American exceptionalism ...

Is the US the most powerful nation in the world because the US is in some ways special? Clearly, the US must have done some thing right. However, does this make the US exceptional, i.e. culturally or otherwise superior to everyone else?

The idea of American Exceptionalism isn't new as the Wikipedia entry makes clear. In fact, it is almost as old as the US. And, the US isn't even the first country to think of exceptionalism. The German's had a similar idea which ultimately led to the second world war. The Romans did too. As did the Greeks. In fact, the world 'barbarian' as used by the Greeks was meant to imply you couldn't speak proper Greek (equivalent to the Hindi "bur bur" or babble, so barbarians are babblers). The British, to paraphrase George Mikes, didn't actually say they were exceptional. They just fought such dangerous ideas in others while never actually saying who they thought was exceptional. :)

The Romans, in particular, grew powerful by conferring Roman citizenship on the power wielders, scientists, artists, etc. of the people they conquered (sound familiar). If it does, it isn't surprising. It isn't an accident that the National Monuments in DC look Roman or that Roman architecture inspired so much of the Third Reich architecture and motifs.

Does a belief in US exceptionalism matter?

One of the most interesting comments about the holocaust I had ever heard was from a history professor patiently trying to explain how otherwise good people could have let such crimes occur. His point was that if you dehumanize someone or something, you are no longer project your own emotions on them, and so, no longer feel their pain. So, your normal moral compass does not operate. The first step in dehumanization is to believe you are different, or worse, better.

I experienced the downside of a belief in US exceptionalism in a weird way. In 2002, I was in a conversation with a finance professor from a US University about how the US might have drawn lessons from the UK Cadbury Committee's Code of Best Practice in 1992 that may have prevented debacles like Enron. That, in fact, most of the Sarbanes Oxley Act drew on lessons that had been learned many times in many countries, and that the US might have been able to anticipate these issues, if they had assumed that the US is just as prone to these human tendencies as any other country. The professor, despite the evidence, wasn't willing to acknowledge that such lessons can be drawn. He went onto assert that, for instance, the US financial system was so sound and so much superior that debacles like the Japanese asset bubble and subsequent banking collapse could never happen here. :)

The idea of US exceptionalism has cropped its head up in recent times in rather more disturbing ways. It has been alleged that the neoconservatives were driven by the idea of American Exceptionalism, i.e. that the US is somehow special. Unfortunately, this quickly devolved into the belief that rules don't apply to the US. Neoconservatives used this theory to argue for the setting aside of foreign treaties, redefine torture, describe as "collateral damage" the deaths of hundreds of thousands in Iraq, and castigate as unpatriotic anyone who questioned the US.

It became an issue in the 2008 Presidential elections, where, Obama's lack of deference to the theory led to questions about his patriotism as articles like this remind us. Those who were driven to make these arguments seem to conflate exceptionalism with irreproachability.

So, perhaps, it wasn't surprising that Obama was confronted with a question on this very question on his European tour. Here is Obama's answer:




As answers go, this was perhaps one of the more eloquent. Without actually saying so, Obama drew a distinction of being proud of the very laudable and commendable things about the US, and drawing any conclusions about the US' inherent moral superiority or manifest destiny. Good stuff!

Obama's speech

President Obama gave an interesting speech yesterday. However, as the Washington Post points out, it had a number of errors, some hyperbole, some exaggeration and some plain wrong.

Overall, his speech set a good tone, albeit it overreached in the scope of its claim. Those who aim high, often miss their mark. Hopefully, what he hits will suffice.

Difference in perspective

As I listened to the debate on the stimulus and the different sides of the story, it struck me as surprisingly reminiscent, in an interesting way, to the debate before the Iraq war. Let me explain.

During the run up to the Iraq war many had felt the war was justified and others had felt it was not. If one looks dispassionately at their debate, it becomes clear that their difference arose not so much because of differences in information or facts, but in differences in their perspective and assumptions about the nature of the underlying problem of terrorism, which consequently affected their subsequent evaluation of all data.

Those for the war genuinely believed that 9/11 was a game changing event. That an evil group of highly organized people had declared war on them, a group they called "terrorists" and consequently it justified a counter "war on terrorism." Moreover, this war was different and the old rules no longer applied. Driven by a fear of imminent attack, the people who subscribe to this view advocated and still advocate no rules, no surrender, and a relentless fight against the enemy. Consequently, the suspension of compliance with rules of engagement and treaties such as the Geneva convention, rules that had been inviolable against foes as formidable as the USSR, seem to be justified. Is the cost of a few civil liberties really worth a collossal loss of life?

