This past week we observed the 40th anniversary of an American landing on the moon. It was a significant moment, a day that I remember quite vividly. Sitting transfixed in front of the TV, I watched grainy black and white images unfold. It was the television climax to all those previous broadcasts of preliminary space flights and admired astronauts: Mercury → Gemini → Apollo → Lunar Module that I had been captivated by in my youth for a decade. The centuries-old dream of the imagination of space travel, breaking free of earth’s gravitational limits, transporting oneself to the ultimate new unknown, had been achieved. In those turbulent times of the late 1960s with its multiple assassinations, civil rights upheavals, Viet Nam battles, and youth cultural rebellion, something had finally transpired around which all the warring factions – the dreamers and the pragmatists and the America-first patriots – could all pull together.
For a few months, the euphoria remained, reminiscent of the honoring of Charles Lindberg’s solo transatlantic flight to Paris in 1929. We had heroes once again, universally admired. And then we too quickly moved on to other things, retreated into the misery of our daily headlines. So the thrills and TV ratings of subsequent moonwalks fell rapidly downhill into non-events, except perhaps for Apollo 13’s near calamity (impending disasters are always an attention-getting ratings boon). The once glorious theater of moon exploration was closed. Crashing to an inglorious early termination only 3 years later due to a lack of funds.
Rather than building on that scientific achievement, flying on the wings of these pioneering astronauts / explorers, we walked away from it all. Soaring spirits gave way to Watergate and a hasty retreat from the embassy rooftop in Saigon. Nixon’s “Peace With Honor” thankfully became Ford’s “Let’s Come Home” and Carter’s “Time For Reconciliation.” The flower children realized that making love was not enough to overcome the entrenched establishment. And in that climate of downward spiral, the US space program drifted into the wilderness of no overriding goal, no dominate purpose. So it simply moved instead towards commercializing the accomplishments to date. The breakfast drink of Tang opened the door to significant commercial uses of space: GPS systems, weather monitoring satellites, world-wide communication links, disease research, new materials and composites. A couple of scientific accomplishments remained – the Hubble Telescope, and the Mars and Jupiter unmanned satellite explorations.
Unfortunately, our opportunity to repeat the 16th century Age of Discovery, to recapture the spirit of Columbus, Magellan, Hudson, etc. never happened. It is discovery for its own sake, basic research, without an immediate return on investment, yet knowing that great nations (and cultures and peoples) are defined by their continuing pursuit forward. Instead, we walked away; not coincidentally, the great American “can do” spirit has been struggling ever since. The financial market explosions of the 1980s and 2000s were not “can do” examples; they were both cynical manipulations of the marketplace that led to implosion and collapse. Only the home technology burst in the 1990s seems to have recaptured that American “do it” persona; yet it too was taken over by the financial guys and driven off the cliff in the “dot com” collapse.
Trucking products into space or to the International Space Station is a necessary thing. But it is not a leadership thing. And it is not a “spirit rising” thing, an uplifting that we need right now. This 40th anniversary of the moon landing should be more than just a nostalgic look back. It should also be a new start forward. Health care reform, global warming reduction, and energy independence are all important chores that we must responsibly tend to in order to support the body. But we also need to plant flowers, inspire music and art, and yes, fly once again to the moon and then beyond. To nurture the spirit. To remind ourselves that, in spite of inherent dangers, the human spirit still needs to meet the unknown and transcend our fears in order to discover and experience that which is new and heretofore unexplored. And thereby to inspire others to do likewise. The late Walter Cronkite understood this and delighted in the aura of the journey. That small cadre of 24 men who once walked on the moon joined an exclusive club in which none of us can truly belong. But all of us can experience our own journey of exploration and discovery in our own way. We can each seek, explore, experience; find what no others can find for us. Neil Armstrong may have made one giant leap for mankind, but regrettably man elected not to leap after behind him.
Friday, July 24, 2009
Monday, July 13, 2009
Strictly Interpreting The Constitution
This week Washington brought us a new edition of the periodic confirmation process for a new Supreme Court judge. Sonya Sotomayor is a Puerto Rican-American with long judicial experience and (a rarity) field experience in prosecutorial law. I have no idea if she is qualified for this judgeship or not; others will determine that for us. Given the current political makeup of the Senate, her confirmation is pretty well assured baring any damaging revelation that may yet arise.
Nevertheless, politicians will still use these televised hearings to make righteous-sounding speeches, gain points from their respective voter bases, and regurgitate stock political slogans in search of news media headlines. Most of which will actually have little to do in substance to Ms. Sotomayor or her confirmation.
So far, there seems little dispute about her legal qualifications, earning a top rating from the American Bar Association, or about her 17 years of experience as a federal judge. The major complaints that we hear are:
1. Her comment to the effect that “a wise Latina will likely make a better conclusion than a white male.” No doubt she wishes she could put that comment back into the tin box, but it is too late. Nevertheless, there is a truth in her comment. While her opponents say that the comment introduces racism into her legal thinking and promotes “law by personal opinion,” in reality it simply describes what is already happening on the court. No judge escapes the reality of his/her background, personal experiences, and lessons learned over a lifetime. That bundle of personal history colors what one sees, thinks about, considers relevant, and how one measures importance. It takes Ruth Bader Ginsburg to help eight older men understand the impact of what strip-searching a 14 year-old girl really means. I do not know of anyone currently on the court who can help them understand the devastation of learning that you have been underpaid for decades solely because of your gender.
It is from one’s sense of outrage at these events, and the recognition of the outcomes of these events, that one energizes intellectual efforts and finds nuanced openings of interpretation in the law. From that enlarged perspective, one finds not only the factual logic of the law, but also the justice which must give the law a context and reason. By any measure, the Dred Scott decision in the 1850s affirming Negroes as “property” was wrong within itself, regardless of the political currents of the day or the reading of the statute books.
2. Which leads to the repeated mantra of those conservatives who yell for “someone who will not legislate from the bench, but who will strictly interpret the Constitution as the Founding Fathers wrote it.” This is another case of horse-dung spoken by people who would not know a Founding Father if they happened to see one rising up from the grave.
Article III of our Constitution established the federal court system. It is considerably shorter than the sections defining the executive and legislative branches. It essentially: a) says that there will be a Supreme and inferior courts as needed with lifetime judges; b) defines the scope of the court’s jurisdiction; c) establishes rules regarding charges of treason (important given the colonies’ experience with England). That’s about it for the courts. No procedural rules, no guidelines for decisions, no set limits on its role, no definitions about what its powers are. All left unanswered, an expectation of sort of following a sense of what courts had been doing before in colonial America – except that there had been no federal court system over all of the colonies. Therefore assumedly just wing it from here.
It was not until 1803 (16 years after the Constitution) that Chief Justice John Marshall’s court even declared that it had the power to declare a congressional law unconstitutional! People may have assumed it, but the Constitution never said it had that power. So the court proactively and unilaterally said “we have that power; it was implied in the constitution.” Neither Congress nor President Jefferson challenged that self-proclaimed authority. Further, Marshall went on to say that the criteria for determining constitutionality was, “Let the end be legitimate, let it be within the scope of the Constitution, and all means which are appropriate, which are plainly adapted to that end, which are not prohibited, but consistent with the letter and spirit of the Constitution, are constitutional.” You could drive a train through that ambiguity. So much for “expressly stated powers only.”
