Morning Fog

Gingrich In South Carolina

The media gush today (and even yesterday evening) about Newt Gingrich's big win in the South Carolina primary.  It's just hype.  It's true that frequently, after two or three caucus/primary exercises, a clear front runner has emerged, and that hasn't happened this year.  So a couple more primaries will be needed.  That was only to be expected, considering how many hopefuls were at the starting line just a couple of months ago.

However, I fail to see anything very surprising about Gingrich's coming out on top in South Carolina.   Not if we consider geography.   No one was surprised that Romney, former governor of Massachusetts, won handily in neighboring New Hampshire. The Republicans of South Carolina recognize Newt as one of their own, i.e., a Southerner.  He came out of Georgia to national prominence, and they in turn know, or think they know, him.     

So if there's a surprise in the process, it's perhaps that Bachmann didn't do better in the Iowa caucuses.   

The Republican Media Circus

What a year for political theater!  Let's see:  we have the unusual spectacle of 9 or 10 (who's counting anymore?) would-be Republican Presidential candidates, the endless "debates" amongst them, the overweening shadow of the SuperPACs, the likelihood that the first three contests among remaining candidates will now produce three different winners, the unprecedented efforts to make candidates' wives a part of the process ... and waiting in the wings, the probability of a close race between Obama and the Republican candidate, with poll numbers no doubt changing daily.  What more could we ask?

Well, my belated New Year wishlist might include the following:

We could do with a more professional approach from the media.  The latest flub came from John King's now-famous question to Newt Gingrich about the accusations the latter's former wife had made against him.  Gingrich is incorrect, in my view, to suggest the question shouldn't be asked, because it speaks to his character; but King was professionally foolish to open with it, thereby suggesting it was the most important thing (it isn't).  King's gambit also offered Gingrich a predictable chance to play to the crowd, and to recite the tired old Republican mantra that the "elite" media are anti-Republican.  It was a silly decision on King's part.  Unless he consciously sought to give Gingrich a boost.

Also on my wishlist, a pledge to keep direct assaults on candidates' spouses out of the campaign.  Presidential campaigns too often boil down to personality contests ("Which of these two would you rather drink a beer with?"); it's beyond the pale to extend that to their wives.  Both politicians and preachers should avoid commenting.  No doubt the voters' impressions of spouses do play a part in their consideration of candidates, but I think they mostly figure these things out for themselves.  [Note: As the previous paragraph suggests, the charges leveled by Gingrich's ex-wife are of a different stripe:  She raised them herself, and the issue involved does show us something about Gingrich's character, if only that he's got the right stuff to be a politician.]

Finally, I would wish for fewer debates among the candidates.  Politics junkies may get a bang out of every additional debate, just as die-hard sports fans will welcome the addition of a half-dozen more playoff games to the schedule.  Most of the rest of us will become jaded.  I'm not sure they serve their supposed purpose very well, anyway; to the extent voters pay them any mind at all, it's probably through the filter of sound/video bites selected by the media, rather than the full transcript of what was said.

Postscript: It's interesting to consider the effects that so many debates might have on the contest itself.  Do they give the various Republican candidates/Party a leg up for the actual election?  Certainly, they provide a lot of exposure and publicity, and there are good opportunities for Obama-bashing.  On the other hand, many of these candidates have some rather extreme views, the exposure of which hasn't helped them with moderates and independents; and the charges and criticisms raised by Republicans against Republicans will certainly offer ammunition for the Democrats in the real campaign.  All in all, perhaps it's a wash.

Your Name In Headlines? Not Necessarily A Good Thing (I: Cain)

Mothers, I presume, still dream that their sons and daughters will grow up to be famous, and see their names in the headlines.   Yet sometimes the dream can become a nightmare - 15 seconds of the wrong kind of fame can wreak havoc with an entire life of sterling public record, or derail a Presidential candidate's chances.

Right now there is a wealth of examples but our media often seem to treat each one as if it were the most serious infraction possible.  Cain, Paterno, Perry - each story is different. If I were to rank them in order of seriousness ... well, gosh, it seems I just did.  Let's look first at: 

Herman Cain, after four charges of sexual harassment, some of them very specific, continues to deny them all.  Is he lying?  The best case that can be made is that perhaps he really does NOT remember; often the sort of offense we're talking about is so common as to become insignificant in the minds of those who commit them.  Kathleen Parker has been through the exercise of putting herself in Cain's shoes, and found them uncomfortable. 