On the other side were people who believed that 9/11 represent the act of a bunch of criminals who had taken advantage of some laxities in the system to conduct a spectacular but ultimately futile attack. These people look at 9/11 as the same as the attacks in UK, Spain, India, Indonesia, Egypt, Yemen, etc. To these people, terrorism is a law and order problem, not a military problem. The fight is against a relatively sparse minority of disenchanted and highly dangerous mercenaries, not governments. They saw and still see no threat to the American way of life, no need for rethinking the structures of government or treaties. The solution they advocate is coordinated police action, removing safe havens, and beefing security. Ultimately though, these people see terrorists as being in the same category as drug czars and not USSR.

Note, those in favor of the war believed the rules had changed and it was war, those on the other side believed nothing substantive had changed and that it was a law and order problem. This difference in perspective has defined the debate ever since.

I remember listening to a commentator on TV who talked about the merits of competition of ideas, about how this really is the strength of democracy. The assumption was that there was an objective way of evaluating the data and rationally resolving the dispute. Yet, when one has such different perspectives, it isn't a data problem, it is a measurement or scale problem. The two sides value the benfits and costs in fundamentally different ways. So, it is nearly impossible to reconcile the problem with data alone.

There is a similar dissonance today in the economic debate. One group genuinely believes that this recession is like most others, just a bit deeper. That nothing really has changed. On the other side is a group that believes that there are fundamental structural issues that make this recession unlike any other since the Great Depression. What your view of the problem is colors the view of the solution.

Now, the bad news is that there are historical precedents to back both sides.

Backing the "everything is normal" camp is a bunch of historical data that essentially suggests that whether you do Keynisian intervention or monetary intervention, ultimately the market will find its own order, and that most recesssions are technical corrections that would probably revert to mean no matter what steps you take.

On the "the sky is falling" side, there are dramatic historical precedents of economies like Japan, where things were eerily similar to the conditions in the US today, and whose ravages are still being felt 15+ years after the fact. Add to that the fact that we have unprecedented monetary intervention, with interest rates no longer working and the Fed resorting to quantitative easing. We have massive fiscal deficits as far as the eye can see adding to the already burgeoning national debt. All of which calls into question how much wiggle room the government will have after the current suite of programs.

At the end of the day though, no one can truly claim to "know" with any degree of certainty which view is correct.

However, we can consider the pay-offs of different courses of action.

• If the government intervenes massively, and the "everything is normal" camp is right, then we will, at the the end, land up with an overheated economy and sharply rising taxes and interest rates at the other end which could stunt the pace of growth for over a decade. On the other hand, it would expedite recovery in the short run and potentially improve infrastructure in a way which wouldn't have happened without the intervention.
  
• If the government intervenes massively, and the "the sky is falling" camp is right, then we avoid a acalamity and recover from this recession in a way that makes it look like a just a slightly deeper version of a normal recession.


• If the government doesn't intervene, and the "everything is normal" camp is right, then we just have a slightly deeper recession but we come out of it structurally more sound and we would see slightly higher long term growth due to lower long term taxes and interest rates.


• If the government does nothing, and the "the sky is falling" is right, then the US and the world could experience a long depression, unemployment could rise to 20%+, and we would almost undoubtedly see massive wars and widespread famines. The end result could be a severe dent to the US domination of the world. Even otherwise, deep recessions have often been followed by periods of war, and we may yet see another one.

The GOP, it would appear believes "everything is normal". But here's the thing, the downside of going along with the "sky is falling" bunch isn't quite as bad as the downside of being wrong in your convictions. So, the GOP is taking a calculated gamble, assuming that Obama will win this round so they won't be held accountable for their convictions, but ensuring they have ammunition to attack Obama at the other end.

The more interesting thing is that Obama has opted for a middle road. As Paul Krugman (who is firmly in the "sky is falling" camp) explains, the current stimulus doesn't do much to plug the $2.9 trillion gap in the GDP projected by the CBO. For the roughly $600BN that will actually injected into the economy as part of the current stimulus package to actually be effective in plugging this gap, you need to assume that the velocity of money will be retained at current levels, i.e. it assumes that savings rates won't rise by too much. If you look at depressions, then that seems like a ridiculously optimistic presumption.