To ask that courts interpret the law “as the Founding Fathers intended (in 1787)” and not legislate from the bench is an absurdist position. Courts have been interpreting the law for 200 years. These interpretations come from the express wording of laws, a judge’s perspective on personal values shaped by experience, a weighing of impact, and the best possible balancing of conflicting legal views – which is why cases come to a Supreme Court in the first place. To re-read the Constitution and the history of its creation is to understand that there was not one collective mind writing this document. It is a broadly-worded framework containing but a few absolute requirements driven by their experience of the Revolution from English rule. It reflects the compromises of men with many different goals and perspectives, with most all details to be filled in later (including a number of critical issues that were ducked entirely, e.g. the slavery issue). Detailed decisions that will necessarily reflect the times and events in which they are decided. Yet they are decided with a flexible eye towards the continuity of “judicial precedent” in order to maintain a certain measure of shared stability and advance knowing.
Our Constitution has little meaning and detail inherently within its pages. It wonderfully instead established values, principles and processes to be utilized in putting statutory meat on that skeleton of ideas. And it left it to future generations to provide that bulk in their best wisdom under that framework. That is the true strength of our Constitution and why it has survived. We need to quit looking for some supposed Oracle of Truth in that document; it is not there. We need instead to find a few select people of good spirit, high intellect, and genuine humility who will utilize that special tool carefully and wisely for our times.
Nevertheless, politicians will still use these televised hearings to make righteous-sounding speeches, gain points from their respective voter bases, and regurgitate stock political slogans in search of news media headlines. Most of which will actually have little to do in substance to Ms. Sotomayor or her confirmation.
So far, there seems little dispute about her legal qualifications, earning a top rating from the American Bar Association, or about her 17 years of experience as a federal judge. The major complaints that we hear are:
1. Her comment to the effect that “a wise Latina will likely make a better conclusion than a white male.” No doubt she wishes she could put that comment back into the tin box, but it is too late. Nevertheless, there is a truth in her comment. While her opponents say that the comment introduces racism into her legal thinking and promotes “law by personal opinion,” in reality it simply describes what is already happening on the court. No judge escapes the reality of his/her background, personal experiences, and lessons learned over a lifetime. That bundle of personal history colors what one sees, thinks about, considers relevant, and how one measures importance. It takes Ruth Bader Ginsburg to help eight older men understand the impact of what strip-searching a 14 year-old girl really means. I do not know of anyone currently on the court who can help them understand the devastation of learning that you have been underpaid for decades solely because of your gender.
It is from one’s sense of outrage at these events, and the recognition of the outcomes of these events, that one energizes intellectual efforts and finds nuanced openings of interpretation in the law. From that enlarged perspective, one finds not only the factual logic of the law, but also the justice which must give the law a context and reason. By any measure, the Dred Scott decision in the 1850s affirming Negroes as “property” was wrong within itself, regardless of the political currents of the day or the reading of the statute books.
2. Which leads to the repeated mantra of those conservatives who yell for “someone who will not legislate from the bench, but who will strictly interpret the Constitution as the Founding Fathers wrote it.” This is another case of horse-dung spoken by people who would not know a Founding Father if they happened to see one rising up from the grave.
Article III of our Constitution established the federal court system. It is considerably shorter than the sections defining the executive and legislative branches. It essentially: a) says that there will be a Supreme and inferior courts as needed with lifetime judges; b) defines the scope of the court’s jurisdiction; c) establishes rules regarding charges of treason (important given the colonies’ experience with England). That’s about it for the courts. No procedural rules, no guidelines for decisions, no set limits on its role, no definitions about what its powers are. All left unanswered, an expectation of sort of following a sense of what courts had been doing before in colonial America – except that there had been no federal court system over all of the colonies. Therefore assumedly just wing it from here.
It was not until 1803 (16 years after the Constitution) that Chief Justice John Marshall’s court even declared that it had the power to declare a congressional law unconstitutional! People may have assumed it, but the Constitution never said it had that power. So the court proactively and unilaterally said “we have that power; it was implied in the constitution.” Neither Congress nor President Jefferson challenged that self-proclaimed authority. Further, Marshall went on to say that the criteria for determining constitutionality was, “Let the end be legitimate, let it be within the scope of the Constitution, and all means which are appropriate, which are plainly adapted to that end, which are not prohibited, but consistent with the letter and spirit of the Constitution, are constitutional.” You could drive a train through that ambiguity. So much for “expressly stated powers only.”
To ask that courts interpret the law “as the Founding Fathers intended (in 1787)” and not legislate from the bench is an absurdist position. Courts have been interpreting the law for 200 years. These interpretations come from the express wording of laws, a judge’s perspective on personal values shaped by experience, a weighing of impact, and the best possible balancing of conflicting legal views – which is why cases come to a Supreme Court in the first place. To re-read the Constitution and the history of its creation is to understand that there was not one collective mind writing this document. It is a broadly-worded framework containing but a few absolute requirements driven by their experience of the Revolution from English rule. It reflects the compromises of men with many different goals and perspectives, with most all details to be filled in later (including a number of critical issues that were ducked entirely, e.g. the slavery issue). Detailed decisions that will necessarily reflect the times and events in which they are decided. Yet they are decided with a flexible eye towards the continuity of “judicial precedent” in order to maintain a certain measure of shared stability and advance knowing.
Our Constitution has little meaning and detail inherently within its pages. It wonderfully instead established values, principles and processes to be utilized in putting statutory meat on that skeleton of ideas. And it left it to future generations to provide that bulk in their best wisdom under that framework. That is the true strength of our Constitution and why it has survived. We need to quit looking for some supposed Oracle of Truth in that document; it is not there. We need instead to find a few select people of good spirit, high intellect, and genuine humility who will utilize that special tool carefully and wisely for our times.
Tuesday, July 7, 2009
The Passing Of Icons
Recently we witnessed all within one week the passing of three figures of note. People who, in their own way, were representative of a slice of Americana in the latter 3rd of the 20th century.
Ed McMahon was the consummate 2nd banana. The stalwart supporting actor to Johnny Carson’s lead star. For 30 years he and Johnny defined the late-night talk show television format still practiced today, and reflected back to us our concerns, foibles, and circumstances with unfailing humor and courtesy.
Farah Fawcett was one of the striking faces of the 1970s. From only one year on a fair-to-middling TV show, combined with being THE pinup poster of the 70s, she and her hair were “the look” for that decade. She was a sweet and friendly kind of sexy that made her the aspirational model of teenage girls and the never-realized fantasy for millions of men and boys.
And then there was Michael Jackson. A true megastar who experienced the complete highs-to-lows often seen in show business. The troubled man-boy who never quite found his way. We watched his cuteness as the little boy lead singer for his older siblings, and then watched awe-struck as he dramatically broke out into his electric solo career in the mid-80s. We watched his descent into increasing weirdness as his personal life became increasingly inexplicable and seemingly irrational, concurrently as his creative power and output diminished. Culminating in a death that seemed to smack of a final release from all his personal chaos.
Ed lived to an old age, yet was struggling at the end to retain his dignity in the midst of financial collapse. Farah, the beauty, withered away to the ravages of cancer. Michael, who defined a whole new style of popular music dance still in place 25 years later, moved from being the King of Pop to the cold slab of a police morgue due to a likely overdose of pharmaceutical drugs.