But even if we concede Cain just doesn't recall, then even his fans ought to be thinking he may not be Presidential timber; certainly they would think so if similar charges surfaced involving some Democrat?  Most observers, however, might suppose that one anonymous charge is vindictiveness, but when they see three or four, they're more likely to think, "Iceberg ahead! Man the lifeboats."

Also stirring doubts are Cain's rather desperate attempts to deflect attention from the issue.   
(a) He says he is being persecuted by some cabal who just don't like him.   There may be some such people; could it be that his name alone stirs a sense of unease among the religiously literate?   E.g., the Rick Perry crowd? 
(b) He suggests there is a conspiracy in the land to keep a "businessman" out of the White House.  Really?  In a nation whose constitution reveres property rights above all else, and whose political practice tends to leave more power to business than to any other entity?  Actually businessmen have been elected.  Never a pizza king, but George W. Bush, Jimmy Carter, Warren Harding and maybe Herbert Hoover.  Come to think of it, if voters consider that record, maybe they DO have a bias against businessmen. 
(c) Finally, there is Cain's protest that he won't let "politics" sway him from pursuing the Presidency;  but from where I sit, it seems that in running for President, "politics" is not an incidental factor.

The Cain story hasn't been fully told yet but when it is, in the coming months, I suspect he'll end up politically Abel. 

Do We Exaggerate Natural Disasters?

In my area lately, we had the pleasure of experiencing three different types of natural disaster.  First on July 3 came a very localized "microburst" affecting an area not much wider than our neighborhood; the second, a 5.8-magnitude earthquake in central Virginia felt from Georgia to New York and Indiana; and the third, hurricane Irene, now petering out somewhere over New England, which affected millions of people in the Caribbean and the entire eastern U.S. seaboard. 

Of these, the most damaging for our locality was the microburst, which brought down numerous large trees, cut power, and destroyed several homes -- I theorize that it also probably kept us from experiencing any serious effects from Irene, by preemptively removing shaky trees and weak limbs. 

Hurricanes are excruciatingly long, drawn-out affairs.   You might suppose a weather phenomenon packing winds of 80, 100, or even higher miles-per-hour winds would zip right through your neighborhood, but it's not so.  This one moved up the east coast at a rate of only 15 miles per hour and affected weather in my locality for about 18 hours (6 hours for the most dangerous combination high winds and heavy rain).  The secret, of course, is that the high winds aren't straight, but circulating spirally around the eye of the storm.  

Still, waiting for it, and then waiting for it to pass, was both boring, and a little anxiety-inducing.  Would my neighbor's 100-foot pine tree, just on the property line to the north, be pushed over onto my house by Irene's northerly winds?  And if so, would it kill me or just destroy the house?  For about 24 hours, I got to consider these unanswerable questions.  (In the end, the pine stood firm.)   But if I get to choose my disasters, I'll take the unpredicted 20-second earthquake, or the 10-minute tornado, please.  

Another factor making the hurricane wait far less pleasant was the media coverage.  With the nearest edge of Irene still about 10 hours away, all our local channels began 24-hour "news" coverage to the exclusion of all else, and they kept it up until (last time I checked) the last trace of the storm was miles to our north.  Overall, the coverage was nonstop for about 36 hours.  With the storm moving so slowly, as you might expect, there was seldom much new to report.  Once the media juggernaut gets moving, though, no force can stop it (sort of like a hurricane?).  Even by the time the reportage began, it was clear that Irene was not only not a Category 3 storm as had been predicted earlier, but barely a 2.  (Not much later, she was officially downgraded to a 1.)   Newscasters, geared for a big, destructive storm, and already deployed to locations hundreds of miles away, were reluctant to acknowledge that this made the storm far less dangerous.

