The People Around Him…

We’ve been on the road, stopping at a couple of charming Bed and Breakfasts in the North Carolina mountains, so I haven’t been blogging with my usual frequency. I also haven’t been glued to my usual sources of political news.

Even so, I have seen the British press’s less-than-admiring coverage of Romney’s visit to England–ranging from a big headline “Mitt the Twit” to “worse than Sarah Palin” to “Do we have another Dubya on our hands?” One columnist described Romney as “devoid of charm, warmth and sincerity.”

Since this visit was initially intended as an extended photo-op–former Olympic savior visits England to cheer on this year’s games–it has been something of a PR disaster.

The most troubling observation by the notoriously sarcastic Brits, however, was the comparison to Dubya. And it is troubling not because Mitt, like George W, constantly displays these “not ready for prime time” moments. Let’s face it, no one is ready to lead the free world. Obama wasn’t, Clinton wasn’t, Reagan wasn’t. (Granted, most of them managed to hide that fact more adroitly.) Even the shared arrogance that leads to these “what were you thinking” moments isn’t the most disturbing characteristic they share.

It’s the people with whom they surround themselves. And actually, on that score, Dubya was better.

When candidates demonstrate that they come up short on knowing, for example, the intricacies of the capital markets, or–in Herman Cain’s memorable formulation–the name of the President of “Ubeki-beki-stan”–most of us understand. The Presidency requires expertise in more subjects than it is fair to expect any candidate to master. So we look to the advisors the candidate has chosen to rely upon. Who is he listening to? How sound are the people around him?

Dubya had some good people (Colin Powell, the early Condoleeza Rice) whose counsel he simply ignored. Their nuanced approach was overpowered by the Dick Cheney/John Bolton/neocon contingent–the purveyors of a Manichean worldview where good and evil were clearly labelled and all the answers were easy ones. (The questions, unfortunately, were generally the wrong ones.)

Romney has chosen to surround himself with the absolute worst of these. Most knowledgable foreign policy experts–Republican and Democrat alike–consider John Bolton crazy. But there he is, at the center of Mitt’s foreign policy team. Most legal scholars will readily admit that Robert Bork is brilliant–but consider his approach to the constitution far out of the mainstream of legal thought (at best) and twisted/dangerous at worst. Bork is advising Mitt on potential Supreme Court nominees.

I could go on, but the bottom line is that for whatever reason–perhaps an effort to solidify the support of the extremist GOP base, perhaps because he actually agrees with them, perhaps because he really doesn’t know better–Romney has surrounded himself with the worst of the Bush Administration’s leftovers. He is listening (presumably) to the people who took us to the edge of depression, who blithely led us into a war of choice in the most unstable and dangerous part of the world, and who still haven’t learned from their mistakes.

A lot of pundits, focused on the horse race, have noted Romney’s frequent gaffes, and attributed them to the absence of good staff work. Fewer have asked the question: if Romney’s campaign people are inept, what can we expect of the people he’d depend upon in the White House? And if the answer to that question is “the worst of Bush’s advisors”–we’d better hope that the Koch brothers and their ilk don’t manage to buy this election.

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Chik-fil-A

Let me be clear about my personal reaction to Chik-fil-A’s corporate homophobia–expressed by its financial support for anti-gay organizations and most recently by the “guilty as charged” statement of its President. I do not patronize Chik-fil-A, and I encourage my friends and family to spend their money elsewhere. When the occasion arises, I communicate my disapproval of the corporation’s message and my hope that consumers who agree with me will communicate theirs by eating elsewhere.

But I do not applaud efforts by elected officials to treat the chain differently than any other business because of its message and beliefs.

When I was at the ACLU, the Klan was denied the right to hold a rally on the Statehouse steps. Other organizations routinely were granted permission to do so. We represented the KKK– the Jewish Executive Director (me), our African-American legal secretary, and a gay co-operating (volunteer) attorney. It certainly wasn’t because any of us agreed with the Klan’s odious message. It was because we knew that the government that could deny equal rights to the Klan today could just as easily deny equal rights to us tomorrow.

