The Next President

The 2008 Presidential campaign is already in full gear. The debates have begun, and it won’t be long before we’re inundated with political commercials.  

 

It’s impossible to predict, at this stage, who the eventual nominees will be. For one thing, what people want in a president tends to be highly idiosyncratic. (My grandmother voted for John F. Kennedy because she loved his hair.)

 

Most of us want someone who agrees with us on the issues, but we also want someone we can trust to exercise good judgment when the unexpected occurs. Most want someone who is a strong leader, although we tend to disagree about what “strength” looks like. Until recently, most Americans wanted a President with “likability,” someone you’d like to have a beer with—but polls suggest that the experiences of the past six years have diminished the appeal of “regular guys” somewhat.

 

That experience has also shaped my own list of what I want in the next President.

   

I want someone who understands the context of Presidential action. Without understanding the foundations of America’s constitutional culture, an administration simply cannot operate effectively—whatever its goals. Lack of familiarity with  geopolitical realities threatens not just American, but global, security. Genuinely understanding the context in which he operates requires a President with an open mind, a curious nature, and high intelligence.

 

I also want someone who has “the vision thing.” As Theodore Hesburgh once said “You can’t blow an uncertain trumpet.” But vision is not stubborness. America needs leaders who know the difference.

 

I want someone with superior communication skills—the ability to bring a divided people together, the ability to inspire hope rather than fear, and the ability to listen as well as talk.

 

Perhaps most of all, I am looking for authenticity. Authenticity is the extent to which people are true to their real selves, the extent to which they refuse to play a role in order to achieve political success. Authenticity doesn’t mean acting without any strategic calculus—sane people respond appropriately to their environments, and to the incentives and disincentives built in to those environments. But for authentic people, there is a line that doesn’t get crossed.

 

Authentic people are emotionally mature, they have the ability to laugh at themselves, they listen to dissenting voices without becoming defensive, and they can distinguish between policy disputes and personal attacks. They learn from their mistakes, and they recognize the limits of their own knowledge. Emotional maturity is not an absence of ego—we’d never get national leadership if that were a condition of candidacy! It is instead the possession of a particular kind of ego, a particular kind of inner security that allows recognition of one’s own limits.

 

I want someone who understands accountability. There’s a world of difference between Truman’s “The buck stops here” and Bush’s “I’m the decider.”  The first says “I accept responsibility.” The second says “I’m the boss.”

 

As Abraham Lincoln said “If you want to test a man’s character, give him power.”

 

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Duke and Prosecutorial Hazard

The recent dismissals of all charges brought against the Duke lacrosse players—accompanied by condemnations of the prosecutor who originally brought the charges—reminded me of something said in 1940 by Supreme Court Justice Robert H. Jackson, who later presided over the Nuremberg trials.

 

Jackson said “The prosecutor has more control over life, liberty and reputation than any other person in America. His discretion is tremendous…The citizen’s safety lies in the prosecutor who tempers zeal with human kindness, who seeks truth and not victims, who serves the law, and not factional purposes.”

 

Whatever other lessons we may learn from the sorry spectacle at Duke—lessons about race, privilege and resentment, or the ease of playing to an ever-more sensation-seeking media—surely the importance of prosecutorial integrity is the most important. Prosecutors are officers of the court; they are lawyers for “the people.” If they do not place their duty to the truth above personal or partisan considerations, they can do enormous damage both to the lives of individuals and to public trust in our institutions.

 

It isn’t only Duke. In Wisconsin, a Republican U.S. Attorney launched a corruption case against an obscure state bureaucrat, and even got a conviction. It was an election year, and not surprisingly, the case was featured prominently in attack ads against the Democratic governor. After the election, the appeals court threw the case out.  The opinion, written by (exceedingly conservative) Judge Easterbrook, called the evidence "beyond thin" and the case “preposterous.”

 

The Wisconsin case, even more than the travesty at Duke, provides a telling example of why the current Congressional investigation into the Justice Department’s firing of eight federal prosecutors is so important.

 

The previous Congress ignored numerous warning signs about politicization of the Justice Department—from the hiring of attorneys with few qualifications and little experience, to the departure of career lawyers who had served both Republican and Democratic administrations. Seasoned career lawyers were overruled so that the department could reverse prior policy in voting rights cases. The list goes on.