So, Obama is hedging his bets. This seems like a lose-lose proposition to me. If the "sky is falling" camp is right, then this won't be enough. If the "everything is normal" camp is right, it'll be too much. Net net, this will neither guarantee a rescue nor guarantee that we avoid the ills of overspending. Now, Obama may believe that the truth lies in the center and that a cautious incremental approach is better. And he may well be right. But he is banking on being able to get more legislation through Congress if and when the need arises. Let's hope he is right!

How memorable was Obama's inaugural address?

There has been a flurry of criticism of Obama's inaugural address. Some have accused it of being uninspiring, others of being vapid and flat, and others of being just wrong. The general consensus is that the speech, while good, didn't live up to the expectations of the moment (a sign of things to come?)

Before we leap to conclusions though, we'd do well to remember that what makes a speech memorable is not what was said at the moment, but how events unfold later. Ronald Reagan's passionate plea, "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!" after all, was not very different from please by other Presidents before him. The reason it is so well remembered is that Mr. Gorbachev did, in fact, allow the wall to be torn down. Similarly, Kennedy's famous, "Ask not what the country can do for you, ... " inaugural address in 1960 was peppered with great lines, which were similar to things said by politicians before. They became instantly popular, but remain memorable to an extent because of the enduring Kennedy aura.

Obama's speech, on a more reflective viewing, was actually filled with potential gems. Here are a few of them:

• "... [the challenges] will not be met easily or in a short span of time. But know this, America: They will be met."
• "... we gather because we have chosen hope over fear, unity of purpose over conflict and discord"
• "... we understand that greatness is never a given. It must be earned. Our journey has never been one of shortcuts or settling for less. It has not been the path for the fainthearted -- for those who prefer leisure over work, or seek only the pleasures of riches and fame. Rather, it has been the risk-takers, the doers, the makers of things -- some celebrated, but more often men and women obscure in their labor -- who have carried us up the long, rugged path toward prosperity and freedom."
• "The question we ask today is not whether our government is too big or too small, but whether it works ..."
• "Nor is the question before us whether the market is a force for good or ill. ... [but] that a nation cannot prosper long when it favors only the prosperous"
• "[The] success of our economy has always depended not just on the size of our gross domestic product, but on the reach of our prosperity; on our ability to extend opportunity to every willing heart -- not out of charity, but because it is the surest route to our common good."
• "... we reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals"
• "Know that America is a friend of each nation and every man, woman and child who seeks a future of peace and dignity, and that we are ready to lead once more."
• "... for those who seek to advance their aims by inducing terror and slaughtering innocents, we say to you now that our spirit is stronger and cannot be broken; you cannot outlast us, and we will defeat you."
• "We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus -- and nonbelievers."
• "To those leaders around the globe who seek to sow conflict, or blame their society's ills on the West: Know that your people will judge you on what you can build, not what you destroy"
• "To those who cling to power through corruption and deceit and the silencing of dissent, know that you are on the wrong side of history; but that we will extend a hand if you are willing to unclench your fist."

Some of these, which I have highlighted above in blue, are significant departures from precedents set by the previous administration.

If his policies and actions prove his words as prescient, then these could be just some of the quotes that you may recall fondly. If he fails to deliver, then these words, like so many spoken before, pretty as they are, will simply reside in the yellowing pages of books, remembered only by those who cling to his memory.

Time will tell.

Inaugural address

Here is Obama taking the oath of office:



Here is Obama's inaugural address, for those who missed it:



This was in many ways one of the most anticipated speeches in history. While some, such as Mitch McConnel expressed some distaste about Obama's characterization of the current ills, it in most part lived upto the expectations of the occasion. Meanwhile, Sen. Edward Kennedy's collapse during the inaugural lunch was a sad note to an otherwise hopeful occasion.

Here's the text of the speech.

One interesting tidbit is that during the oath of office Obama appears to stumble over the oath. It turns out that the Chief Justice had changed the words of the oath.

The actual oath reads: "I, [name], do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States."

Here's what the Chief Justice actually said: "... that I will execute the office of president to the United States faithfully".

Obama starts by saying, "... that I will execute ..." but then hesitates. The Chief Justice helpfully prompts with "faithfully execute the office of president of the United States ..." This latter version is correct.

Unfortunately, having already said, "... that I will execute ..." Obama could either repeat a corrected version of his earlier phrase or repeat a slightly modified version. He opted for the latter coming back with: "... the office of president of the United States faithfully ..."

