"Ladies and gentlemen, your kitchen table is like mine. You sit there at night before you put the kids -- after you put the kids to bed and you talk, you talk about what you need. You talk about how much you are worried about being able to pay the bills. Well, ladies and gentlemen, that's not a worry John McCain has to worry about. It's a pretty hard experience. He'll have to figure out which of the seven kitchen tables to sit at."
The Obama-Biden debut in Springfield has just concluded and it is easy to see why Biden is the perfect Vice-presidential choice for this pivotal election. Both men spoke with passion, and their different yet convergent biographies nicely underline the theme of realizing and revitalizing the American dream for all citizens in a tough time, even as we recapture respect for the United States in the world. Their tableau in the home of Lincoln embodies powerful reverberations in the telos of American history.
The Springfield prologue to the Obama-Biden show has the beat. I hear a particular note, a leitmotif. Obama: "overcome the adversity of the last eight years." Biden: "The next president of the United States is going to be delivered into [the world]...The reckoning is now...These times require more than a good soldier, they require a wise leader."
It's the Biblical note. When George Bush used to do it, we called it signalling--telling the base that he's one of them. I think we're hearing it again, which is a good thing. The base that Obama's going for overlaps with what used to be the Bush base of believers. Obama mentioned Biden's Catholicism. These guys will not surrender the mantle of righteousness.
The upsweep through adversity into the sunny future--this is the classic pattern of the American civic-political speech going back to the 17th century. Sacvan Bercovitch wrote about it memorably in The American Jeremiad.
Now for the adversity and the reckoning.
I've not been all that excited about the McCain "I don't know how many houses I've got" gaffe. (I have to admit though that Josh Marshall's take on it does get the heart racing a bit.)
I know others who aren't tuned into such details and they'd make fine national leaders. One can be out of touch with a lot of things -- numerous homes, paying bills on time, remembering to put gas in the car, knowing which drawer the kitchen utensils are in (that's one of my regular screw-ups), and so on.
If you want to take a break from news about Obama's articulate and bright and clean V-P choice (hat-tip to John Dickerson), get a load of this. In a trough of the manic-depressive cycle about Obama's summer doldrums, I among others was dismayed last weekend when Obama seemed so downright (if admirably) professorial ("you could argue that....") around Rick Warren. I didn't find out till later in the week that in an interview with Christian Broadcasting Network's David Brody the same weekend, Obama plainly said that his antagonists charging him with infanticide were lying. He said it directly, looking at Brody straight, yet without raising angry-black-guy alarms. He didn't sound whiny a la Bob Dole "stop lying about my record." He didn't sneer. He sounded righteous without going nasty. It's the right way to confront McCain when the time comes. Go to YouTube and take a look (search "david brody obama"). Here's the transcript.
The least I should say after writing so churlishly yesterday about Obama's lacking fire in the belly for an elemental confrontation wth this country's deepening, interlocking injustices is that picking Joe Biden is a great rebuttal, a credit to Obama on some of the terms in which I challenged him.
Biden has an elemental, working-class sense of justice and is the kind of fighter this campaign has lacked. If he can't coach Obama on how to land some direct punches -- and be funny while doing it -- he'll land 'em himself, Mentored by Hubert Humphrey, Biden is a "Happy Warrior," but with knuckles.
Think of Biden's quip that every one of Rudy Giuliani's sentences consisted of "A noun, a verb, and 9/11." Whether such punch-lines now come from Obama himself (as in the "How many homes?" arena) or from Biden, McCain won't know what hit him.
This doesn't answer the challenges to the republic from corporate capital and the consumer-marketing juggernaut which I flagged yesterday and here and here. But an American campaign is what it is, and it has to be won. After that, if there are ways through Washington's thickets of lobbying and legalism, Biden will be a terrific guide for Obama, who'll listen and choose wisely -- as he has just now.
And it's a reminder of what this is all about. No matter who the VP is, this is the most important election of our lives (not just just the lives of the 20 somethings but even the 80 somethings.
Those of us who lived through the 60's are hardwired to expect the worst and to believe that, in the end, the reactionary geezer will win.
But who would have thought Barack Obama would have gotten this far? Not me. But it sure is a privilege to be part of it.