The media attention, plus modern society's tendency to lean toward caution and security, have changed our approach to these natural disasters.  A few decades ago, we probably would just have read in the morning paper that a hurricane was expected that day.   We would have taken whatever precautions we considered necessary, and pretty much gone about our business, and lived with the consequences.  No doubt the new approach is laudable if it saves lives and lessens destruction; yet like many aspects of modern life, it also adds its share of complication.       

Republicans Debate Not

I was fully intending to watch the Republican Party candidates and notional candidates talk on Monday night, but I just forgot to tune them in.   It turns out that this may have been a case of extreme accidental prescience.  It was, by all accounts, a very forgettable event.

The would-be Republican challengers to Obama all chose, apparently, to paper over the differences among them and to focus instead on attacking the President's record.  Just as we all voted in 2008 for "anybody but Bush," the Republicans would now like us to vote for "anybody but Obama."  Fair enough.  That's a predictable political campaign platform, no matter which of them (if any) ends up as the real candidate.  It's almost as if they all banded together to orchestrate this approach (and probably, they did).

So, if I had watched this production, I would have been disappointed.  Anyone who did tune in should have been disappointed too.  The only reason for anyone to watch it, I would think, would be to have a look at the field and begin to sort out the differences between them, and that didn't occur.  This was more like broadcasting the Republican Party convention, or maybe some national but dull GOP planning session - purely partisan and purely predictable. 

Which leaves me thinking that someone else ought to be disappointed too:  the sponsors of the event, reportedly "CNN, the New Hampshire Union Leader, and WMUR-TV."  Whatever these media may have invested in putting on this "debate," they got taken to the cleaners and didn't get what they paid for.  Could any Republican in the state possibly have been helped in making his/her primary voting decision by this lovefest?

 

Military Health Care Premiums

There's an interesting debate pending over the premiums to be paid by military retirees for their health care.  The Defense Department has proposed that such retirees pay an additional $5 per month, which would raise their annual premium for family coverage to $520 per year. 

The system, known as Tricare, is the military equivalent of Medicare, and its costs are rising just as quickly as Medicare's.  Also in parallel to Medicare, there are military groups that equate loosely to AARP (the Military Officers' Association of America is one) that see Tricare as an entitlement, a reward to service members for their sacrifices, so they naturally oppose increases.  In this case, MOAA has conceded a small increase may be necessary but wants to limit future increases to the pace of inflation (3%) rather than the pace of actual costs (6%).  Some in Congress join MOAA in opposing an increase.

Though some of these issues supposedly were to be decided in Congress last week, I have been unable to find any report that they actually were.  The results will be interesting to see.

It seems self-evident to me that if we're going to fix our budget deficit problems, we will need not just cuts in the non-military discretionary portion of the budget, but also in the main (civilian) entitlement programs and in military spending.   A slightly higher health care premium would certainly be a sensible part of the latter, though I'm sure there are far greater savings to be found in the costs of military hardware and supplies.

It goes beyond reducing the deficit, however; it's also a matter of what is fair and reasonable, to service members and to the society they serve.  The overall package of benefits we provide our military personnel is generous -- I invite any reader, for example, to compare his retirement health care costs with those stated above.   And it must remain generous enough to provide both security and incentive, but we need to think about them in the right contemporary context.  

Our thinking about compensating our armed forces originated in the era of a citizen army with conscription.  People from all walks of life were called on, often randomly, and possibly against their "druthers," to perform a dangerous duty for their country, while their neighbors, friends, or relatives were not.  That's no longer the case, and we may need to adjust our thinking accordingly.  

 

 

Obama's Birth Certificate Again

Already it begins to look as if Obama's decision to release his birth certificate has all the earmarks of the subtle political astuteness he's known for -- only a day later, the birthers are rushing to prove they're nothing more than nut cases. and a liability for the political party that embraces them.

As we all supposed, those who sought to create suspicions about Obama's birthplace haven't missed a beat.  After demanding it be released, of course they now discount its authenticity and relevance.  In doing so, however, they paint themselves into a corner - the same corner where people toss all those Christmas fruitcakes that no one wants.  Their objections are based on claims about citizenship that are just plain wrong, but as they used to say in Pogo, "my mind is made up, don't confuse me with facts."