On TV, it looks as if Obama is stumbling, but it looks as if Obama was stumped because the Chief Justice had got his words wrong.

On a different note, at one point in the inaugural address, Obama does err when he says, "Forty-four Americans have now taken the presidential oath." Oops. That's not exactly correct. One of the US Presidents, Grover Cleveland, won in 1885, lost in 1889 and won again in 1893. He served two terms, but not concurrently, and is counted as both the 22nd and the 24th President. So, although Obama is the 44th President, he is only the 43rd American to hold the office.

Corruption in the windy city

Blagojevich, the Illinois Governor, has been caught attempting to make money by selling such mundane things as the Obama's Senate seat to the highest bidder. The press has led the charge as judge, jury and executioner, with good reason, given the extraordinary tapes of phone conversations. In one of these conversations he brazenly declares, "[the Senate seat] is a (expletive) valuable thing, you just don't give it away for nothing." Ah, Lincoln would be proud.

The expletive laced conversations was enacted on the Rachel Maddow Show to the amusement of viewers:



This is a very interesting piece that outlines Obama's many associations with the said Governor. As the article points out, it would be hard for a politician from the state legislature in Illinois not to have had many an association with the murkier side. Obama is no exception having had extensive dealings with both Blagojevich and Rezko, and he certainly has friends in high and corrupt places. In a state where three of its last eight Governors spent time in prison (Blagojevich would make the fourth), it would have been nigh impossible for a rising star like Obama to have avoided them. As Blagojevich's highly expletive laced opinion of Obama in this piece illustrates, Obama was not playing ball on Blagojevich's demands for money for favors. But, while Obama's reputation may remain unscathed in the eyes of his many supporters, the GOP, conservatives and Fox News have already gleefully declared him guilty by suspicion. Read the conservative bloggers and you'd think Obama committed the crime himself. In fact, the irony of it may be that Obama himself may have expedited Blagojevich's downfall by championing a revised ethics bill, which forced Blagojevich to attempt to speed up his takings before the bill took effect. Also, while Rahm Emmanuel's aides deny it, the chatter on the blogosphere is that he or someone on Obama's staff may have tipped of the Feds.

Apart from the obviously criminal behavior, Blagojevich's seems to have been astonishingly stupid in not following his own admonishments of caution (there are extensive pieces where he advises the parties on the phone with him to always assume someone is listening). As with so many other corrupt politicians before him, lulled by previous successes, he seems to have indulged in increasingly risky behavior, a.k.a. Elliot Spitzer in many ways.

Still, in some ways, as a rick38 on this blog points out, the press seems to forget that people are innocent until proven guilty. As rick38 says, "Much talk is made about Blagojevich “scheming” to sell a senate seat, but scheming alone isn’t enough to convict anyone. He has to be caught trying to make a deal before they can even think of indicting him. But since he was exposed before he had a chance to carry out his scheme, his plans have become thwarted, and he may now get off scot free.

If they (Fitzgerald and the Tribune) had held off until Blagojevich had shaken hands with someone, they would have had enough to force him to resign, allowing the Lieutenant Governor to step in and select a successor to Obama in accordance with the Illinois Constitution. They would also be able to pursue the case to its completion and get more goods on more people inevitably involved. ..."

Having not seen the evidence in the case, I can't say how prescient Rick38 is.

Obama's birth certificate

This article and the comments below it discuss Obama's citizenship. It is extraordinary the lengths to which some of these people are willing to go to in justifying their argument that Obama is not a natural US citizen.

The Supreme Court is considering a case on this. However, a quick clarifications. Contrary to the assertions of the bloggers and the commenters, Obama's birth certificate is not the issue in the case before the Supreme Court. The facts of Obama's birth have already been settled. He was born in Hawaii. Here's politifact.org's comment on the subject.

The case the Supreme Court is considering alleges that because Obama's father was a Kenyan and Kenya was still at the time a British colony, that the laws at the time would have made him a dual citizen of both the US and UK/Kenya and therefore he is not a natural born American citizen. If the Supreme Court decides that this view is correct, children of immigrants (even if only one parent is an immigrant) would be ineligible to be the US President. It seems unlikely though that the Supreme Court would decide to overturn the election.

UPDATE: The Supreme Court has thrown out the case. One appeal is still pending - the case filed by Berg alleging Obama wasn't born in Hawaii. The Federal court in Philadelphia had earlier rules that Berg had no locus standii to challenge Obama's citizenship. It's more than likely that Berg will lose the appeal.