I just got back from Beijing from the Olympics and was thrilled to get my copy of Out of Mao's Shadow. (Phil, your signed copy from way back still hasn't arrived...). I hadn't been to Beijing in just under two years (and that was just an overnight stop to say hi to friends) and hadn't really traveled around Beijing in six. The changes were breath-taking.
It was disorienting to go back to Beijing University (Beida), because -- as my classmates and I noted -- the changes were so dramatic that we couldn't even orient ourselves geographically. But the new buildings (and there are so many, everywhere) are architecturally impressive, and not just the Olympic venues. They are daring and playful and surprisingly more modern than anything I've seen built recently in the states.
Any day now, a glossy savant like David Brooks or Nicholas Lemann will sigh theatrically that almost no Democratic nominee - think of McGovern, Mondale, Dukakis, Gore, Kerry, and maybe Obama - has played rough and dirty enough when it counted. Only Bill and Hillary showed the shameless determination it takes to win. Why, oh why, the pundits will ask, have so many Democrats left us looking for the fire in their bellies?
The answer has little to do with the candidates themselves being too innocent, nuanced, confused, or weak, as the licensed cynics often pretend. Even Slick Willie won in 1992 thanks partly to Ross Perot. The Democrats' problem is political and economic, long before it's psychological. Focusing on candidates' personal weaknesses and assessing vice-presidential nominees as steroids only dodges the deeper truth that most of us aren't free enough to get candidates we deserve - or to bring the best out of them when we do.
Sometimes followers have to lead leaders, as Theda Skocpol noted here two days ago, to resounding applause. But what are we ready to demand that Obama fight for?
Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein recently wrote this piece calling on regulators to emphasize disclosure and transparency by requiring electronic disclosures. The authors suggest that machine-readable disclosures containing general information about credit terms and individualized consumer information would make consumers better shoppers. The authors' basic point that regulators should think beyond paper disclosures is a good one. The prior paper disclosure forms were ineffective and the proposed paper forms will not guarantee that consumers only enter into feasible loans.
The authors' more ambitious claim is that "government should not decide which pricing practices are permitted; it should simply require suppliers to make their pricing observable." In support of disclosure over regulation in the mortgage context, Thaler and Sunstein argue that low-income borrowers are the principal beneficiaries of "financial innovation."
Minxin Pei makes a very good point about the nature of political reform in the comments to my first posting. He argues that even though the party-state has successfully resisted change so far, pressure on the system for political liberalization is building. When change comes, he suggests, it may be quick and sudden instead of gradual. Capitalism and economic growth may not have resulted in democracy in China yet, he seems to be saying, but it has unleashed forces that may eventually too great for even the Chinese Communist Party to contain.
I don't disagree with this analysis. I would add, however, that China would probably be better off with a more gradual transition, one that is lead by the party itself. I would also add a cautionary note. I think it's important not to underestimate the ability of this remarkably resilient party-state to adapt and survive. It has been on the brink of collapse many times in its nearly 60-year history, and it has always found a way to make it through. It survived the violent upheavals and disasters of Mao's misrule. It survived the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre. Most recently, perhaps, it managed to abandon its cover-up of the SARS epidemic just in time to contain the disease.
The rationale of the Surge in American forces in Iraq, according to George Bush and John McCain, was to provide the security conditions to allow Iraqi political reconciliation. It now appears the Maliki government has betrayed both General Petraeus and the Sunni Awakening Councils, and has no interest in sectarian peace.
The Shiite-dominated government in Iraq is driving out many leaders of Sunni citizen patrols, the groups of former insurgents who joined the American payroll and have been a major pillar in the decline in violence around the nation.
Jeffrey Goldberg, the Atlantic writer is worried about Iran and Israel. His worry is not the usual one. Goldberg is worried about what an Israeli attack on Iran would mean for America.
"The problem is simple: Muslim extremists often conflate Israel and the Diaspora. They do this for two reasons: One, they are anti-Semites, and so tend to see all Jews, and not merely 'Zionists,' as their enemies; the second is a practical one--it is easy to strike at soft Jewish targets outside of Israel, easier, certainly, than executing mass terror attacks against Israeli targets these days. And so what you have, on occasion, is an attack like the one directed against the Jewish center in Argentina in 1994, in which eighty-five people were murdered," he writes.