The news media, of course, loves these milestones. Ed was given a short but due mention of his supporting role in television history. Farah (and her long-term companion Ryan O’Neal) was given documentaries and the Barbara Walters interview, overall treated with respectful honor. It was Michael that has generated the media feeding frenzy. Hours of video replays; interviews with the truly famous alongside the umpteen wanna-be and underwhelming bit stars and media players; some ridiculous presentations and statements by news commentators (e.g. Matt Lauer giving us a tour of the empty Michael Jackson house and describing to us what furniture USED to be in each room; one self-serving commentator telling us that his interview with Michael years ago was a “life-changing event for BOTH of us!”). At one point I channel surfed across four cable news channels and two network news programs: all were running some kind of special report on Michael’s death. Dick Cheney’s outlandish speeches, the supposed revolution in Iran, nuclear missiles in North Korea, torture and the redistribution of terrorist prisoners, suddenly were all faint glimpses of discussion in this yet-again overreaction of the news media to this latest “big story of the moment.” We await the next frenzy that will likewise thankfully chase away this current crop of over-reported death stories.
There are people who are truly iconic and deserve that label, versus just people of recognition. Those that we rightfully call iconic fully embody within themselves a time, a moment, or a cultural movement. Some make it to a long natural end; many die short and tragically and thereby become immortalized. Often these are in entertainment, frequently in sports, occasionally in politics. Babe Ruth and Joe DiMaggio epitomized baseball in their times, and extended their auras to sports in general for all time. Frank Sinatra, Elvis Presley, John Lennon, and now Michael Jackson each defined a musical genre and reached iconic status. Marilyn Monroe was the ultimate iconic sexual female, unsurpassed 50 years later by any number of pretenders to that status. It is important that we properly differentiate those people who truly set the bar and serve as the fundamental reference point, versus the endless parade of followers who we prematurely anoint with a status beyond their accomplishment.
We do legitimately take pause when persons-of-note die. Especially for people who came to represent certain aspects of our cultural life. We tend to freeze those people into a fixed image in our minds. We link those images to parts of our individual histories and experiences. Experiences that seem forever in our own mind are suddenly jolted into recognition that they are in fact gone forever. These are often hard moments for us to assimilate – these reminders of the temporariness of our lives, that time does not stand still and we are now of another time, that parts of our lives are truly gone forever. It is worthwhile to properly acknowledge these kinds of events, and to give peace to our moments of small deaths in our psyche. Honor the individuals; honor ourselves. And from that place of quiet honoring, we move on.
Ed McMahon was the consummate 2nd banana. The stalwart supporting actor to Johnny Carson’s lead star. For 30 years he and Johnny defined the late-night talk show television format still practiced today, and reflected back to us our concerns, foibles, and circumstances with unfailing humor and courtesy.
Farah Fawcett was one of the striking faces of the 1970s. From only one year on a fair-to-middling TV show, combined with being THE pinup poster of the 70s, she and her hair were “the look” for that decade. She was a sweet and friendly kind of sexy that made her the aspirational model of teenage girls and the never-realized fantasy for millions of men and boys.
And then there was Michael Jackson. A true megastar who experienced the complete highs-to-lows often seen in show business. The troubled man-boy who never quite found his way. We watched his cuteness as the little boy lead singer for his older siblings, and then watched awe-struck as he dramatically broke out into his electric solo career in the mid-80s. We watched his descent into increasing weirdness as his personal life became increasingly inexplicable and seemingly irrational, concurrently as his creative power and output diminished. Culminating in a death that seemed to smack of a final release from all his personal chaos.
Ed lived to an old age, yet was struggling at the end to retain his dignity in the midst of financial collapse. Farah, the beauty, withered away to the ravages of cancer. Michael, who defined a whole new style of popular music dance still in place 25 years later, moved from being the King of Pop to the cold slab of a police morgue due to a likely overdose of pharmaceutical drugs.
The news media, of course, loves these milestones. Ed was given a short but due mention of his supporting role in television history. Farah (and her long-term companion Ryan O’Neal) was given documentaries and the Barbara Walters interview, overall treated with respectful honor. It was Michael that has generated the media feeding frenzy. Hours of video replays; interviews with the truly famous alongside the umpteen wanna-be and underwhelming bit stars and media players; some ridiculous presentations and statements by news commentators (e.g. Matt Lauer giving us a tour of the empty Michael Jackson house and describing to us what furniture USED to be in each room; one self-serving commentator telling us that his interview with Michael years ago was a “life-changing event for BOTH of us!”). At one point I channel surfed across four cable news channels and two network news programs: all were running some kind of special report on Michael’s death. Dick Cheney’s outlandish speeches, the supposed revolution in Iran, nuclear missiles in North Korea, torture and the redistribution of terrorist prisoners, suddenly were all faint glimpses of discussion in this yet-again overreaction of the news media to this latest “big story of the moment.” We await the next frenzy that will likewise thankfully chase away this current crop of over-reported death stories.
There are people who are truly iconic and deserve that label, versus just people of recognition. Those that we rightfully call iconic fully embody within themselves a time, a moment, or a cultural movement. Some make it to a long natural end; many die short and tragically and thereby become immortalized. Often these are in entertainment, frequently in sports, occasionally in politics. Babe Ruth and Joe DiMaggio epitomized baseball in their times, and extended their auras to sports in general for all time. Frank Sinatra, Elvis Presley, John Lennon, and now Michael Jackson each defined a musical genre and reached iconic status. Marilyn Monroe was the ultimate iconic sexual female, unsurpassed 50 years later by any number of pretenders to that status. It is important that we properly differentiate those people who truly set the bar and serve as the fundamental reference point, versus the endless parade of followers who we prematurely anoint with a status beyond their accomplishment.
We do legitimately take pause when persons-of-note die. Especially for people who came to represent certain aspects of our cultural life. We tend to freeze those people into a fixed image in our minds. We link those images to parts of our individual histories and experiences. Experiences that seem forever in our own mind are suddenly jolted into recognition that they are in fact gone forever. These are often hard moments for us to assimilate – these reminders of the temporariness of our lives, that time does not stand still and we are now of another time, that parts of our lives are truly gone forever. It is worthwhile to properly acknowledge these kinds of events, and to give peace to our moments of small deaths in our psyche. Honor the individuals; honor ourselves. And from that place of quiet honoring, we move on.
Monday, June 22, 2009
Our Iranian Response
The past few weeks we have witnessed some amazing events occurring in Iran. A normally controlled, if not docile, population has risen up in substantial numbers to publicly protest and defy the announced outcome of their latest presidential election. Fueled by our detestation of much of what Iran’s government stands for, a number of American politicians and commentators have rushed to their pulpits arguing for the US government to come out in strong support of these “revolutionary patriots” (our media terminology), as well as for a harsh denouncement of the current Iranian power regime. To those speakers I say, “Back off. Your arrogance is once again creating your own story as you want to see it, but you are not truly listening to the Iranian people themselves.”
There is certainly a shared goal among many that would like to see an Iran no longer isolated from international connections, acting responsible to its neighbors instead of antagonizing or threatening them, and withdrawing its support of fanatical terrorists. America shares this goal not only with all of Europe, but also with much of the Middle East community. It is at least one area where very diverse governments can come together. But that is not what we are watching occur today in Iran. What is occurring there is much more of a local event, fueled by local grievances. It is not another cultural explosion of American wanna-be democratic aspiration in yet another foreign land as is being portrayed in many media. We need to be clear about what we are witnessing.
