaching against our civil liberties. And amidst all the pontificating about financial responsibility, it was the three Republican presidents starting with Ronald Reagan who exploded our deficit spending and national debt – leading us into this current greatest of recessions.
President Obama is absolutely correct that Election 2012 represents as distinctive a political choice as we have seen in decades. A choice not just for president and vice president, but for state and local governments and decisions on how we choose to live our lives. As much as Mitt Romney would like to talk only about jobs and the economy, the Republican ascendancy of 2010 has wreaked huge upheavals in the states with assaults on voting rights and redistricting, marital rights, religious rights, public education, and government infrastructure and services – all hidden under the umbrella of supposed “financial reform.” Financial reform is needed, yes. But that should not be used to hide a radical social agenda that marches us backward from being a progressive, just, opportunistic, and safe society in the 21st century. As president-wanna-be Newt Gingrich observed, Americans dislike radical social engineering from the right as much as they dislike it from the left.
For me personally, when I look at the Republican Party of today, all of these “policy” issues pale next to one overriding issue. Democrats are often rightly accused of bad messaging skills, undisciplined strategizing, over-reach and excess in government programs, and a knee-jerk instinct for a government response to solve virtually all economic and social shortcomings. But over these last four years, at a time of severe economic and human crisis potentially just one step away from a free-fall collapse, at least they have tried to DO something. Because some significant things have needed to be done, and done quickly, with the patience to allow those somethings to bear long-term fruit. In these moments of universal need, affecting in one way or another Americans of all income levels and situations, a collective response has been needed for the collective good. But instead, today’s Republican Party chose to turn its back on its proud traditions and to ignore the needs of the American public. It decided to simply become the “party against” for the sole objective of just being against. Politics and a grab for political power, wrapped in a willingness to say anything regardless of its truth, has been the openly declared priority of this Party. Even the term “conservative” has been tossed upside down to become something that would be unfathomable to the conservative heritage of Goldwater and Reagan.
That decision to conduct a self-serving revolt instead of to achieve solutions for the American people has been a total breach of public trust and a violation of ethical responsibility. For that failure to put the American people first, forgiveness is not yet warranted. But accountability is demanded now.
“If I could not go to heaven but with a (political) party, I would not go there at all.” (Thomas Jefferson)
Tuesday, September 18, 2012
The Arab Summer
The past few weeks, Americans have been shocked by a wave
of anti-American demonstrations erupting unexpectedly in a number of countries
across North Africa, the Middle East, and Southeast Asia. Most Americans have been supportive of the
“Arab Spring” upheavals against ruling dictators that have occurred over the
past 21 months. But these recent
coinciding events have left many, as Secretary of State Clinton said, “trying
to make sense of the senseless.” And
these events have sowed potential seeds across America for more indiscriminate
anger and prejudice against Muslims in general.
Such seedings are unwarranted. When the American Embassy in Cairo discovered the existence of an inflammatory anti-Muslim YouTube video, it quickly issued a statement (before any violence had occurred) that said simply (and correctly) that “[we] condemn the continuing efforts by misguided individuals to hurt the religious feelings of Muslims.” Mitt Romney alternately made an ill-informed and ill-advised political criticism in the wake of the subsequent demonstrations that “an apology for American values is never the right course.”
I have no idea what “American values” Mr. Romney was referring to in his campaign statement. Or what “apology” he thinks was even made. I know that I value very much the freedom of everyone to practice their religion of choice without interference, obstruction or denigration. I value that each person is equal in the law and in God’s eyes, and thereby deserves respect as a valued human being. I know I value freedom of speech, but accept that this freedom is limited by the responsibility to avoid harming others. These are the very values implicit in our government’s statements. Which of these values would Mr. Romney have us retract?
As for making an apology, apologies are perhaps due to much of the Muslim world by the Western powers. We have collectively treated Islam and its Muslim followers with unwarranted contempt and disdain for a thousand years. Even though their Koran calls for worshiping the same God as Jews and Christians; treats the Jewish and Christian teachings as righteous and from God; commands that Jews and Christians who faithfully adhere to their religious teachings are to be respected and honored – Christians have labeled Muslims as “the infidels” for a millennium. Christians fought religious Crusades against the Muslims for two hundred years. In the last 100 years following World War I, the West has sought to hold the Arab/Muslim communities as virtual economic and political hostages – a subservience Western countries would never tolerate. We have exploited their wealth (mainly oil) until countries have gradually regained control over their own resources. We have covertly overthrown legitimate popular governments when they refused to follow our direction. We supported cruel dictators with arms and dollars – arms and dollars used to suppress their populations and keep them poor and un-empowered – and then looked away as long as they sided with us instead of Russia.