In other words, Americans could pay a very heavy price if Israel attacks Iran.
Out of Mao's Shadow is a must read. Not for Human Rights Watchers and Congressional hawks who make a career out of hectoring China. But instead for those of us who have lived, worked, and studied in the Middle Kingdom, and have come away from that experience with a far more complicated relationship with the place.
Here's the rub: it's hard not to get the sense sometimes that a huge portion of the Chinese population tacitly accepts the current mode of governance. How else can you explain the recent Pew Global Attitudes Poll that indicated that more than eight-in-ten Chinese are satisfied with their country's overall direction? It would be a grave mistake to simply explain this away as a result of a veil of ignorance blanketing the Chinese people; Philip's book could easily have been a profile of ten ordinary Chinese whose lives, and those of their families, have improved enormously over the past thirty years--through honest means, hard work, and ingenuity.
Some in the liberal blogs are excited that a new Pew study shows a majority of the US population thinks "churches should stay out of politics," but do we want to really prevent one of the few places where Americans gather together in a broad community to discuss and debate politics? (which yes, implies being active through those institutions as well). It just seems similar to the rightwing bemoaning that unions are active in politics, since the reality is that the workplace is one of the other main places where people gather together for extended and repeated times together in our society.
Subtract the churches and unions and you leave a political landscape where the 30-second attack ad is the main conduit of political consumption by Americans. Is that really better than Rick Warren's Saddleback conversation? Sure, a lot of discussions in churches are rightwing, but other churches are where strategy for the civil rights movement was planned, opposition to wars have been articulated, and denunciations of poverty have been deepest.
We need more unions, more churches, more organizations of any kind where people gather together face-to-face, involved in politics. Otherwise, the attack ad really will be the dominant mode of politics for all but a tiny minority of Americans
Have you heard? John McCain was a P.O.W.?
The Keating Five are back. Can Boy George be far behind? By way of a modest appendix to Comrade Rosenberg's post, I simply note the extent to which Senator John McCain can take credit for the ginormous national debt that seems to give him nightmares. (Not me. How can we be broke? We still have more checks.) As of 1996, the cost of the S&L bailout was estimated at $481 billion. (Gory details here.) In today's money, that would be $674 billion, using the Consumer Price Index.
On a per capita basis, that comes out to $2,210. So for our little family of three -- myself, Maria, and our beloved little Roomba -- John owes us $6,630. I suppose inquiries should be directed to Cindy, since she handles the finances.
ABC World News Tonight's Charlie Gibson introducing the network's lead piece on McCain and Obama, Thurs., Aug. 21:
Today, the two got into a dispute about which of them is richer.
No, that's not what happened. McCain said he didn't know how many houses he and his wife owned--4? 8? (Politico says 8.) His campaign accused Obama of owning one big house in Chicago, with four fireplaces and a wine cellar. (That part is evidently true.)
By Politico's calculation, McCain's properties are worth more than 7 times Obama's.
Below is how the AP sums up the McCain family wealth:
For that kind of poor folk,I'm afraid the rest of us really can't help by cutting their taxes. So John McCain is just going to have to endorse the Obama proposal: cut taxes for everyone making up to about $125,000 a year, and let the billionaires cope.
This is exactly the crap that drives liberals crazy about the "Very Serious People" over at TNR. Yes, Rachel Maddow getting her own show is indicative of the trend toward ideological cable news. But unless Sacha Zimmerman has some plan for ridding the world of Fox News and fundamentally changing the political DNA of our country and its media markets, denying her a show because of this would amount to (continued) liberal unilateral disarmament.
And more importantly, Rachel Maddow, while obviously liberal, is the person on cable least likely to further the actual problems that Zimmerman believes come with this increasing media polarization: "that we are more and more retreating to our comfortable trenches and refusing to acknowledge anything but spite, paranoia, and conspiracy theory when it comes to the other side" and "knee-jerk reactions" passing "for smart commentary."
It's pretty presumptuous to propose language to Barack Obama, but here goes anyway, in accord with Josh's suggestion that Obama's complaint about McCain casting aspersions on his patriotism rings tinny.
