Our Fictional President

Saturday, I opened my IBJ to read a truly paranoid rant from Greg Morris, the publisher, who has a weekly opinion column. Mr. Morris is clearly one of those Second Amendment folks who views his right to bear arms with religious fervor, and his embrace of “one nation, armed to the teeth” was unsettling enough. But what really set the warning bells off was his full-throated embrace of one of the many conspiracy theories that have persisted since the election of Barack Obama: “they’re coming for our guns!”

Mr. Morris was unable to point to a single fact supporting this fantasy. It was the usual “everyone knows” and “someone said” rant–the Obama administration is “just waiting for the second term” and then they’ll confiscate your weapons!

I was shocked to see this garbage in the staid IBJ, a publication focused on the business community, and one of the few media outlets that still fact-checks and reports.But it reminded me of an observation someone made about the Republican primary–that the GOP candidates are running against a fictional President.

The criticisms of Obama from the left–and there have been plenty of them–tend to fault him for specific policy decisions. He has failed to dismantle Bush’s security apparatus; his administration defended the killing of an American citizen working with the terrorists, without a trial or other due process. Agree or not with those criticisms (and I do), they are specific and tangible.

The criticisms from the Right, however, rarely focus on something the President actually did. Other than the hated “Obamacare” (which very few people who want it repealed seem to understand) and pious hand-wringing over the national debt (inconveniently created by George W. Bush), most of the accusations seem to be the products of fevered imaginations: Obama is a “socialist” who wants to make the U.S. into Europe; Obama hates white people; Obama is a Kenyan Muslim fascist; Obama wants to confiscate our guns….

I read “The Audacity of Hope” during the 2008 campaign. I agreed with almost everything in it–because the positions outlined were very much the same positions I held (and continue to hold) when I ran for Congress in 1980 as a moderate Republican. If there is one mistake today’s Left and Right hold in common, its the belief that Obama ran as some sort of raging liberal. He didn’t, he wasn’t, and he isn’t.

The absolute hysteria on the Right can’t be explained by Obama’s actual policies. Unlike the situation with George W. Bush, who didn’t arouse intense animosity until he’d actually done things, the irrational hatred of Obama began the day he was elected.

We seem to have two Presidents, the actual man we elected, and a fictional “boogeyman.” And while race doesn’t explain all of that, it explains a hell of a lot.

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Defining “Religious Liberty”

Tomorrow, the South Bend City Council will consider amending its Human Rights Ordinance to include protections against discrimination based on sexual orientation.

HR Ordinances–while relatively toothless in Indiana–express a municipality’s intent to discourage some people from picking on other people based solely upon their religion, race, gender and other markers that are irrelevant to the question whether those people can pay the rent or perform the duties required for the job.

I’ve agreed to serve as a sort of “expert witness” at the Council hearing, and as a result, over the last week or so I’ve been copied with the various arguments being made in opposition to the proposal. As often happens when I find myself immersed in indignant justifications of homophobia, I’m increasingly feeling like an inhabitant of the Twilight Zone.

One example is the “legal memo” submitted by the Alliance Defense Fund. I’ve seen most of its arguments before–it’s pretty much a retread of similar arguments made when other Indiana cities passed similar measures. The ADF insists that Indiana municipalities lack the authority to pass such ordinances–despite the fact that over the past decade or so several have done so, and none have been challenged. The memorandum mis-characterizes court cases, and engages in the other tactics lawyers resort to when they find themselves on the losing side of a legal argument.

I understand those tactics; at one point or another, we all find ourselves desperately trying to find a legal basis for what are really policy arguments.

The jaw-dropping argument, however, and the most ridiculous claim in the entire 30+ page “brief,” is a claim that the religious exemption is inadequate because it does not protect “religiously motivated” discrimination.

Let’s think about that for a minute.

The proposal before the South Bend Council contains an exemption for religious organizations. This exemption, in my opinion, is entirely appropriate–if your religion disapproves of gay people, or unwed mothers, or atheists, the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment forbids government from forcing your church or other religious organization to employ such people. The law requires that we accommodate even beliefs that are at odds with basic American values.

Apparently, however, protecting the right of religious organizations to follow the dictates of their faith–even when those dictates are inconsistent with civil rights laws–isn’t sufficient. According to the ADF argument, if I truly believe gay people are sinners, that belief alone should allow me to discriminate with impunity–If I can’t fire employees I discover are gay, if I can’t refuse to rent to GLBT folks, the government is denying me religious liberty.

This is similar to the argument that anti-bullying legislation infringes the “free speech rights” of the bullies. The argument is apparently that I should be able to pick on gay people—or black people, or women, or Muslims–if I say my motivation is religious.

There’s a yiddish word for that argument: Chutzpah.

Obviously, an exemption for “religious motivation” would eviscerate the law. But this is part and parcel of the worldview of those who oppose equal civil rights for GLBT folks. Stripped of the “legalese” and rhetorical devices, that argument is simple: legislation that is inconsistent with my particular religious beliefs is a denial of my religious liberty.

The religion clauses of the First Amendment require government to be neutral between religions, and between religion and non-religion. To use a sports analogy, government is supposed to be an umpire, not a player. But there are citizens who simply cannot abide the notion of a neutral government–who experience “live and let live” and civic equality as affronts to the primacy to which they feel entitled. In that peculiar worldview, a government that insists on fair play for gay people is a government that’s denying them religious liberty.