Iran is a theocracy. A state where religion and government are intricately mixed together. Where Islamic religious beliefs and its power structure within a homogeneous society lies behind the illusion of secular government. Given the natural way that the practice of Islam integrally permeates one’s daily life, such a religious/secular integrated governing structure should be no surprise. The minimal separation of religious and secular life is similar to what we see within the Tibetan culture (in its exiled form, not as controlled by the Chinese within Tibet). It is close in form to what we see in Israel. And, of course, in the Vatican, an independent state as well as religion. Historically, England, Japan and China were all theocracies at different times. And, closer to home at the local government level, we have seen it practiced here with the Mormons and groups such as the historical Shakers and the current Amish. If some would have their way, it is what we would come to in America, except that we are too religiously diverse for that to happen within my remaining lifetime. The conduct and aspirations of theocratic countries may differ, but the concepts and the structures are the same.
From all responsible insight, the protest occurring in Iran, while as inspiring in their courage as the Chinese in Tiananmen Square, is not about overthrowing their theocratic system. Rather, in a country highly literate, demographically young, politically aware, and increasingly middle class, the protest is about cleansing the current structure. In its amateurish mishandling of the presidential election, the Iranian government moved into blatant arrogance and made the people’s true powerlessness unmistakably apparent. And the clumsy threat of the cleric Supreme Leader threatening people to “go home and accept the election result because I said so” was just yet another insult. The Iranian president may be a virtual figurehead standing in for the real power of the supreme cleric, but the people’s right to pick that figurehead is highly important to them. As individuals, each of us picks our own symbols that we use to disguise our actual powerlessness. These are important protective symbols for us, and we do not react well to having our truth exposed.
It may actually be true that, if the votes had been honestly counted, Ahmadinejad could well have won, although highly unlikely with the landslide margin claimed even before the balloting ended. In his fear of losing to a close competitor, his arrogance of authority, and his Cheney-esque disdain for the public, he overreached, perhaps unnecessarily, and brought this chaos on. What the Iranian people have reacted to, and now want, is a redress to that insult. An enforcement of the process in place. A return to the observance of their constitution. A rebuilding of the trust that had existed among religion, government, and the people. If we are prepared to be accepting of those national goals and such an outcome, then we should in fact be supportive of the Iranians we see out on the streets in the cell phone pictures coming to us. But if our goal is to subvert their state integrity in our zeal to overthrow the current distasteful Iranian clerical and governmental regimes, then we need to withdraw and mind our peace. For in such an instance, our efforts to overthrow that regime is our own selfish goal, and our pronouncement of support for the Iranian people is hypocritical at best.
We forced a regime change once before in the 1950s via a CIA-engineered coup that threw out the then government and returned a western-friendly king to the Iranian historical throne. It took them 20 years to throw out our puppet king, and we have thereby endured 30 more years of distrust to no one’s advantage. And we aggravated this distrust by our support of Iraq in its 1980s war with Iran. Thus, we have our own stained hand in the Middle East life-and-death poker game, a fact we are most uncomfortable acknowledging. So from their vantage point, Iran’s suspicions of our intentions and trustworthiness, like it or not, have been well grounded.
We can rightly decry and seek to influence the actions of governments, but it is not up to us to tell other nations how to live and what form of government to utilize. Just as we would not accept being told how to live and govern. In spite of our local critics, we should not act now in such a way as to confirm to the Iranian paranoia that we intend to repeat our 1950’s intervention, nor make Iran into another Iraq-style adventure. The reality is that we are not in any position or capability to eliminate the Iranian government, so hollow threats of such bring no desirable result. Decry the actions of Iran’s government; yet respect the people to be who they are. They are not us, and do not need to be.
There is certainly a shared goal among many that would like to see an Iran no longer isolated from international connections, acting responsible to its neighbors instead of antagonizing or threatening them, and withdrawing its support of fanatical terrorists. America shares this goal not only with all of Europe, but also with much of the Middle East community. It is at least one area where very diverse governments can come together. But that is not what we are watching occur today in Iran. What is occurring there is much more of a local event, fueled by local grievances. It is not another cultural explosion of American wanna-be democratic aspiration in yet another foreign land as is being portrayed in many media. We need to be clear about what we are witnessing.
Iran is a theocracy. A state where religion and government are intricately mixed together. Where Islamic religious beliefs and its power structure within a homogeneous society lies behind the illusion of secular government. Given the natural way that the practice of Islam integrally permeates one’s daily life, such a religious/secular integrated governing structure should be no surprise. The minimal separation of religious and secular life is similar to what we see within the Tibetan culture (in its exiled form, not as controlled by the Chinese within Tibet). It is close in form to what we see in Israel. And, of course, in the Vatican, an independent state as well as religion. Historically, England, Japan and China were all theocracies at different times. And, closer to home at the local government level, we have seen it practiced here with the Mormons and groups such as the historical Shakers and the current Amish. If some would have their way, it is what we would come to in America, except that we are too religiously diverse for that to happen within my remaining lifetime. The conduct and aspirations of theocratic countries may differ, but the concepts and the structures are the same.
From all responsible insight, the protest occurring in Iran, while as inspiring in their courage as the Chinese in Tiananmen Square, is not about overthrowing their theocratic system. Rather, in a country highly literate, demographically young, politically aware, and increasingly middle class, the protest is about cleansing the current structure. In its amateurish mishandling of the presidential election, the Iranian government moved into blatant arrogance and made the people’s true powerlessness unmistakably apparent. And the clumsy threat of the cleric Supreme Leader threatening people to “go home and accept the election result because I said so” was just yet another insult. The Iranian president may be a virtual figurehead standing in for the real power of the supreme cleric, but the people’s right to pick that figurehead is highly important to them. As individuals, each of us picks our own symbols that we use to disguise our actual powerlessness. These are important protective symbols for us, and we do not react well to having our truth exposed.
It may actually be true that, if the votes had been honestly counted, Ahmadinejad could well have won, although highly unlikely with the landslide margin claimed even before the balloting ended. In his fear of losing to a close competitor, his arrogance of authority, and his Cheney-esque disdain for the public, he overreached, perhaps unnecessarily, and brought this chaos on. What the Iranian people have reacted to, and now want, is a redress to that insult. An enforcement of the process in place. A return to the observance of their constitution. A rebuilding of the trust that had existed among religion, government, and the people. If we are prepared to be accepting of those national goals and such an outcome, then we should in fact be supportive of the Iranians we see out on the streets in the cell phone pictures coming to us. But if our goal is to subvert their state integrity in our zeal to overthrow the current distasteful Iranian clerical and governmental regimes, then we need to withdraw and mind our peace. For in such an instance, our efforts to overthrow that regime is our own selfish goal, and our pronouncement of support for the Iranian people is hypocritical at best.
We forced a regime change once before in the 1950s via a CIA-engineered coup that threw out the then government and returned a western-friendly king to the Iranian historical throne. It took them 20 years to throw out our puppet king, and we have thereby endured 30 more years of distrust to no one’s advantage. And we aggravated this distrust by our support of Iraq in its 1980s war with Iran. Thus, we have our own stained hand in the Middle East life-and-death poker game, a fact we are most uncomfortable acknowledging. So from their vantage point, Iran’s suspicions of our intentions and trustworthiness, like it or not, have been well grounded.