 

Then there is the curious “coincidence” that several of the fired prosecutors came from battleground states that will be critical in the 2008 election: New Mexico, Nevada, Michigan, Washington and Arkansas.

 

It is easy for citizens numbed by the constant drumbeat of accusations and counteraccusations and disgusted by the political gameplaying and outright corruption of the last several years to shrug off the situation at the Justice department as one more fight between equally unpleasant political insiders. But that would be a mistake, because we all have an important stake in the independence and integrity of the men and women entrusted, literally, with life and death decisions.

 

Once we lose confidence in the probity of those officers of the court, once we suspect that they have based the decision to pursue (or overlook) behaviors on political calculation rather than on the evidence, we will have lost what John Adams memorably called “a government of laws, not men.” We really will have lost America.  

 

 

Fits and Starts

In last month’s column, I wrote about an unexpected victory for equal rights—the defeat, or at least the temporary derailing, of a same-sex marriage ban in very red Indiana. Since then, at least two other states have enacted civil union statutes, and polls suggest that the saliency of the issue and its utility in energizing the GOP base have declined.

 

But then there is the other side of the coin, the episodes that remind us that progress does not occur in a straight line, but in what my mother used to call “fits and starts.”

 

In Richmond, Indiana, at virtually the same time our legislature was showing signs of an emerging sanity, a young man named Joe Augustine was beaten with a rock and left with a fractured skull as he was leaving a rehearsal of the Richmond Civic Theater’s production of “The Laramie Project.”  That play, as most readers of this column probably know, is based upon the horrific beating and death of Matthew Shepard.

 

As I write this, there has not been confirmation that this was a hate crime, although it seems unlikely that the choice of victim was merely coincidental. And even in Richmond, in the wake of this savage beating, the news is not all terrible. Townspeople have rallied to support the young man and his family. Businesses have put up signs; the community held a fundraiser to help with medical bills. And the rest of the cast—in the grand old tradition of “the show must go on”—continued with the play’s production.

 

Two steps forward, one step back. That’s the way humans progress. But we do progress. Over the nine years that I have taught university undergraduates, I have watched a sea change in their attitudes toward their gay classmaters. Most of today’s college students literally do not understand what the fuss is all about. In contrast to their parents’ generation, homosexuality—like sexuality in general—does not make them uncomfortable. Most have gay friends, watch “out” entertainers, and tend to attribute anti-gay bias to ignorance at best or emotional problems at worst.

 

Much of this attitude change can be directly traced to the “coming out” movement, and the familiarity with gay friends and neighbors that has ensued. One of the persistent mysteries of human behavior is our tendency to fear that which is different and unknown, despite ample evidence that such fears can be—and often are—pathological.  In a healthy society, we would divert the energy and resources being expended to deprive gay people of their civil rights to an effort to identify and help the angry and dangerous who walk among us.

 

Of course, in a healthy society, we would also divert the resources being flushed down the toilet in a failed drug war to public health measures aimed at helping drug abusers quit. In a healthy society, we would not spend trillions of dollars and waste thousands of young lives fighting a war of choice in Iraq. I could go on and on, but there is little point. I often wonder whether the people who are so angry at the prospect that two men or two women might create a loving and supportive family are equally upset when children go to bed hungry or abused, when we cannot find the public resources to improve our schools or to pay our police and fire personnel adequately. Is their “morality” equally offended when our brave young soldiers come home from a fool’s errand to face poor or indifferent medical care? And speaking of medical care, where are these guardians of public morality when we discuss the 47 million Americans who are uninsured? Isn’t that a sufficiently moral issue?

 

Fits and starts. It would be nice if we were beginning to recover from the fits and ready to start addressing the genuinely important conditions of our common culture.        

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Death and Taxes

Over the past few years, conservative members of Congress have devoted considerable energy to efforts to repeal the Estate Tax. An expensive PR campaign has hammered at the awful unfairness of the “Death Tax.” People unfamiliar with the tax and its application have been led to believe that heirs are routinely having to sell the family farm to pay confiscatory taxes. They’d probably be surprised to learn that 99 percent of estates pay no estate tax at all. 

 

Among the 1% of estates that do pay these taxes, the "effective" tax rate — that is, the actual percentage of the estate that is paid in taxes — averaged about 20 percent in 2005 (the latest year for which IRS data are available), far below the statutory rate of 48 percent. 