Hillary Clinton stated that “America had nothing to do with the making of this [YouTube] film.” Americans understand full well that this film is protected by our First Amendment right of freedom of speech. But we are speaking that distinction to millions of people who have never known freedom of speech, i.e. the freedom to speak separately and independently from one’s government. How can we expect these masses to understand such a fine distinction about an individual right that has been completely outside of their own personal and cultural experience?
We pontificate about the supposed “cultural and educational backwardness” of many Muslim societies, lumping all Muslims and Muslim-dominated countries together as if one homogeneous peoples. But we skip over the excessive functional illiteracy still present in America. We decry the stories we hear of Muslim family violence, but domestic violence inexplicably rages every day in America. We protest the limited rights of Muslim women, but our Roman Catholic, Southern Baptist, and many Evangelical and other religious branches continue to operate on a male-dominated / female-subservient inequality in faith and family. American hate groups claiming to be Christians act in terrorist ways against their fellow citizens of different color, faiths, and lifestyles; both good Christians and good Muslims each get lumped together with the aberrational thugs in their midst. American political power and economic wealth is increasingly weighted to only a select few businesspeople, politicians, and clergy in a hierarchy not unlike many Middle East countries. Yet most Americans never mentioned in our headlines go about their daily lives honestly and law-abidingly while trying to be helpful to others, horrified by our own violence against each other – just as we see with people across the Muslim world. Jesus’ guidance to “judge not lest you also be judged” is highly applicable here.
We Americans have so much to be proud of about this country and our efforts to try to make lives better and more just. But an honest look in the mirror of self-examination would show us many reasons for overseas Muslims to rightly resent us even as they also admire us for other reasons. Even our support for their freedom revolutions has been limited by many to “as long as they believe and act like us.” After centuries of such attitudes and treatment toward these fellow men and women, we should not be surprised at their short fuses over what we may see as insignificant circumstances. When we “walk around in another’s [Muslim] shoes,” supposedly simple rights and wrongs begin to look a whole lot less simple. It is like continuing family tensions over long-ago hurts, rubbed raw over years of neglect alternated with exacerbative needling, exploding in a disproportionate argument at a suddenly unexpected moment. We fear the latent anger of the beast we helped to create. We need only to look at our own history of attitudes and conduct toward African-Americans and Native-Americans to see the truth of this.
We need to recognize that a bond between American and Muslim cultures and countries must come from people connecting directly with people; observing their right to self-determination over their own affairs; taking time to truly understand the great religion of Islam and respecting their choice of faith; and helping to end Muslim poverty, desperation and hopelessness in favor of a better life. The same things that American people seek. We who barely understand how differently people think and live from one region of America to another should remember that Cairo, Egypt is not Cairo, Illinois. Given that most Americans have never set foot in a Muslim country, we can barely begin to fathom how extraordinarily different their daily life is than in America.
We often forget that our American Revolutionary War took eight years to complete, resulting in a confederative government of thirteen individual states (“tribes”) barely able to work together or collectively decide anything, disrespected and ridiculed by the international community. A government so weak that four years after the War’s end its potential collapse pushed our Founders into a Constitutional Convention to finally create this strong central government that has now stood for 225 years. As the Arab Spring moves into the Arab Summer of new governance, we need to extend the same understanding and patience to these various Muslim communities as was required in establishing our new country.
As John McCain eloquently stated, “I know many Americans may feel a temptation … to distance ourselves from people and events in Libya, and Egypt, and elsewhere in the Middle East … We were right to take the side of the Libyan people, and others in the region who share their peaceful aspiration. And we would be gravely mistaken to walk away from them now. To do so would only be a betrayal of everything that [Ambassador] Chris Stevens and his colleagues believed in and ultimately gave their lives for, but it would also be a betrayal of America’s highest values and our own enduring national interest in supporting people in the Middle East who want to live in peace and freedom.” Those are the true American values that need no apology.
Such seedings are unwarranted. When the American Embassy in Cairo discovered the existence of an inflammatory anti-Muslim YouTube video, it quickly issued a statement (before any violence had occurred) that said simply (and correctly) that “[we] condemn the continuing efforts by misguided individuals to hurt the religious feelings of Muslims.” Mitt Romney alternately made an ill-informed and ill-advised political criticism in the wake of the subsequent demonstrations that “an apology for American values is never the right course.”