We can rightly decry and seek to influence the actions of governments, but it is not up to us to tell other nations how to live and what form of government to utilize. Just as we would not accept being told how to live and govern. In spite of our local critics, we should not act now in such a way as to confirm to the Iranian paranoia that we intend to repeat our 1950’s intervention, nor make Iran into another Iraq-style adventure. The reality is that we are not in any position or capability to eliminate the Iranian government, so hollow threats of such bring no desirable result. Decry the actions of Iran’s government; yet respect the people to be who they are. They are not us, and do not need to be.
Sunday, June 14, 2009
The Mighty Also Fall
On June 1, 2009, General Motors filed for bankruptcy. Granted, it was Chapter 11 bankruptcy for protection against creditors while they produce a new organizational plan and business strategy to attempt to become viable again. But Chapter 11 reorganization does not mask the fact that the company has collapsed and no longer works for whatever multiplicity of reasons.
With General Motors, its collapse carries a different resonance than the failures of the innumerable financial institutions and mortgage companies we have witnessed. Those institutions were abstract entities removed from our sense of connection, done in by insatiable ambition combined with a no sense or responsibility to the general good for their decisions and conduct. But GM? This was a company cobbled together in the early 1900s from a series of mergers with various standalone individual car companies. Back when there were many car companies built by energetic entrepreneurs – Buick, Cadillac, GMC, Chevrolet, Pontiac. Henry Ford may have invented the assembly line and created a mass market for the automobile. But GM built that mass market to new levels of demand, and then became the predominant company to supply that demand. In the process, it became the largest manufacturing company in the world, and the biggest auto producer for over 75 years.
It was an institution that was synonymous with the American Dream, that was married to American’s love of the open road, that symbolized the growth of the middle class. Through its extended network of suppliers and franchised dealers, it anchored small-town America and its social fabric. Long before the Japanese form of life-long employment emerged, GM supported a multi-generational workforce with a rising blue-collar income, complete with something brand new: medical insurance to protect those employees and their families from debilitating illness. It was a cocoon of an economic sanctuary on a scale never seen before in America. And the company grew, and grew, a growth assumed to continue forever.
Forever ended on June 1, 2009. Now General Motors is just a shell of its former self. In 1962, GM had 51% of the US auto market and 464,000 domestic employees; in 2009 that had shrunk to 23% of the market with 92,000 domestic employees. When the car designers and the car builders lost out to the marketers and the accountants years ago, the vulnerabilities began to set in. Not readily visible, but a hole was opening, just waiting for someone new to fill it. Workmanship became shoddy. Buyers’ needs for cars changed, but GM wasn’t listening to them anymore. Greater societal demands grew, but “we can’t do it” became the corporate mantra instead of “we will get there before anyone else.” And for reasons I still fail to understand, Detroit married itself to the gasoline industry and thereby became dependently whiplashed by those rogue capitalists. So a company once known for innovation became seen as an unresponsive can’t do obstructionist. The door was now open to someone who could see this opportunity and exploit it – and along came Toyota (now the biggest automaker) and Honda to do just that.
So good old American competition got turned on its head in the 1980s, and the once biggest competitor got out-competed. The new guys saw the gaps in the market no longer being served by GM, so they were happy to draw that market away by good products that lasted, better prices, appealing designs, and responsiveness to the safety and fuel goals that GM said could not be done.
Management stood lead-footed and blamed everyone else for its woes. Employees, now conditioned to expect lifetime job security, stuck their heads in the sand and remained dedicated to job security and rising incomes disconnected to market realities.
Now it has all come home to roost, like so many other course corrections Americans are experiencing. There is an incomprehensible chorus of protests being voiced: that now the US government has nationalized the auto industry; that the government is running the company, closing plants and dealerships, throwing employees out of jobs; that the government is inappropriately dictating new car directions and fuel standards that GM fought for years. And of course, President Obama is a socialist overly involved and now dictating the US economy.
What GM managers, workers, apparently some Congressmen/women and some of the general public seem to have forgotten is that last fall GM said it was broke, with enough money to last only a few months. It was GM that came to Washington looking for a handout to stay alive, not Washington traipsing to Detroit looking to give away money. Without such bailout money that was provided, GM would have disappeared and been completely out of business six months ago. Today a lot of people are still employed, not because of what GM leaders and workers did but because the American public bailed them out at their request. It is only right in such a circumstance that there are strings attached to that help, a refusal to simply underwrite business-as-usual failure. If you are insistent upon driving off a cliff, please don’t ask me to fill the tank of your car so that you can accomplish that goal.
Failure can come from several causes. The causes are often different for the new ventures in our lives than for the breakdown of an established order. For an established order, whether it is we as individuals or a collective organization, failure usually comes from an unwillingness to hear, a resistance to new learning, resulting in an inability to adapt. Such we have seen in the demise of General Motors. There is a shared sadness in all of these events. In the end, companies are simply groups of people moving together en masse. And when this many people move downhill at the same time, even if as a result of their own folly, and when a familiar icon is no longer what it once was, some part of all of us goes with them on that sad trip.
With General Motors, its collapse carries a different resonance than the failures of the innumerable financial institutions and mortgage companies we have witnessed. Those institutions were abstract entities removed from our sense of connection, done in by insatiable ambition combined with a no sense or responsibility to the general good for their decisions and conduct. But GM? This was a company cobbled together in the early 1900s from a series of mergers with various standalone individual car companies. Back when there were many car companies built by energetic entrepreneurs – Buick, Cadillac, GMC, Chevrolet, Pontiac. Henry Ford may have invented the assembly line and created a mass market for the automobile. But GM built that mass market to new levels of demand, and then became the predominant company to supply that demand. In the process, it became the largest manufacturing company in the world, and the biggest auto producer for over 75 years.
It was an institution that was synonymous with the American Dream, that was married to American’s love of the open road, that symbolized the growth of the middle class. Through its extended network of suppliers and franchised dealers, it anchored small-town America and its social fabric. Long before the Japanese form of life-long employment emerged, GM supported a multi-generational workforce with a rising blue-collar income, complete with something brand new: medical insurance to protect those employees and their families from debilitating illness. It was a cocoon of an economic sanctuary on a scale never seen before in America. And the company grew, and grew, a growth assumed to continue forever.
Forever ended on June 1, 2009. Now General Motors is just a shell of its former self. In 1962, GM had 51% of the US auto market and 464,000 domestic employees; in 2009 that had shrunk to 23% of the market with 92,000 domestic employees. When the car designers and the car builders lost out to the marketers and the accountants years ago, the vulnerabilities began to set in. Not readily visible, but a hole was opening, just waiting for someone new to fill it. Workmanship became shoddy. Buyers’ needs for cars changed, but GM wasn’t listening to them anymore. Greater societal demands grew, but “we can’t do it” became the corporate mantra instead of “we will get there before anyone else.” And for reasons I still fail to understand, Detroit married itself to the gasoline industry and thereby became dependently whiplashed by those rogue capitalists. So a company once known for innovation became seen as an unresponsive can’t do obstructionist. The door was now open to someone who could see this opportunity and exploit it – and along came Toyota (now the biggest automaker) and Honda to do just that.
So good old American competition got turned on its head in the 1980s, and the once biggest competitor got out-competed. The new guys saw the gaps in the market no longer being served by GM, so they were happy to draw that market away by good products that lasted, better prices, appealing designs, and responsiveness to the safety and fuel goals that GM said could not be done.