Let's look at a sampling of today's reactions:

Joseph Farah, editor of something called the WorldNet Daily, contends that it doesn't matter where Obama was born; his father was African so he may not be a citizen.  WRONG.  U.S. citizenship law is simple: Born in the USA? You're a citizen.  Ask Bruce Springsteen. 

Another birther, Sharon Guthrie, from her exalted position as a gopher for a Texas state assemblyman, sniffs that what has been released is only a "certificate of live birth," not a "birth certificate."  WRONG.  That's standard terminology for the official document issued in most U.S. states when someone is born.  My own birth certificate, the only document obtainable from my state to prove I exist, is also called a "certificate of live birth."  Possibly in Texas they call it something else? ( leave to readers to imagine what they might call it in Texas.)

Guthrie also says that it's easy to falsify a certificate.  But her boss is sponsoring a bill in Texas that would require anyone running for President in Texas to produce a birth certificate "proving" their citizenship.   Such bills (also pending elsewhere) must certainly be unconstitutional (it is not for the states to specify eligibility requirements for U.S. Presidential candidates), but they do illustrate the final twist in the contorted mental processes of the birther group:  If a certificate can be so easily falsified, what can possibly be accomplished by a bill requiring candidates to produce one?  It could lead only to endless arguments over the authenticity of certificates. 

All told, the objections of the birthers are nothing more than paranoid conspiracy theories.  They're a matter of faith, and they don't die.  Fringe concepts like this used to make the rounds in fringe media; now the Washington Post reports on them as if they were worthy of serious note.         

Musings: Secrets And Our Right To Know Them

From the very personal level all the way up to the transactions of high muckety-mucks and higher-muckety nations, people, governments, and corporations all keep secrets.  Some keep them better than others but I think ultimately most beans get spilled - the variables are in the when, where, and how.

I have argued that Wikileaks and Julian Assange have done damage to the U.S. national interest (not to mention other interests); and that the leaks should be prosecuted.  I suspect that lowly private Bradley Manning, who is the prime suspect in providing the huge cache of documents to Assange in the first place, will face a more stringent justice than Assange. 

And that's not necessarily off the mark:  Manning's offense is of the first water - shall we say, "first degree leakage" -- while Assange's is less direct.  I recall the big flap when a then-anonymous government official outed CIA officer Valerie Plame to columnist Joe Novak.  No one thought to prosecute Novak, though technically the offense was defined as "publicizing" such information, and it was clearly Novak who had publicized it, once he was privy to it.  Of course that was a single fact, and here instead we have... a LOT of information.

Journalists inevitably argue that once such information is available, the public has a right to know.  Daniel Ellsberg thinks so, too.   On the large scale of things, they're right.  That's the essence of freedom of the press.  Ellsberg's revelations have long since been forgotten; the harm they probably did was kept quiet and not acknowledged, which will be the case this time, too.  That's why Assange can claim to a television reporter that there is not one confirmation that anyone has died as a result of the leaks.  Of course not; no one is going to confirm, which would only risk further damage.  So Assange may be prosecuted somewhere for something, but it's unlikely to be very successful.

In some other areas, the media's insistence on the public's "right to know" is probably less solidly grounded.  The first amendment freedom of the press has essentially a political character, just as the Second Amendment has essentially a militia character.  "Right to know" can be turned into a ridiculous shadow of itself when it's imputed to everything.   

So I'm always dumfounded, for example, by reports about how criminals have been caught; often they detail exactly how the evil-doer gave himself away.  In one recent case, a Washington Post reporter's home was burglarized by a guy who recorded his deed on the Facebook page of his victim, and the reporter wrote a column about it.  Does the criminal have a right to know?  Are we conducting training to make better crooks, or might it not be better to leave them in the dark about what they did wrong?  We'd like to think the bad guy is stupid and will soon be caught, but I'm recalling a similar case of a bank robber in England at least a year ago, and I can't remember seeing news that he was ever apprehended.

Terrorists, too, can benefit from just keeping up with the TV news, as our media reps insist on airing everything:  how things are being done, what is working and what isn't, which airports are least secure, and the like.  One recent example: Reports that up to 70% of test runs with clearly visible weapons in luggage escape detection.  Here again, I think the main beneficiaries of this kind of revelation are probably the terrorists.