I have no idea what “American values” Mr. Romney was referring to in his campaign statement. Or what “apology” he thinks was even made. I know that I value very much the freedom of everyone to practice their religion of choice without interference, obstruction or denigration. I value that each person is equal in the law and in God’s eyes, and thereby deserves respect as a valued human being. I know I value freedom of speech, but accept that this freedom is limited by the responsibility to avoid harming others. These are the very values implicit in our government’s statements. Which of these values would Mr. Romney have us retract?
As for making an apology, apologies are perhaps due to much of the Muslim world by the Western powers. We have collectively treated Islam and its Muslim followers with unwarranted contempt and disdain for a thousand years. Even though their Koran calls for worshiping the same God as Jews and Christians; treats the Jewish and Christian teachings as righteous and from God; commands that Jews and Christians who faithfully adhere to their religious teachings are to be respected and honored – Christians have labeled Muslims as “the infidels” for a millennium. Christians fought religious Crusades against the Muslims for two hundred years. In the last 100 years following World War I, the West has sought to hold the Arab/Muslim communities as virtual economic and political hostages – a subservience Western countries would never tolerate. We have exploited their wealth (mainly oil) until countries have gradually regained control over their own resources. We have covertly overthrown legitimate popular governments when they refused to follow our direction. We supported cruel dictators with arms and dollars – arms and dollars used to suppress their populations and keep them poor and un-empowered – and then looked away as long as they sided with us instead of Russia.
Hillary Clinton stated that “America had nothing to do with the making of this [YouTube] film.” Americans understand full well that this film is protected by our First Amendment right of freedom of speech. But we are speaking that distinction to millions of people who have never known freedom of speech, i.e. the freedom to speak separately and independently from one’s government. How can we expect these masses to understand such a fine distinction about an individual right that has been completely outside of their own personal and cultural experience?
We pontificate about the supposed “cultural and educational backwardness” of many Muslim societies, lumping all Muslims and Muslim-dominated countries together as if one homogeneous peoples. But we skip over the excessive functional illiteracy still present in America. We decry the stories we hear of Muslim family violence, but domestic violence inexplicably rages every day in America. We protest the limited rights of Muslim women, but our Roman Catholic, Southern Baptist, and many Evangelical and other religious branches continue to operate on a male-dominated / female-subservient inequality in faith and family. American hate groups claiming to be Christians act in terrorist ways against their fellow citizens of different color, faiths, and lifestyles; both good Christians and good Muslims each get lumped together with the aberrational thugs in their midst. American political power and economic wealth is increasingly weighted to only a select few businesspeople, politicians, and clergy in a hierarchy not unlike many Middle East countries. Yet most Americans never mentioned in our headlines go about their daily lives honestly and law-abidingly while trying to be helpful to others, horrified by our own violence against each other – just as we see with people across the Muslim world. Jesus’ guidance to “judge not lest you also be judged” is highly applicable here.
We Americans have so much to be proud of about this country and our efforts to try to make lives better and more just. But an honest look in the mirror of self-examination would show us many reasons for overseas Muslims to rightly resent us even as they also admire us for other reasons. Even our support for their freedom revolutions has been limited by many to “as long as they believe and act like us.” After centuries of such attitudes and treatment toward these fellow men and women, we should not be surprised at their short fuses over what we may see as insignificant circumstances. When we “walk around in another’s [Muslim] shoes,” supposedly simple rights and wrongs begin to look a whole lot less simple. It is like continuing family tensions over long-ago hurts, rubbed raw over years of neglect alternated with exacerbative needling, exploding in a disproportionate argument at a suddenly unexpected moment. We fear the latent anger of the beast we helped to create. We need only to look at our own history of attitudes and conduct toward African-Americans and Native-Americans to see the truth of this.
We need to recognize that a bond between American and Muslim cultures and countries must come from people connecting directly with people; observing their right to self-determination over their own affairs; taking time to truly understand the great religion of Islam and respecting their choice of faith; and helping to end Muslim poverty, desperation and hopelessness in favor of a better life. The same things that American people seek. We who barely understand how differently people think and live from one region of America to another should remember that Cairo, Egypt is not Cairo, Illinois. Given that most Americans have never set foot in a Muslim country, we can barely begin to fathom how extraordinarily different their daily life is than in America.