Management stood lead-footed and blamed everyone else for its woes. Employees, now conditioned to expect lifetime job security, stuck their heads in the sand and remained dedicated to job security and rising incomes disconnected to market realities.
Now it has all come home to roost, like so many other course corrections Americans are experiencing. There is an incomprehensible chorus of protests being voiced: that now the US government has nationalized the auto industry; that the government is running the company, closing plants and dealerships, throwing employees out of jobs; that the government is inappropriately dictating new car directions and fuel standards that GM fought for years. And of course, President Obama is a socialist overly involved and now dictating the US economy.
What GM managers, workers, apparently some Congressmen/women and some of the general public seem to have forgotten is that last fall GM said it was broke, with enough money to last only a few months. It was GM that came to Washington looking for a handout to stay alive, not Washington traipsing to Detroit looking to give away money. Without such bailout money that was provided, GM would have disappeared and been completely out of business six months ago. Today a lot of people are still employed, not because of what GM leaders and workers did but because the American public bailed them out at their request. It is only right in such a circumstance that there are strings attached to that help, a refusal to simply underwrite business-as-usual failure. If you are insistent upon driving off a cliff, please don’t ask me to fill the tank of your car so that you can accomplish that goal.
Failure can come from several causes. The causes are often different for the new ventures in our lives than for the breakdown of an established order. For an established order, whether it is we as individuals or a collective organization, failure usually comes from an unwillingness to hear, a resistance to new learning, resulting in an inability to adapt. Such we have seen in the demise of General Motors. There is a shared sadness in all of these events. In the end, companies are simply groups of people moving together en masse. And when this many people move downhill at the same time, even if as a result of their own folly, and when a familiar icon is no longer what it once was, some part of all of us goes with them on that sad trip.
Sunday, May 24, 2009
Go Quietly Into The Night - Please
For the last several months, we have witnessed the sorry spectacle of former Vice President Dick Cheney speaking to anyone who will listen to his defense of his conduct in the Bush Administration’s war on terrorists. Inexplicably, he continues to enjoy airtime whenever he speaks, even though his message never changes except to progressively backpedal and hedge his story of “the facts.” The once near-invisible vice president is now so ubiquitously in the public eye that I fully expect him to show up at my granddaughter’s kindergarten graduation if only he is promised a microphone.
His actions are unprecedented for a former vice president. Except perhaps for Aaron Burr’s post-government notoriety and Al Gore’s Nobel prize-winning actions after serving as vice president, other vice presidents not ascending to the presidency have quietly left Washington and gone home, fading thereafter into historical oblivion. Many of them have agreed with John Adams who described the vice presidency as “The most insignificant office that ever the invention of man contrived or his imagination conceived,” or John Nance Garner who described the job as “not worth a bucket of warm piss” (later changed to “warm spit” by the news media!).
Not so Dick Cheney. This was perhaps the most powerful vice president in our history. In George Bush’s corporate model presidency, Dick Cheney was the all-powerful Chief Operating Officer managing the implementation of the CEO/President’s policies and directions. By all accounts, he managed at a very deep and detailed level, tolerating no dissent, accepting no roadblocks to his intentions and decisions. Underlings that dared to disagree were sent packing. And until perhaps his last year in office, when Condi Rice’s and Robert Gates’ more temperate views found some acceptance, his reign was absolute. The American public was a nuisance to be disdained, whose opinions were publicly acknowledged to be inconsequential and irrelevant.
But now the secret government is coming into the full light. And what went on, predominately under the all-shielding name of “national security,” is proving to be quite ugly. If not outright illegal, then certainly an affront to Constitutional implications, the values we celebrate each July 4th, and the national self-image we claim for ourselves and hope that others see in us. So now the previously unthinkable is happening: the all-powerful, never-questioned VP/COO is being questioned. About his decisions, his rationale, his intent, and most importantly, his methods. And Mr. Cheney does not know how to handle his new, now assailable status.
The centerpiece of the questions is about our government’s use of torture to extract terrorist intelligence information. That our actions constituted torture is essentially beyond debate, understood by most all Americans and clarified by international law and treaty. Only Dick Cheney, his close associates, the perpetrators themselves, and Fox News really think otherwise. What has been subsequently revealed is that the claimed “legal justification” for these actions was bad lawyering at its worst, and even these bad legal opinions were issued after the torture had already commenced. And that most torture exercises were not done by trained, experienced interrogators, but by for-hire contractors without interrogation qualifications, even though valuable information was already being gained from traditional, accepted interrogation techniques. Yet we used the oft-cited technique of waterboarding 183 times on one prisoner; if it was such an effective technique, why was it needed 183 times to make its point – the frequency itself becoming yet another form of torture? Or as Jesse Ventura, former governor of Minnesota put it, “It’s drowning. It gives you the complete sensation that you are drowning ... I’ll put it to you this way: you give me a waterboard, Dick Cheney and one hour, and I’ll have him confess to the Sharon Tate murders.”
Dick Cheney argues two points: that these “enhanced interrogation techniques” (i.e. torture) yielded actionable information and thereby saved American lives; and Obama’s elimination of these techniques has made our country less safe to a future attack (a despicable statement for a former vice president to make about a sitting president). In essence, the goal to save American lives and prevent another 9-11 justifies anything Dick Cheney did. Yet what kind of country, what kind of America has been saved if this is how we do business? I have no doubt that had we slowly sliced off one finger at a time until a prisoner’s hands were gone entirely that he would say almost anything we wanted. But is this what we want to be known for? Where is the line that we dare not cross? Have we become the very Saddam Hussein we claimed to despise, operating our own version of an Iraqi terror prison? At what point does our hatred, combined with an “anything goes” sense of absolute righteousness, lead us to becoming that very thing that we claim to hate? “We have met the enemy, and it [is indeed] ---- us.”
In this dangerous world, it is my full expectation that America will be attacked again by extremists, whether foreign or local (remember Oklahoma City). The twin towers were originally bombed in 1993 under Clinton’s watch; 9-11 happened 8 years later under Bush. Our fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan has contained the terrorists there for now, hampering their planning and execution of that next attack. But it will tragically come, even if by a delayed timetable, and in spite of everything our military, police, and intelligence communities can reasonably prevent. I have no doubt that when that inevitability occurs, Dick Cheney will be the first to stand on his soapbox and yell “I was right.” And that scenario is the most distasteful thing of all about Dick Cheney’s present conduct.
The former vice president has claimed that his methods worked. But he has never proven that they were required in lieu of our traditional interrogation methods that have kept us on a proper moral compass over the years. He is now being called to account. From his previous power-driven role, it is an accounting that he is unprepared to endure, therefore he resorts to the old rhetorical tricks of skipping over the substantive issues and instead just questions the questioners, slanders the critics, and impugns the integrity of his prosecutors.
There are lessons in this for all of us. We all must confront our demons. And when our demons lead us to arrogance, to believe we are beyond questioning, and that the noble end allows us to justify whatever conduct we choose, then a large dose of humility is the required antidote to be taken. Dick Cheney lost his job on January 21, 2009; apparently he did not get his memo of termination. He needs to go home, write his inevitable book, and fade from our view. He had his eight years; he has been replaced; it is other people’s turn at bat without his attempted reconstruction of the past. Like it or not, his legacy is not on the speaker’s platform. It is now out of his control, passed on to the public record and to the work of the historians.