The centrist puzzle

Throughout the election season, the GOP peddled the view that Obama was a closet radical leftist. McCain and Co. went so far as to describe him as Socialist. Even the 'punditocracy' pointed to the "data" - his votes in the legislature and Senate that supposedly proved that he had no record of being centrist. Now, as Michael Gerson's article shows, they are all scratching their heads in wonder as his picks for various cabinet posts prove to be centrist. The left is infuriated. The right is pleasantly surprised and horrified.

Of course, all these reactions are a repudiation not of Obama's record, but the media story surrounding his record. Those who were crying "Socialist" and "Radical" were relying not on facts, but on opinions based on a selective sampling of facts. For instance, Obama's voting record can only be described as leftist if you believe that all tenets of the Democratic party platform are by definition leftist. Those who had bothered to examine his statements, his record and his opinions (which have been surprisingly consistent over the last 15 years or so), would have realized that he was a centrist all the time, and that votes to the contrary were usually tactical voting or political maneuvering. The gasps of astonishment just show the extent to which the media is willing to delude itself and buy the memes they peddle.

Bill Ayers speaking out

This is an interview with Bill Ayers. It is fascinating to hear him essentially echo the same position that Obama expressed in the debates. It is also interesting just how much he is grilled on this.

Foreign hackers attacked Obama and McCain

Here's a fascinating report from Newsweek on espionage against the candidates:

"The computer systems of both the Obama and McCain campaigns were victims of a sophisticated cyberattack by an unknown "foreign entity," prompting a federal investigation, NEWSWEEK reports today.

At the Obama headquarters in midsummer, technology experts detected what they initially thought was a computer virus—a case of "phishing," a form of hacking often employed to steal passwords or credit-card numbers. But by the next day, both the FBI and the Secret Service came to the campaign with an ominous warning: "You have a problem way bigger than what you understand," an agent told Obama's team. "You have been compromised, and a serious amount of files have been loaded off your system." The following day, Obama campaign chief David Plouffe heard from White House chief of staff Josh Bolten, to the same effect: "You have a real problem ... and you have to deal with it." The Feds told Obama's aides in late August that the McCain campaign's computer system had been similarly compromised. A top McCain official confirmed to NEWSWEEK that the campaign's computer system had been hacked and that the FBI had become involved.

Officials at the FBI and the White House told the Obama campaign that they believed a foreign entity or organization sought to gather information on the evolution of both camps' policy positions—information that might be useful in negotiations with a future administration. The Feds assured the Obama team that it had not been hacked by its political opponents. (Obama technical experts later speculated that the hackers were Russian or Chinese.) A security firm retained by the Obama campaign took steps to secure its computer system and end the intrusion. White House and FBI officials had no comment earlier this week."

The many statistics of the election

Everyone is pointing out that obvious, that the 2008 Presidential election resulted in the first African American President. What is less well known is that this represented a number of other interesting milestones:

• Barack Obama is actually the first colored person to become the head of state of any majority white Western nation. That is extraordinary when you consider that the US was among the last major white nations to abolish slavery and the last nation, bar South Africa, to abolish segregation. It's the first time that the US is ahead of the curve.


• Actually, most whites should be happy too. Before Barack Obama, all Presidents of the US were from just three racial groups: Irish, Anglo-Saxon (England, Wales) or Germanic (Germany, Austria, Switzerland). No one from any other white background has ever won the Presidency before, which includes all Southern Europeans, Eastern Europeans and Scandinavians. Of course, no other minority race has won either, although some of the prior US Presidents were rumored to have colored antecedants.


• This is only the second time in US history that a non protestant has won on the ticket - Biden is Catholic. The previous one was Kennedy.


• Barack Obama received more votes than any President in US history.


• This is only the third time since FDR that a Democrat has won the majority of the popular vote (Obama received more than 52% of the vote at last count). The only other presidents to have done so were Carter and Johnson. Kennedy, Truman and Clinton never managed the feat.


• A corollary is that the percentage of votes that Obama received was also the highest percentage of votes cast for any Democrat since FDR, save Lyndon Johnson.


• Obama's number of electoral votes, 340+ is actually the historical norm. The only presidents since FDR who failed to receive 300+ votes were Carter and George W. Bush - both with disastrous regimes. The others who were borderline were Truman, Kennedy and Nixon in his first term.