We often forget that our American Revolutionary War took eight years to complete, resulting in a confederative government of thirteen individual states (“tribes”) barely able to work together or collectively decide anything, disrespected and ridiculed by the international community. A government so weak that four years after the War’s end its potential collapse pushed our Founders into a Constitutional Convention to finally create this strong central government that has now stood for 225 years. As the Arab Spring moves into the Arab Summer of new governance, we need to extend the same understanding and patience to these various Muslim communities as was required in establishing our new country.
As John McCain eloquently stated, “I know many Americans may feel a temptation … to distance ourselves from people and events in Libya, and Egypt, and elsewhere in the Middle East … We were right to take the side of the Libyan people, and others in the region who share their peaceful aspiration. And we would be gravely mistaken to walk away from them now. To do so would only be a betrayal of everything that [Ambassador] Chris Stevens and his colleagues believed in and ultimately gave their lives for, but it would also be a betrayal of America’s highest values and our own enduring national interest in supporting people in the Middle East who want to live in peace and freedom.” Those are the true American values that need no apology.
Tuesday, September 4, 2012
The Truth Of Lying
Awhile
back, standing in the well of the Senate while proposing to eliminate
government funding to Planned Parenthood, Senator John Kyle (R-AZ) stated, “90%
of Planned Parenthood’s funding goes toward providing abortion services.” In fact, the percentage was @10% or
less. Nevertheless, when challenged
about this egregious error of fact, Kyle released a now-infamous reply that
“what I said was not intended to be a factual statement.” Somehow that rationale was supposed to excuse
his glaring lie.
Shortly after Paul Ryan gave his acceptance speech as the Republican nominee for Vice President – a speech riddled with false statements – former mayor Rudy Giuliani tried to explain away those errors in an interview by saying, “When someone gives a speech, not every fact is 100% accurate.” I guess this includes when someone gives his/her speech of their lifetime for the history books for which they had weeks to prepare. (Versus a meandering off-the-cuff ad lib address, a la Clint Eastwood.) Funny, I always thought a “fact” less than 100% accurate was no longer a fact.
We all understand that at times in political campaigns truths will compromised, context will be omitted, and logic will be stretched beyond recognition. That is a shame, because it is during political campaigns that the public is most often paying attention to the issues of governance, and good information on which to make substantive decisions is critically needed. We accept this “stretching” of truths, intended to create an electoral advantage, as just another one of our sad realities of life. Just as we discount much of the other advertising that we hear about the many evils of “Brand X.”
But when a politician seeks to unabashedly lie about things, knowingly ignoring today’s realities of videotape, fact-checking researchers and internet information sharing, it shows either a woeful ignorance of today’s media world and/or a shortage of character and a willingness to deceive that insults the public trust. Such is the case with Mr. Ryan’s speech, for which he has been appropriately called out. For example:
The reality is that Paul Ryan’s role to Mitt Romney in 2012 is the same as Sarah Palin’s was to John McCain in 2008 – but with the major difference that Paul Ryan has both intelligence and substance. Nevertheless, like Ms. Palin, Ryan is there to provide political energy and “star power” in support of the nominee on top who has minimal such attractions. He is there to shore up support from a party base that fundamentally distrusts the conservative credentials of their top-of-the-ticket nominee. Ryan is a man with a detailed track record of significant conservative proposals. But having made Ryan his appointee, Romney now spends his time disavowing those same proposals. And Mr. Ryan now no longer speaks of those proposals or his convictions in order to hide the differences between the two men. It is as if those ideas that are required to convince the Republican base are anathema to moderate and independent Americans who will ultimately decide the election winner. So why would Romney select Ryan as his choice in the first place, only to then quietly disavow what Ryan stands for? And why would Ryan choose to give up the very independence and honest-speaking position that endeared him to his followers in the first place? The attraction to power can certainly do harsh things to one’s character.
We all understand the “attack dog” role of a Vice Presidential nominee. And we understand the stretching of truths that occurs in political campaigns. But Americans are struggling right now, painfully trying to figure out the next step in their individual and collective future. People need solid and truthful information to answer their difficult questions. Questions that are actually of far greater importance than who will be the winners and losers in November’s election. There are political candidates who choose to cross a fine but critical line of outright lying to the American people in a deliberate attempt to hide truth for political gain. Such unethical conduct makes it more difficult for all of us to intelligently and accurately find our way. Perhaps we should just shrug our shoulders and dismiss all of this as simply “campaign rhetoric.” But if a person – regardless of their political party or viewpoints – chooses to step across that ethical line as a candidate, should we not then assume that they will believe that that choice of action is politically permissible? And that as an elected official they will then continue that pattern of lying to the public?