He had his time, and his time is now over. True class – in sports, in politics, in life – is knowing when it is time to put the bat down and move on. It is now that time for him to move on, to go quietly into the night, and to leave the world to the next leaders.
His actions are unprecedented for a former vice president. Except perhaps for Aaron Burr’s post-government notoriety and Al Gore’s Nobel prize-winning actions after serving as vice president, other vice presidents not ascending to the presidency have quietly left Washington and gone home, fading thereafter into historical oblivion. Many of them have agreed with John Adams who described the vice presidency as “The most insignificant office that ever the invention of man contrived or his imagination conceived,” or John Nance Garner who described the job as “not worth a bucket of warm piss” (later changed to “warm spit” by the news media!).
Not so Dick Cheney. This was perhaps the most powerful vice president in our history. In George Bush’s corporate model presidency, Dick Cheney was the all-powerful Chief Operating Officer managing the implementation of the CEO/President’s policies and directions. By all accounts, he managed at a very deep and detailed level, tolerating no dissent, accepting no roadblocks to his intentions and decisions. Underlings that dared to disagree were sent packing. And until perhaps his last year in office, when Condi Rice’s and Robert Gates’ more temperate views found some acceptance, his reign was absolute. The American public was a nuisance to be disdained, whose opinions were publicly acknowledged to be inconsequential and irrelevant.
But now the secret government is coming into the full light. And what went on, predominately under the all-shielding name of “national security,” is proving to be quite ugly. If not outright illegal, then certainly an affront to Constitutional implications, the values we celebrate each July 4th, and the national self-image we claim for ourselves and hope that others see in us. So now the previously unthinkable is happening: the all-powerful, never-questioned VP/COO is being questioned. About his decisions, his rationale, his intent, and most importantly, his methods. And Mr. Cheney does not know how to handle his new, now assailable status.
The centerpiece of the questions is about our government’s use of torture to extract terrorist intelligence information. That our actions constituted torture is essentially beyond debate, understood by most all Americans and clarified by international law and treaty. Only Dick Cheney, his close associates, the perpetrators themselves, and Fox News really think otherwise. What has been subsequently revealed is that the claimed “legal justification” for these actions was bad lawyering at its worst, and even these bad legal opinions were issued after the torture had already commenced. And that most torture exercises were not done by trained, experienced interrogators, but by for-hire contractors without interrogation qualifications, even though valuable information was already being gained from traditional, accepted interrogation techniques. Yet we used the oft-cited technique of waterboarding 183 times on one prisoner; if it was such an effective technique, why was it needed 183 times to make its point – the frequency itself becoming yet another form of torture? Or as Jesse Ventura, former governor of Minnesota put it, “It’s drowning. It gives you the complete sensation that you are drowning ... I’ll put it to you this way: you give me a waterboard, Dick Cheney and one hour, and I’ll have him confess to the Sharon Tate murders.”
Dick Cheney argues two points: that these “enhanced interrogation techniques” (i.e. torture) yielded actionable information and thereby saved American lives; and Obama’s elimination of these techniques has made our country less safe to a future attack (a despicable statement for a former vice president to make about a sitting president). In essence, the goal to save American lives and prevent another 9-11 justifies anything Dick Cheney did. Yet what kind of country, what kind of America has been saved if this is how we do business? I have no doubt that had we slowly sliced off one finger at a time until a prisoner’s hands were gone entirely that he would say almost anything we wanted. But is this what we want to be known for? Where is the line that we dare not cross? Have we become the very Saddam Hussein we claimed to despise, operating our own version of an Iraqi terror prison? At what point does our hatred, combined with an “anything goes” sense of absolute righteousness, lead us to becoming that very thing that we claim to hate? “We have met the enemy, and it [is indeed] ---- us.”
In this dangerous world, it is my full expectation that America will be attacked again by extremists, whether foreign or local (remember Oklahoma City). The twin towers were originally bombed in 1993 under Clinton’s watch; 9-11 happened 8 years later under Bush. Our fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan has contained the terrorists there for now, hampering their planning and execution of that next attack. But it will tragically come, even if by a delayed timetable, and in spite of everything our military, police, and intelligence communities can reasonably prevent. I have no doubt that when that inevitability occurs, Dick Cheney will be the first to stand on his soapbox and yell “I was right.” And that scenario is the most distasteful thing of all about Dick Cheney’s present conduct.
The former vice president has claimed that his methods worked. But he has never proven that they were required in lieu of our traditional interrogation methods that have kept us on a proper moral compass over the years. He is now being called to account. From his previous power-driven role, it is an accounting that he is unprepared to endure, therefore he resorts to the old rhetorical tricks of skipping over the substantive issues and instead just questions the questioners, slanders the critics, and impugns the integrity of his prosecutors.
There are lessons in this for all of us. We all must confront our demons. And when our demons lead us to arrogance, to believe we are beyond questioning, and that the noble end allows us to justify whatever conduct we choose, then a large dose of humility is the required antidote to be taken. Dick Cheney lost his job on January 21, 2009; apparently he did not get his memo of termination. He needs to go home, write his inevitable book, and fade from our view. He had his eight years; he has been replaced; it is other people’s turn at bat without his attempted reconstruction of the past. Like it or not, his legacy is not on the speaker’s platform. It is now out of his control, passed on to the public record and to the work of the historians.
He had his time, and his time is now over. True class – in sports, in politics, in life – is knowing when it is time to put the bat down and move on. It is now that time for him to move on, to go quietly into the night, and to leave the world to the next leaders.
Wednesday, May 13, 2009
From Irrelevance to Absurdity
I have written before lamenting the loss of the Republican Party I knew in my youth from my father. A political party with important historical names --- Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, and examples in my lifetime that included Eisenhower, Dirksen, Goldwater, Baker, Lodge, Rockefeller and Reagan. A party broad enough to contain the “silk stocking” Republicans of the northeast alongside the conservative individualists of the southwest. A potent force in U.S. political history. Yet not one of those historical individuals would recognize the collective irresponsibility of that which now passes for today’s Republican Party. Witness the following examples of political pandering:
1) Representative Michelle Bachman of Minnesota, who continually confounds rationality by:
- saying that Obama is seeking to set up “reeducation camps” to brainwash our children;
- introducing a bill to prohibit one world-wide currency, notwithstanding the U.S. dollar’s de facto role as just that for 60 years;
- inexplicitly announcing that “carbon dioxide occurs naturally in the world, so it does not cause global warming and so we don’t have to worry about it.” (I guess unlike black widow spiders, which also occur “naturally” in nature but which I will still choose to avoid!)
2) Norm Coleman, senator from Minnesota, who all electoral commissions have determined lost his reelection bid, but who refuses to take the classy statesman path and accept his defeat 6 months after the election, making the Gore/Bush debacle in Florida look like a textbook perfection.
3) Representative Spencer Bachus from Alabama, who announced that he personally knows of “17 socialists in Congress,” borrowing from Senator Joe McCarthy’s frighteningly injurious accusations of the 1950s, and who similarly thus far refuses to name any one of the 17. He further ignores that being a “socialist” is neither a U.S. political party nor an illegal status outlawed anywhere.