In our system–a system far too many of us don’t understand–the government has an obligation to remain neutral about ideas, even–as Justice Holmes memorably wrote–about “the idea we hate.” If Chik-fil-A, or the Klan, or the ACLU wants to open a store or office somewhere, and are otherwise following the rules, their views should not be part of the decision-making process.

The gay community, especially, should understand the importance of government neutrality. Until very recently, government officials could be counted on to exercise their powers to suppress, rather than support, GLBT folks. The social change we rightly celebrate–where a Chik-fil-A is roundly condemned for anti-gay bias–would have been impossible but for the free marketplace of ideas that the First Amendment protects.

In our system, government stays neutral so that individuals don’t have to. That means we each have an obligation to be active citizens and intentional consumers. Moral bullies want government to fight their ideological battles for them; free citizens fight their own.

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Health and the Market

Well, I see that the Congressional GOP is threatening to shut down the government in October if the Democrats block repeal of the Affordable Care Act, aka Obamacare, and the partisan rhetoric is predictably flying.

A Democratic friend sent me an email listing the multiple sins of the Bush Administration, from wars of choice to decimation of the economy to the massive increase in the national debt; the message was something like “You didn’t get mad about any of these things, but now a black guy wants to provide healthcare to Americans who don’t have it, and that makes you mad!?” A Republican friend sent me a similarly incendiary message insisting that Obama is a “socialist” who hates capitalism and wants to destroy the market “that made American health care the best in the world.”

Let’s stipulate that not everyone who opposes Obamacare is a racist, and that American healthcare before the ACA was not only not the best in the world, but actually ranks around 37th. Other than that, my purpose is not to engage these arguments, but to point to a perfect example of the way “the market” works in areas like healthcare, where buyers and sellers are not on equal footing, and do not possess the sort of equivalent information that is necessary for markets to work.

I have previously referred to a book written my cousin, Morton Tavel, in which he takes on the “snake oil” aspects of the healthcare industry. He has now created a blog devoted to the subject, and his first post is a perfect example of “the market” in medicine–a discussion of all the ads about “low T”–testosterone deficiency. I encourage you to click through and read the whole post, but the bottom line is that  “low T” is extremely rare. The numbers the manufacturers are hyping are misleading at best and fraudulent at worst, and the “remedy” they are promoting is expensive, unnecessary and unlikely to restore the virility of the aging men who miss their morning erections.

Markets are wonderful where they work. And they work more often than they don’t. But in those areas where they don’t work, they enable the snake oil salesmen who prey on the unwary and drive up costs for everyone.

As with so many policy debates, this isn’t an “either-or” debate between all market all the time and socializing every aspect of the economy. We “socialize” functions that markets cannot efficiently provide–police and fire protection, infrastructure provision, national defense, public education. We leave to the market those economic areas where markets have proven their effectiveness.

The decision whether to leave an activity to the market or provide it through government should be based on evidence, not ideology. And as every other western industrialized country has long recognized, the evidence for government’s role in healthcare is overwhelming, just as the evidence for the market in consumer goods and manufacturing is overwhelming.

The evidence also tells us a lot about elected representatives who–having lost the argument–are willing to shut down the American government in order to protect the profits of health insurers and drug companies.

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The Art of the Dog Whistle

Poor Mitt Romney. He’s wooden and inauthentic on the campaign trail, and yesterday, his attempt at a ‘dog whistle’ to those uncomfortable with Obama’s “otherness” simply betrayed his very curious lack of self-awareness.

A ‘dog whistle,’ for those unfamiliar with the phrase, is use of language and/or allusions that send a message to a targeted constituency without communicating that message to the public at large. George W. Bush was a master at it: he would use biblical phrases that were familiar and meaningful to evangelical Christians but unfamiliar to most of us to send a signal that he was one of them–without alerting anyone who might have a problem with so explicit a declaration of faith.