• Missouri appears to be going for McCain. If it does, its only the second time in history that Missouri didn't vote for the President.


• Obama won at least two states: Virginia and Indiana, that have not been carried by a Democrat since LBJ.


• The total spending on the campaign by all parties and their supporters was a staggering $5.3 BN, 27% higher than the 2004 campaign and the most ever spent in the history of Presidential campaigns. To put it in perspective though, it totals less than what US citizens spend on potato chips every year.


• Obama was the first Presidential candidate to refuse public financing since the laws were revised in the mid seventies.


• Obama spent more than $650 MM on his campaign, more than any other Presidential candidate in history. He also set the fundraising record for a single month, with $150 MM in September.


• Obama's campaign was only the second time in history that the Internet had been used so widely as a fundraising tool for a Presidential candidate (the first being Howard Dean), and the first time it was used as the primary fundraising tool by a major party candidate.


• Obama's campaign has reportedly received donations from over 3.2 MM people, the most small donors for a political campaign ever.

The election's hidden impact

In this article, a white banker writes about his experience canvassing for Obama. It's fascinating because it shows the type of change in perspective that Obama is bringing about. While we do not know who will win yet, we do know that like Sidney Poitier in 'Guess Who's Coming to Dinner', Obama has forced Americans of all hues, backgrounds and colors to confront their values and in doing so has changed the face of this country. Should he prove to be as competent a president and he has been a candidate, the US and the world will be a different place indeed.

The impact of this, at least for the GOP, could be very disturbing. In this article, Paul Krugman suggests that the GOP may, in reaction, lurch further right and become the party of racists and bigots. I was in conversation with a person who works for the office of one of the GOP Congressmen, and from what he said, such fears are shared by many in the GOP too. If Obama manages to wrest the taxation ploy away from the GOP by making offering tax cuts for the middle-class and tax hikes for the rich, it's entirely possible that the party will become the party of the Sarah Palin right, rather than the party of the fiscal conservatives and libertarians.

Not everyone agrees. In this article, Peter Beinert suggests that Sarah Palin represents the end of an era, as demographic changes and real economic woes have made these social issues seem trivial. Not sure I agree.

Of course, even otherwise, it would have been premature for fiscal conservatives to despair. Obama's Achilles heel are the members of his own party, who have mastered the art of discord. It's entirely possible that egged on by an increasingly powerful DNC Congress, he will overreach on spending in a way that puts fiscal issues squarely back in the center.

Should Obama defy his party's predilections and not go down in flames by being fiscally irresponsible, then the extraordinary power of having so much support in Congress could doom him to becoming a victim of his own success. For instance, Obama should have the votes to successfully address healthcare, taxation, college education, immigration and environment in his first term, if he so chooses. If he does, then what issues will be left for the DNC to rally their populace around in four years?

One quick postscript for those who start worrying about the prospects of an Obama presidency. In this article, Malcolm Gladwell discusses how being an outsider has proved to be so useful for so many in business. In fact, in most countries, outsiders often have disproportionate economic impact. If you follow Gladwell's reasoning, it could be an added advantage that could enable Obama to be more effective than many of his predecessors.

Guess who's coming to dinner

This is a great analysis comparing the historic 1960s movie with the Obama run for the Presidency. Very good article.

How liberal is Obama?

At its heart, Conservative philosophy is about the belief that sudden drastic change to remake the world is doomed to failure; that it is better to seek the middle ground and move incrementally. So, conservatism opposes military adventurism and generally opposes drastic changes to the status quo. A reading of Obama's books suggests that while liberal on issues, he is temperamentally conservative.

However, conservative-liberal debate has been skewed by some touchstone issues. On these issues, Obama is considered to have one of the most liberal voting records in the Senate. The problem, this sort of scoring system is completely meaningless as it just adds up votes and uses arbitrary allocation of weights. To illustrate one of its shortcomings, if there were 19 votes on the same issue on which a candidate votes the 'liberal' way and one on another issue in which the candidate votes 'conservative', according to this scale person would have voted for the liberal view 95% of the time.

A better way would be to look at their actual positions. OK, so where does Obama stand on the issues?

Abortion: On abortion, the view expressed in many news organizations is that Barack Obama is an extreme liberal as he opposes a ban on late term abortion. This is actually inaccurate. He explains this in his book.