4) Governor Rick Perry of Texas, who announced that Texas may secede from the United States, raising eyebrows from those who were never fully convinced that Texas had ever truly joined the U.S. in the first place. A governor who chooses to ignore the history lesson of the War Between the States 140 years ago that denied the right of secession. (Texas was a loser in that war, by the way).
5) Continuing attempts by individual or several senators to block various Obama cabinet appointments, with flimsy or even no reason given, only to subsequently have them overwhelmingly approved in the end. What was achieved? As examples, Richard Burr of NC singularly opposed Tammy Duckworth, a double amputee Iraq War veteran universally praised by veteran groups, as Assistant Secretary of the VA; John Cornyn of Texas opposed Hillary Clinton for Secretary of State; Arlen Specter opposed Eric Holder as Attorney General. And most recently, Senator David Vitter of Louisiana is holding up the nomination of Craig Fugate as head of FEMA because he doesn’t like FEMA’s answers to how it will proceed with high-risk flood zones that will affect rebuilding in Louisiana. How exactly does depriving an agency of its leadership help provide new leadership and answers?
6) Then there is Dick Cheney, the scariest-person-now-no-longer-in-government-who just-won’t-go-away, whose negative comments about everything that has happened since the January 20th inauguration, and whose ends-justify-the-means defense of Bush administration torture exceeds my capacity for thoughtful response.
7) And lastly, there is the Fox News (aka the Republican Party Communications Directorate) inspired Tea Bag Protest, in which a bunch of folks got together to protest a) taxes and b) income redistribution. Except that the total number of protestors nationwide was probably less that those filling Grant Park one night awhile back in Chicago to hear Obama’s victory speech. A great many of those protestors are likely already included in Obama’s tax cuts for 90% of the population. Virtually every one of them will no doubt be gladly accepting their social security retirement payments when the time comes, which is the biggest income redistribution program in the country. Oh, and in 1773 the original tea protest in Boston was against taxation without representation; our current taxes were passed with representation, even if one does not like their representative’s response.
Once again, at a time when serious dialog, creative ideas, and political courage are needed, the current group of political lightweights in today’s Republican Party is found lacking. The most recent poll I saw shows only 21% of voters declaring themselves as Republicans. These are not “minority party” numbers, these are 3rd-party numbers. George Corley Wallace in ’68 numbers, Ross Perot in ’92 numbers, just a step ahead of Ralph Nader Green Party numbers. It is a party at a loss for message, direction and spokespersons. And if it were not for the aforementioned Fox News and the party’s self-anointed spokesperson Rush Limbaugh, they would be getting just about the same 3rd-party level of press attention.
Tax cuts and medical insurance tax credits are meaningless to the unemployed. Sending military forces against the bad guys is a hollow threat when you already have two wars going on, a war-weary public, and only estranged allies. A balanced budget is a death knell to an economy reeling from a lack of consumer spending. Talk of free enterprise capitalism wins no fans when people are reeling from the excesses of irresponsible deregulation. Republicans have to come up with a new message instead of the old news, and that message cannot be one that panders to the hysterical conspiracies of a decreasing number of citizens. It is not a time for trying to extract revenge for losing the 2008 election using political and rhetorical tricks. It is a time for governing and leading.
1) Representative Michelle Bachman of Minnesota, who continually confounds rationality by:
- saying that Obama is seeking to set up “reeducation camps” to brainwash our children;
- introducing a bill to prohibit one world-wide currency, notwithstanding the U.S. dollar’s de facto role as just that for 60 years;
- inexplicitly announcing that “carbon dioxide occurs naturally in the world, so it does not cause global warming and so we don’t have to worry about it.” (I guess unlike black widow spiders, which also occur “naturally” in nature but which I will still choose to avoid!)
2) Norm Coleman, senator from Minnesota, who all electoral commissions have determined lost his reelection bid, but who refuses to take the classy statesman path and accept his defeat 6 months after the election, making the Gore/Bush debacle in Florida look like a textbook perfection.
3) Representative Spencer Bachus from Alabama, who announced that he personally knows of “17 socialists in Congress,” borrowing from Senator Joe McCarthy’s frighteningly injurious accusations of the 1950s, and who similarly thus far refuses to name any one of the 17. He further ignores that being a “socialist” is neither a U.S. political party nor an illegal status outlawed anywhere.
4) Governor Rick Perry of Texas, who announced that Texas may secede from the United States, raising eyebrows from those who were never fully convinced that Texas had ever truly joined the U.S. in the first place. A governor who chooses to ignore the history lesson of the War Between the States 140 years ago that denied the right of secession. (Texas was a loser in that war, by the way).
5) Continuing attempts by individual or several senators to block various Obama cabinet appointments, with flimsy or even no reason given, only to subsequently have them overwhelmingly approved in the end. What was achieved? As examples, Richard Burr of NC singularly opposed Tammy Duckworth, a double amputee Iraq War veteran universally praised by veteran groups, as Assistant Secretary of the VA; John Cornyn of Texas opposed Hillary Clinton for Secretary of State; Arlen Specter opposed Eric Holder as Attorney General. And most recently, Senator David Vitter of Louisiana is holding up the nomination of Craig Fugate as head of FEMA because he doesn’t like FEMA’s answers to how it will proceed with high-risk flood zones that will affect rebuilding in Louisiana. How exactly does depriving an agency of its leadership help provide new leadership and answers?
6) Then there is Dick Cheney, the scariest-person-now-no-longer-in-government-who just-won’t-go-away, whose negative comments about everything that has happened since the January 20th inauguration, and whose ends-justify-the-means defense of Bush administration torture exceeds my capacity for thoughtful response.
7) And lastly, there is the Fox News (aka the Republican Party Communications Directorate) inspired Tea Bag Protest, in which a bunch of folks got together to protest a) taxes and b) income redistribution. Except that the total number of protestors nationwide was probably less that those filling Grant Park one night awhile back in Chicago to hear Obama’s victory speech. A great many of those protestors are likely already included in Obama’s tax cuts for 90% of the population. Virtually every one of them will no doubt be gladly accepting their social security retirement payments when the time comes, which is the biggest income redistribution program in the country. Oh, and in 1773 the original tea protest in Boston was against taxation without representation; our current taxes were passed with representation, even if one does not like their representative’s response.
Once again, at a time when serious dialog, creative ideas, and political courage are needed, the current group of political lightweights in today’s Republican Party is found lacking. The most recent poll I saw shows only 21% of voters declaring themselves as Republicans. These are not “minority party” numbers, these are 3rd-party numbers. George Corley Wallace in ’68 numbers, Ross Perot in ’92 numbers, just a step ahead of Ralph Nader Green Party numbers. It is a party at a loss for message, direction and spokespersons. And if it were not for the aforementioned Fox News and the party’s self-anointed spokesperson Rush Limbaugh, they would be getting just about the same 3rd-party level of press attention.
Tax cuts and medical insurance tax credits are meaningless to the unemployed. Sending military forces against the bad guys is a hollow threat when you already have two wars going on, a war-weary public, and only estranged allies. A balanced budget is a death knell to an economy reeling from a lack of consumer spending. Talk of free enterprise capitalism wins no fans when people are reeling from the excesses of irresponsible deregulation. Republicans have to come up with a new message instead of the old news, and that message cannot be one that panders to the hysterical conspiracies of a decreasing number of citizens. It is not a time for trying to extract revenge for losing the 2008 election using political and rhetorical tricks. It is a time for governing and leading.
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