I can hear the theme from “Twilight Zone” as I type…..

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Counterintuitive…and Interesting

The most recent issue of The New Yorker has an interesting article about retail establishments and staffing levels.

The conventional wisdom is that in order to profit, retailers must keep costs low, and the most effective way to do that is to have as few employees as possible. As the article points out, however, “Although leanness is generally a good thing in business, too much cost-cutting turns out to be a bad strategy, not only for workers and customers, but for businesses themselves.”

The author quotes from a recent Harvard Business Review study of four large low-price retailers with much higher employee costs than their competitors. These are stores, like Costco, that pay their employees more, provide benefits, and provide more training. They also employ a lot more people.

And–counterintuitively–they make more money. They have higher sales per square foot than similar businesses with thinner staffs, and they experience much less (costly) turnover.

The article doesn’t just look at the successful retailers with larger sales staffs; it also notes examples of the reverse. When Home Depot and Circuit City slashed employees to cut costs, sales plummeted.

I’m sure there are other business practices that contribute to both the positive and negative results. But assuming the Harvard folks are right, assuming they have controlled for other factors and that they have produced sound, compelling evidence that hiring more employees (to a point, obviously) translates into greater profits, I wonder if that evidence would be enough to overcome the conventional wisdom that favors “lean and mean.”

Somehow, I doubt it.

After all, we have years and years of compelling evidence that tax cuts don’t create jobs–but politicians continue to insist otherwise.

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Etch-A-Sketch and Old White Guys

There’s been a lot of talk–gleeful and rueful–about the “Etch-a-Sketch” comment by one of Mitt Romney’s advisors. (For those who missed it, the advisor was asked by a CNN reporter whether he worried that Mitt had been pushed so far right during the primary process that he would be unable to attract moderates during the general election; he responded that he wasn’t concerned, because the general election was like an Etch-A-Sketch–you shake everything up and start over.)

The remark underscored one of Romney’s biggest problems: the widespread perception that there is no “there” there–that he is Mr. Inauthentic. But I think it displayed an even more fundamental disconnect.

Today’s GOP has become a party of old white men who don’t understand how people communicate in the world of twitter and Facebook. We saw this during the last campaign–John McCain was often (aptly) described as “an analog candidate for a digital age.”

Romney’s advisor wasn’t wrong, exactly, about the nature of the primary and general campaigns–he was simply behind the times. It used to be that candidates could target voting blocks and special interests with direct mail appeals that flew under the radar of the electorate at large. It used to be that primaries could be conducted as largely “in house” contests–and it was usually only political junkies who would read the traditional media’s reporting on those primaries.

We don’t live in that world anymore. Facebook, Twitter and You Tube, among others, have altered the political landscape; people see a ridiculous remark, or are angered by a political position, and post it. Posts go viral. Literally millions of people are drawn into arguments that would have been “inside baseball” in days gone by.

And speaking of days gone by–nothing says old-fashioned and out of touch like a reference to Etch-A-Sketch.

Romney’s problem isn’t just that he’s willing to say anything to anyone. It’s that he and his team of old white guys don’t understand the world they now live in.

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Decision Point

Last night, Education Reform Now hosted a presentation and panel discussion at Central Library. The main speakers were a representative from the New Orleans system and David Harris, CEO of the Mind Trust; they were joined by two (very impressive) teachers currently working for IPS–one from Howe, a “traditional” school that has just been taken over by the state, the other from Herron High School, a high-achieving public charter school.

Often, when people from elsewhere (isn’t that the definition of an expert?) come to lecture about education, they deliver bromides, based upon their own pet theories and unacknowledged values/prejudices. The New Orleans representative (name escapes me) was very different. He didn’t come to throw bombs or accusations; he was very clear that the failure of urban systems is a systemic failure, not a result of teacher’s unions, or bad teachers or even poverty. New Orleans recognized that what had to change was the top-down system itself–that even the most well-meaning, hard-working people could not achieve results until the system changed.

He was also very candid that the New Orleans schools–despite impressive gains–still has a long way to go.

They key to the improvements in New Orleans was relinquishment–recasting the central office as an administrative support unit, not a command center. As he pointed out, you cannot micromanage what happens in the classroom if you want to hold schools accountable for results. (There’s an analogy to what architects call “performance specifications”–unlike detailed drawings, performance specifications set out the required results, and let the architect or engineer figure out how to achieve those results.)

The systemic changes in New Orleans sounded a lot like the proposals recently made by the Mind Trust, as both presentations made clear.

During the panel discussion, moderated by Amos Brown, the two teachers on the panel explained why they endorsed the Mind Trust’s approach, and shared their own experiences and frustrations.

All in all, the program was the best analysis I’ve heard of the challenges urban school systems face, and the best explanation of the Mind Trust’s proposals for change. That change won’t be easy; the representative from New Orleans downplayed the role of the hurricane in that city, but that disaster clearly created–along with so much tragedy–an opening and mandate for the reinvention of that city’s schools. The tragedy we face is much less obvious–a steady stream of children we are failing. They aren’t being swept away by tidal waters, but they are drowning in a dysfunctional system.

There are no panaceas, and no one on the panel suggested they had all the answers. But the program made a compelling case for change–not just the typical handwringing “we have to do something,” but a well-researched, carefully constructed plan to help us improve the school system and the lives of the children that system is currently failing.

The question is, do we have the will to make the changes we need? Or will we continue to bicker and tinker at the edges of a broken system?

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