In an interview with Larry Kudlow yesterday, Mitt “went there” by opining that Obama’s beliefs are “foreign to American experience.”

Mitt, Mitt, Mitt. This might work if you were one of the dramatically declining number of Americans living the life of Opie in Mayberry, but in case you hadn’t noticed, your beliefs and experiences aren’t exactly part and parcel of the “American experience”–whatever that means these days.

Very few Americans are married to someone who drives “a couple of Cadillacs.” Fewer still claim a tax deduction of 77,000 for upkeep of their “dressage” Olympic horse, or install car elevators in one of their multiple homes.

Your devotion to your church probably does reflect American religiosity, but most denominations don’t share a belief that Jesus visited the continental U.S. after he rose from the dead, or that his visit and further instructions were inscribed on gold plates that were subsequently discovered buried in Palmyra, New York.

Let’s face it: neither you nor President Obama are typical Americans. Obama is a member of a racial minority; you are a member of a religious minority. You grew up privileged, he spent a good part of his childhood abroad.  In both cases, your experiences have shaped who you are. In neither case have your atypical backgrounds made you “foreign” to the American experience. Both of you are part of the increasingly diverse fabric of this country.

Dog whistles only work when you are clearly a member of the group you are signaling–and the other guy just as clearly isn’t.

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Incivility and an Inability to Govern

There’s an interesting symposium on political civility in a recent issue of PS: Political  Science and Politics. The articles wrestle with some foundational questions: what is the difference between the sort of argumentation that illuminates differences and is an inevitable part of democratic discourse and rhetoric that “crosses the line”? What do we mean by incivility?

The consensus seemed to be that incivility is rudeness or impoliteness that violates an agreed social standard.

I’m not sure we have agreed social standards in this age of invective, but surely attacks that focus on, and disrespect, persons rather than positions should count as uncivil. An example of civility in political argument might be Dick Lugar’s often-repeated phrase to the effect that “that is a matter about which reasonable people can differ.” (Hard to imagine Mr. Mourdock, who has taken pride in incivility and intransigence, making such a statement.)

The contributors offer a variety of perspectives on the definitions and causes of today’s nasty politics, but one of the most trenchant observations came from a Professor Maisel of Colby College, who attributes the gridlock in Washington and elsewhere to “partisan one-upmanship expressed in ways that do not show respect for those with differing views.” As he notes (referring to Erik Cantor)

If your will is to prevent legislation from passing, to prevent the president’s agenda from moving forward, to work the system to your political advantage, then lack of civility works.

In other words, if your over-riding motivation is simply to beat the other guy–to keep the President from a second term, as Mitch McConnell famously admitted–and if that motivation outweighs any concern for the public good, governing is impossible.

The reason politicians no longer “respectfully disagree” with each other, Professor Maisel points out, is that they do not in fact respect the views of their opponents. They hardly know them. The days when Congressional families lived in Washington and socialized–when their children went to school together, and their spouses carpooled or otherwise interacted–are long gone. It’s easy to demonize people you don’t know.

Add to that an even more troubling aspect of today’s politics, a disregard for fact and truth, enabled by partisan television, talk radio and the internet. Survey after survey shows that people on the Left and Right alike get their “news” from sources that validate their biases. Worse, we have lost the real news, the mainstream, objective journalism that fact-checks, that confronts us with inconvenient realities. In such an environment, it becomes easier to characterize those with whom we disagree as buffoons or worse, unworthy of our respect.

When political discourse is so nasty, and regard for truth so minimal–when the enterprise of government has more in common with a barroom brawl than a lofty exercise in statesmanship–is it any wonder that so many of our “best and brightest” shun politics?

Government is broken, and we need to fix it. Unfortunately, the symposium contributions didn’t tell us how to do that.

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