So yes, nearly everyone, and every organization, has secrets.  Often there are perfectly good reasons not to reveal every detail of everything.  (Note to secret-stashers:  Usually, the desire to keep something under wraps only because it might be embarrassing is NOT a legitimate reason!)  Purposeful leaks will surely, and should, continue to be prosecuted by keepers of the official order.

Meanwhile, corporations seem to do somewhat better in keeping their secrets than other holders of sensitive materials.  Can anyone tell me, for example, how to get an honest description of a cell phone contract from a wireless carrier's representative?  Now that would be very much in the public interest.

Juan Williams? Never Heard Of Him, But...

Juan Williams, described as a former "commentator" for NPR, got fired.  Many reports suggest that was due solely to comments he made regarding being nervous about Muslims on airplanes.   Would NPR have been right to fire him for that reason? No.

But that wasn't the issue.  Was NPR right to fire him because he had consistently overstepped limits established by NPR for a "commentator?"  Yes. 

I don't listen to NPR much but when I catch it on radio accidentally I am usually impressed by its efforts to present both sides of an issue, and to deal in facts, not opinions.  Could NPR, as Williams claims, have been looking for a pretext to fire him?  Perhaps.  After all, Williams's overall record (not just this one incident) damaged his credibility as a balanced newsman.  At the same time, his apparently frequent guest stints on Fox News shows suggests that he was really looking to bolt to Fox anyway, so the score seems about even on this one.

Why then the tempest?  Republican politicians who would under any other circumstances defend an employer's right to terminate an employee for cause, are in this case wailing about "defunding NPR."  They demonstrate not only their hypocrisy but their ignorance, since in fact NPR isn't  funded by government.  But factual or not, it makes a good stick with which to stir the pot of politics.

Beck and King, King and Beck

The media frenzy of the week (the "ground zero mosque" having been done to death without result), is over a radio personality named Glenn Beck having tried to usurp (or not) Martin Luther King's legend by delivering a political speech to his own followers on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington D.C. on the same date that King did.

For the record, I think this entire controversy is spurious.  Beck has a perfect right to speak there if the National Park Service has approved it.  End of story.  Few would ever have even considered the equation Beck = King if the media hadn't played it that way.  Beck supporters ought to note that the supposedly liberal mainstream media have chosen to put Beck on the front pages in a way that could never have happened without their help.  This is normal journalistic practice these days, I'm sorry to say. 

Whatever the hype, though, I am not too worried that Beck could go down in history as another Martin Luther King.

King was a religious figure, a civic leader, and yes, informally a politican.  Few would contest that he was motivated by principle and by a moral sense of right and wrong.  Beck's main claim to fame, evidently, is that he's a "commentator"; his motivation can only be to amass a following for largely egotistical and commercial purposes.   It's easy to sit back and criticize with impunity, and perhaps even suggest simplistic solutions, but he'll never have to take responsibility for implementing his ideas, nor for dealing with the fallout when they don't pan out.  If today's extravaganza is his attempt to grow beyond that, and move in a political direction, then he's graduated from "commentator" to "demagogue." 

King was fighting an uphill battle against entrenched prejudices; his challenge was to persuade, one follower at a time.  Beck faces no such trial.  He preaches to the choir; it's easy to develop a following by pandering to the basest human instincts, and that's what Beck seems to do. 

Is Beck himself a racist, a xenophobe, or an anarchist?  Perhaps not, but he has identified the strains of those populist currents of prejudice and fear as ones that resonate with a large cross section of the public, and he is prepared to exploit them.  Are Beck's followers all racists, xenophobes, or anarchist?  No.  But the group -- the "universe of Beckites," is the current harbor of refuge for those categories of thought.   

King was struggling to make a reality of what was already in our Constitution, but largely ignored - his vision of America was expansive, positive, and optimistic.  Beck, by contrast, talks of "restoring," meaning a retrograde movement; and his vision is restrictive, negative, and ultimately pessimistic. 

That's a thread of thought I'd like to explore later but for now, suffice it to say that a big crowd on the Mall can result from many different causes.  It doesn't always mean the presence of a messiah; sometimes it just means free hot dogs.