John McCain has the gall to question my judgment about how our country should act in the world? Why would he do that? He has two reasons: He wants to distract you from his own bad judgment. And he wants to distract you from the bad judgment of the Bush administration that he has supported and that he now wishes to prolong. Sen. McCain is quick to temper and quick to war. For many years he has supported "rogue-state rollback"--his chief foreign policy adviser coined that expression. Sen. McCain wanted to attack Iraq when there was no evidence Saddam Hussein had anything to do with the Al-Qaeda attacks on us, no evidence that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction, and even when the U. N. had not finished its inspections to find out.
The last month has been excruciating for Obama supporters, watching him and his campaign squander so many hopes and resources on an utterly wimpy campaign. For me, the last straw was yesterday -- in the VFW speech when supposedly Obama was gettting tough against McCain's character assassination strategy -- to watch him speak like a soporific college professor, repeating McCain's charges at length, flattering McCain as honorable and patriotic, and then, finally, sort of begging McCain to take it back! Josh Marshall is totally right to call Obama out on this.
Philip Pan's book is an excellent reminder that history is not a simple process of nations snowballing from authoritarianism to democracy. And furthermore, that it is dangerous to consider modern authoritarian regimes as temporary phenomena merely stalled in the inevitable transition towards democracy. Many policymakers in Washington remain afflicted with this notion, having come of age during the Cold War and America's victory in it. If Pan's book helps to debunk the closely guarded myth that economic development invariably leads to political liberalization, it will have already made a vital contribution to the debate about China's future.
But Out of Mao's Shadow also highlights, albeit indirectly, another important insight regarding the prospects for democratization in China: namely, that mass, populist movements can also be impediments to the expansion and expression of individual liberty. Rather than ending in stable, full-blown democracies, democratic transitions are often seized and reversed by political entrepreneurs who fill the societal vacuums that exist under dictatorship. This point is reinforced by Orville Schell's insightful comments regarding the underdetermined goals of Chinese development.
I've been wondering why Arizona reporters don't get much national exposure. Since McCain is running on "character," wouldn't reporters who've covered his local doings for a quarter-century be useful witnesses?
I'm far from expert, but I've been asking around and was advised to check out John Dougherty's stuff in The Washington Independent, exposing the smudges on McCain's pretty Arizona picture. Dougherty is a freelance based in Phoenix. He does his homework.
One of Dougherty's recent pieces exposes McCain's "ranch" as no ranch at all: It's a vacation home in a subdivision. But MSM unthinkingly call it a ranch. Google "mccain ranch" and you'll see what I mean.
McCain has a lot riding (sorry) on his ability to sustain the rough-riding image. He is, of course, the latest in a line of out-of-the-west, rawhide-wrapped Republicans: Goldwater, Reagan, Bush II. As Dougherty reminds us, Teddy Roosevelt launched the rugged individualist brand, and had an authentic claim to it. Now it's become shtick. The brush-cutter in jeans is not a sure-fire image, quite (see under: Goldwater), but overall it's a winning persona in a country that believes in making itself perennially new on the vanished frontier. All the more reason to peek beneath the persona and see who's wearing the mask and the $520 loafers.
Bigfoot media, isn't it time to get Dougherty, a real Arizona reporter, more exposure? Sunday show bookers? NPR?
Yesterday, Businessweek published an insightful piece by Chris Farley. He points out that while the respective tax plans of the two presidential candidates have dominated policy debates, it's actually rapidly rising medical costs that are increasingly dominating the economy.
Farley writes: "When it comes to fiscal policy, taxes are a subsidiary issue. The crucial long-term fiscal problem facing the U.S. and its aging population is health-care spending; what happens to taxes will largely be shaped by changes in the health insurance market." He reports that total health-care spending in the U.S. by both public and private sources is expected to expand from 16% of GDP to a staggering 40% of GDP in 2040.
Which of the two presidential candidates is most likely to implement a plan that effectively reigns in these costs and ensures high-quality coverage for all Americans?
In Nixonland all the deals are rotten,
The Wall Street boys are not forgotten
Giveaway, giveaway, giveaway . . .
The TVA . . .
Well I've read two-thirds of this thing and there's still 250 pages to go (not counting footnotes). I need a SciFi break or something. The book is very good. Especially if you didn't follow politics in the period, you should definitely buy it. But I wish Rick Perlstein had written a different book. In fact, I can think of several different stories he could tell with more or less the same research.