Shortly after Paul Ryan gave his acceptance speech as the Republican nominee for Vice President – a speech riddled with false statements – former mayor Rudy Giuliani tried to explain away those errors in an interview by saying, “When someone gives a speech, not every fact is 100% accurate.” I guess this includes when someone gives his/her speech of their lifetime for the history books for which they had weeks to prepare. (Versus a meandering off-the-cuff ad lib address, a la Clint Eastwood.) Funny, I always thought a “fact” less than 100% accurate was no longer a fact.
We all understand that at times in political campaigns truths will compromised, context will be omitted, and logic will be stretched beyond recognition. That is a shame, because it is during political campaigns that the public is most often paying attention to the issues of governance, and good information on which to make substantive decisions is critically needed. We accept this “stretching” of truths, intended to create an electoral advantage, as just another one of our sad realities of life. Just as we discount much of the other advertising that we hear about the many evils of “Brand X.”
But when a politician seeks to unabashedly lie about things, knowingly ignoring today’s realities of videotape, fact-checking researchers and internet information sharing, it shows either a woeful ignorance of today’s media world and/or a shortage of character and a willingness to deceive that insults the public trust. Such is the case with Mr. Ryan’s speech, for which he has been appropriately called out. For example:
-
Ryan
accused President Obama of failing to deliver on a presidential promise to
prevent the closing of a GM plant in Ryan’s home state. Except that no such promise was made, and the
plant’s closing was announced and competed all within George W. Bush’s
presidency.
-
Ryan
claimed that Obama has removed the work requirement within welfare programs
that was adopted in the Bill Clinton years.
Not at all true, as all responsible news media (and Clinton himself) have
confirmed.
-
Ryan
has accused Obama of not supporting the Simpson-Bowles deficit report that
Obama had commissioned. But Mr. Ryan
failed to mention that he was a member of that same Commission, voted against
its findings and recommendations, and refused to allow it to be brought up and
considered in his House budget committee.
- Ryan has accused Obama of taking $716 billion out of the Medicare program “to pay for Obamacare.” He left out that this reduction was based on reduced payments to health care providers, not Medicare enrollees, based upon expected productivity and other gains. And Ryan pointedly failed to mention that he has also proposed the same transfer in his latest House budget proposal.
- Finally, Ryan has laid responsibility for America’s credit downgrade solely on Obama, omitting that he himself was one of the leaders of House Republicans in creating the debt/budget standoff of a year ago. It was the only time that the raising of the debt ceiling and the protecting of our collective credit rating had been held hostage by Congress under any Republican or Democratic president.
The reality is that Paul Ryan’s role to Mitt Romney in 2012 is the same as Sarah Palin’s was to John McCain in 2008 – but with the major difference that Paul Ryan has both intelligence and substance. Nevertheless, like Ms. Palin, Ryan is there to provide political energy and “star power” in support of the nominee on top who has minimal such attractions. He is there to shore up support from a party base that fundamentally distrusts the conservative credentials of their top-of-the-ticket nominee. Ryan is a man with a detailed track record of significant conservative proposals. But having made Ryan his appointee, Romney now spends his time disavowing those same proposals. And Mr. Ryan now no longer speaks of those proposals or his convictions in order to hide the differences between the two men. It is as if those ideas that are required to convince the Republican base are anathema to moderate and independent Americans who will ultimately decide the election winner. So why would Romney select Ryan as his choice in the first place, only to then quietly disavow what Ryan stands for? And why would Ryan choose to give up the very independence and honest-speaking position that endeared him to his followers in the first place? The attraction to power can certainly do harsh things to one’s character.
We all understand the “attack dog” role of a Vice Presidential nominee. And we understand the stretching of truths that occurs in political campaigns. But Americans are struggling right now, painfully trying to figure out the next step in their individual and collective future. People need solid and truthful information to answer their difficult questions. Questions that are actually of far greater importance than who will be the winners and losers in November’s election. There are political candidates who choose to cross a fine but critical line of outright lying to the American people in a deliberate attempt to hide truth for political gain. Such unethical conduct makes it more difficult for all of us to intelligently and accurately find our way. Perhaps we should just shrug our shoulders and dismiss all of this as simply “campaign rhetoric.” But if a person – regardless of their political party or viewpoints – chooses to step across that ethical line as a candidate, should we not then assume that they will believe that that choice of action is politically permissible? And that as an elected official they will then continue that pattern of lying to the public?
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