 

Although few families pay, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities calculates that repeal would reduce tax revenues by a trillion dollars in the first ten years. That’s because the 1% of Americans who do pay the tax are very, very wealthy.

 

Meanwhile, as policymakers have argued whether the Estate tax imposes an unfair burden on our wealthiest citizens, they have been shockingly unmoved by a far more confiscatory and widespread “death tax”—the requirement that elderly citizens entering nursing homes impoverish themselves before Medicaid will pay for their care.

 

Millions of older Americans who have worked and paid taxes their whole lives cannot afford the ever-escalating costs of long-term care. Very few insurance policies cover these costs, and those that do are far too expensive for most middle-class retirees.

 

Before these vulnerable Americans can receive the services they need, federal law requires that they “spend down” their assets. That is, they must apply virtually everything they have to payment of the initial nursing home charges. Once they no longer have assets, medicaid will pick up the costs. There are few exceptions: prepaid funeral expenses, or a home that remains occupied by a spouse. Over six million elderly Americans are currently receiving Medicaid. All of those seniors have thus paid the “tax”—i.e. the spend-down. Its “effective rate” is 100%. 

 

My mother spent her last years in a nursing home. Many of the residents had worked hard their entire lives. Like the wealthy, most had hoped to pass their possessions and savings on to their children and grandchildren. Unlike the wealthy, they couldn’t afford estate planners and lawyers to help them shelter their assets and minimize the impact of federal rules. Their savings were gone, and all too often their pride and independence had vanished with the money.

 

Some wealthy Americans believe this state of affairs is wrong. They include Warren  Buffett, George Soros and William Gates, Sr. They have urged Congress to reject President Bush’s push to repeal estate taxes, arguing that "repealing the estate tax would enrich the heirs of America‘s millionaires and billionaires while hurting families who struggle to make ends meet."

 

In other words, agonize less over burdening George Soros, and worry more about wiping out Mr. Average Citizen.

   

 

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It’s a Bird, It’s a Plane…

Crime has become a high-decibel subject of conversation in Indianapolis. From the persistent challenges posed by jail overcrowding, the recent sharp increase in homicides, and the hotly debated merger of the Indianapolis Police and  Sheriff’s Departments, crime prevention has become the topic of the day. And it sometimes seems as if everyone has figured out what we need to do if we are serious about ensuring public safety and fighting the bad guys.

 

We need Superman.

 

Superman—AKA Clark Kent—didn’t just appear after a crime had been committed. No siree. He had x-ray vision and superkeen hearing, so he knew beforehand when a crime was about to be committed, and usually he got to the scene (just) in time to foil the attempt. His response time was outstanding.

 

Just his presence in Metropolis made the city safe. His take-home cape struck fear in the hearts of the criminal class, and deterred many crimes. (Undoubtedly, this ability to keep the crime rate down was the reason there was always room in the Metropolis Jail for the culprits he brought to justice.) Plus, he supplied his own—admittedly idiosyncratic—uniform.

 

Best of all, we didn’t have to pay Superman. He protected citizens out of the goodness of his heart. He didn’t require a funded pension, or health benefits, or fancy equipment. He kept crime under control without demanding a single dollar of our tax money. A simple “thank you” (and perhaps an adoring look from

Lois Lane

) was all he needed. In the language of economics, Superman made everyone in Metropolis a free rider.

 

It may seem silly even to say this, but Superman is fantasy. And no matter how reluctant we may be to inhabit it, we live in the real world.

 

In the real world, even the most diligent police officer is only human. Most of the time, officers will not be able to avert crimes before they are committed, and will not be able to get to the scene within two or three minutes, even if our police force had an optimum number of sworn officers, which it doesn’t. A take-home car may or may not be part of a cost-effective crime prevention program, but in either case, the police are going to need vehicles, guns, ready access to computer records, a crime lab filled with expensive equipment and a certain amount of clerical and staff support in order to be effective. They are also going to need adequate space in the jail to house the bad guys they catch.

 

Being only human, police need salaries. Given the inherent dangers in their line of work, they especially need health benefits and retirement savings.

 

If we truly want to improve public safety, we will have to pay for that improvement through our taxes. The police merger was an effort to achieve economies of scale, to do more with less, but at some point, there are no more places to cut.

 

Superman isn’t going to save us from fiscal reality.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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