First, let me recommend Philip Pan's book. It's a really good read that looks behind the blur of the immediate events - that so impresses people who now see it for the first time to raise some very interesting questions about how China's tormented past fits together with its dynamic present and what it all portends for the future.
Second, I thought Pei Minxin got to the heart of the matter in his discussion of reform, namely, what kind of a society is this extraordinary, dynamic country going to become?
Of course, nobody, not even so-called "China experts" can deign to answer that question definitively, because it is not answerable. And the reason why it is so difficult to foresee China's future is that, despite all its quite amazing dynamism, it is in perpetually in a state of high-speed transition between two utterly dissimilar traditions and systems: a model adopted during the time of Stalinism from the USSR in the 1950s and... Well, that's just the question. What?
Paul Krugman is understandably concerned about Russian actions in Georgia and questions, as many have, whether this portends an end to an era of peace among the great powers:
[O]ur grandfathers lived in a world of largely self-sufficient, inward-looking national economies -- but our great-great grandfathers lived, as we do, in a world of large-scale international trade and investment, a world destroyed by nationalism.It's that phrase, "as we do," that should stop us. As David Remnick writes in his commentary on Putin's Georgia gambit, "Every thing is what it is, and not another thing."
Some analysts tell us not to worry: global economic integration itself protects us against war, they argue, because successful trading economies won't risk their prosperity by engaging in military adventurism. But this, too, raises unpleasant historical memories.
Shortly before World War I...[the] British author, Norman Angell, published a famous book titled The Great Illusion, in which he argued that war had become obsolete, that in the modern industrial era even military victors lose far more than they gain. He was right -- but wars kept happening anyway.
Obama takes McCain on over the patriotism issue. He's strong, and tough, and angry. In short, he gets it exactly right.
This is the Obama we need to see at the convention. Anger is appropriate, and necessary, when dealing with McCain's slurs. It is equally appropriate and necessary in dealing with the mess the Republicans have made of this country over the last eight years.
Give 'em hell, Barack. It's the way to win, the only way. And it's right.
I'm glad to see you have it in you. Use it!
First of all, I'd like to thank Lila Shapiro and the folks at TPM for organizing what I hope will be a lively and substantive discussion of Out of Mao's Shadow: The Struggle for the Soul of a New China. I also want to apologize right away for starting the chat behind schedule. As Lila mentioned, I'm moving to Moscow this week, earlier than expected because of the situation in Georgia. The past few days have been a blur of book events, Russian studies and packing. But I'm excited to be finishing the book tour here on TPM, and I think it will be fun to post my final observations on China later this week from my new home in Moscow.
For more than seven years, from the end of 2000 to the beginning of 2008, I made my home in Beijing, trying to understand China and explain it to readers of the Washington Post. This book is the culmination of those years of reporting, and I'm pleased I was able to finish it and get it into bookstores in time to join the public conversation about China that has unfolded around the Olympic Games. For links to interviews with me -- as well as reviews of the book -- please visit its website. While promoting the book over the past few weeks, I have tried to emphasize two of its major themes:
"Meg Whitman, [the CEO of eBay]. Meg Whitman, 12 years ago, there were five employees. Today, they're 1.5 million people that make a living off eBay in America, in the world. It's one of these great American success stories."
Above is John McCain's answer to Pastor Rick Warren, in part, concerning who he'd take advice from. So let's match Ms.Whitman's former company -- she is now the former CEO of eBay and I'm eager to say she is a fine business leader -- against John McCain's tech policy.
Under McCain's plan, if eBay were to fire a thousand engineers doing R&D, it would still get a tax credit of 10% of wages of the remaining engineers doing R&D. In other words, eBay would be paid cash even while it was downsizing its work force.
So, we're entering into a wild couple of weeks here at TPM world headquarters (and, naturally, in the world at large), and we want some input from you, our loyal readers. Who do you want to see at Cafe next week, writing about the future of the democratic party? Think politicians, policy makers, wonks, organizers, movers and shakers, etc, etc, etc. Drop it in the comment threads or shoot me an email. Tralala!
John McCain has explicitly embraced President Bush's economic policies. This means that McCain is running on the worst economic track record of any president since the Great Depression.
In a normal world, this would be a problem for McCain, since the economy is clearly the most important issue in voters' minds. However, in Swiftboat land, reality gets turned on its head. McCain is trying to make the economy a weak spot for Obama, just as Bush made John Kerry's Purple Hearts a liability for him.
Just as Kerry's war record was not a cause for shame, it is not Senator Obama who should have to worry about a bad economic record. The policies he has endorsed, including higher tax rates for Senator McCain and his rich friends, produced solid economic growth under President Clinton. It is John McCain who is Mr. No Jobs in this story.
Former Washington Post bureau chief in Beijing Philip P. Pan joins us at Cafe to discuss his new book, Out of Mao's Shadow: The Struggle for the Soul of a New China. We're lucky to have him, because this Friday, he is (earlier than expected) off to Moscow to head up the WaPo bureau there. Obviously, an exciting and timely conversation, and I hope you'll stay tuned.
Joining us are Minxin Pei of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace's China Program, New York Times city reporter Jennifer 8. Lee, Orville Schell, director of the Center on U.S.-China Relations at the Asia Society, former FCC chairman and information industries consultant Reed Hundt and Ely Ratner, a UC Berkeley Ph.D. candidate studying the effects of U.S. support for non-democratic regimes. Come chat with us!
Josh writes that the buzz here in Washington is all about Joe Biden. He's right. It is. And I hope he's the choice.
I was not a Joe Biden fan until I actually sat in a bunch of meetings with him. And he simply knocks your socks off. He knows foreign policy issues backwards and forwards. He knows the nuances and he knows the players. Not only will Joe Biden not get tripped up by an interviewer asking who the President of Uzbekistan is. Biden will tell him who the Vice President is and the Foreign Minister too.
In my many years in this city, I've sat in plenty of rooms with plenty of these guys, and he is about as impressive as they get.
One of the most read posts I ever wrote was a piece in April called The Hollowed-Out Economy, in which I mocked Treasury Secretary Paulson's contention that Bush's economic stimulus package was going to create 600,000 new jobs in America. I think he secretly thought it wasn't the stimulus checks but rather the falling dollar that would revive America's hollowed-out manufacturing base.
This morning it's clear that not only was Paulson wrong about the job creation, but the current boom in exports is not from manufacturing, but rather from selling corn and soy.
Exports are the bright spot this year in an otherwise bleak economy. But the world is not suddenly snapping up made-in-America goods like aircraft, machinery and staplers. The great attraction is decidedly low-luster commodities like corn, wheat, ore and scrap metal.This helps explain why manufacturing jobs are continuing to disappear by the tens of thousands and factories are closing even during a miniboom in exports. While the surge in commodities is a welcome relief, it is an unreliable prop for an industrial power.
I think the Rick Warren discussion/debate showed the following:
1. John McCain is not reluctant to discuss his POW experience; I don't think he should be, but I don't think reporters can write any more that he is reluctant to express himself on this topic.
2. Barack Obama is a Christian -- through and through. He has read and thought about Christianity and showed a deeper understanding of a Christian way of approaching his life and his goals than his opponent did. For example, the problem of evil and the notion of good are each topics on which his answers were more profound than John McCain's.
3. Barack Obama ought to be very acceptable as a President to the members of Rick Warren's community. Most of them are comfortable, I suspect, with the conventional nostrums of the Republicans: lower taxes, bellicose language about evil enemies, and so forth. But Obama, as opposed to McCain, talked about purpose, sacrifice, difficulty, community, caring, and a commitment to the world. In fact, these are the major emerging themes in Pastor Warren's community.
The NY Times ran an editorial on Friday lamenting how employees are borrowing more and more from their 401(k)s to pay for medical bills, mortgage payments, and stints of unemployment. The Times reports that this trend is exacerbated by the "401(k) debit card," which holders use like any other debit card, except the money comes as loans from their 401(k)s rather than as deductions from a checking account.
What the article, like the Democratic Party, neglects is the inadequacy of a retirement system reliant largely on 401(k)s. In her new book, When I'm 64, economist Theresa Ghilarducci demonstrates that we can have a system in which workers save for their own retirements without the risk and inequity of 401(k)s.
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