The perception about his liberal record stems from his record in the Illinois senate, where the GOP has tried for years to write laws on late term abortion in ways that weaken the hold of Roe v. Wade. The most consistent strategy by the GOP is to define the foetus as a person and include an exception for women's life, but not women's health. This latter definition means that doctors cannot operate on the mother in ways that could result in abortion in situations where, for instance, there is a breach in the womb that permanently prevents the women from having further children, or somehow damages internal organs in a way that would be debilitating but not life threatening.

The GOP strategy is that if the law pushes the issue enough, it will inevitably be challenged, giving the Supreme Court to reopen the issue for a constitutional challenge that could be a way to overturn Roe v. Wade.

Here is what Obama says on the issue:

'On an issue like partial birth abortion, I strongly believe that the state can properly restrict late-term abortions. I have said so repeatedly. All I've said is we should have a provision to protect the health of the mother, and many of the bills that came before me didn't have that.

Part of the reason they didn't have it was purposeful, because those who are opposed to abortion have a moral calling to try to oppose what they think is immoral. Oftentimes what they were trying to do was to polarize the debate and make it more difficult for people, so that they could try to bring an end to abortions overall.'

This is not the pro-choice position, but it isn't the highly liberal pro-life at all cost position either. What is more, he actually has a very interesting take on where life begins.

'Q: Do you personally believe that life begins at conception?

A: This is something that I have not come to a firm resolution on. I think it's very hard to know what that means, when life begins. Is it when a cell separates? Is it when the soul stirs? So I don't presume to know the answer to that question. What I know is that there is something extraordinarily powerful about potential life and that that has a moral weight to it that we take into consideration when we're having these debates.'

The social conservative movement and the extreme liberals suggest that this is a cut and dry issue. Interestingly, a conservative position would be that it is not. That the issue is so complex that only a slow deliberate incremental change would work. That was the basis of the conservative opposition to Roe v. Wade, as it cut short the debate.

Women's rights: The liberal view is "equal rights". This translates into equal pay for equal work and and equal opportunities in all walks of life. On this, Obama is firmly for equality. You can read his views here.

Gay marriage: On this, Barack Obama believes in: (a) no discrimination based on sexual orientation, (b) a repeal of "don't ask. don't tell" as he suggests that the policy as it currently stands makes sexual orientation a criteria for selection, which is discrimination, and (c) he opposes gay marriage, but supports civil unions. He does support the rights of states to define marriage any way they want, i.e. he opposes a Federal marriage amendment.

Healthcare: Barack Obama's healthcare plan is actually eerily similar to the one that a bi-partisan effort had produced in Congress in the early 1990s, the one that Hillary shot down. Hillary's plan mandated universal healthcare, Barack Obama's plan doesn't. It just provides a government subsidized option. The subsidy is to be provided by a market maker like Fannie Mae, except for health insurance. While Fannie Mae has come in for heavy criticism, its actually been hugely more effective in enabling home ownership than the government housing schemes in Europe.

The GOP has argued that Obama is more liberal because he apparently supports applying the antitrust laws to insurance companies. Currently, insurance companies are allowed to collude, unlike participants in virtually every industry in the US.

Environment: On this, the biggest criticism of Obama has been his historical opposition to further drilling in the US. He has backtracked on that position in the heat of the election, but essentially, Obama's belief is that more investment in oil exploration is a distraction from finding alternatives.

Economy: On the economy, Obama is supposed to be a tax and spend liberal who redistributes wealth. Here's what he actually said to Joe the non-plumber:

I do believe that for folks like me who’ve worked hard but frankly also been lucky, I don’t mind paying just a little bit more than the waitress who I just met over there. . . . She can barely make the rent. . . . And I think that when you spread the wealth around, it’s good for everybody.

Worried that this is socialism? Well, here's what Adam Smith had to say about it in his seminal work, "The Wealth of Nations":

The necessaries of life occasion the great expense of the poor. . . . The luxuries and vanities of life occasion the principal expense of the rich, and a magnificent house embellishes and sets off to the best advantage all the other luxuries and vanities which they possess. . . . It is not very unreasonable that the rich should contribute to the public expense, not only in proportion to their revenue, but something more than in that proportion.

Moreover, the progressive income tax in the US was actually the brainchild of Teddy Roosevelt, who was no liberal.

Underlying Obama's refrain though, is the word "lucky". As George Packer explains:

Obama’s view is not that people deserve everything they have and taxation amounts to confiscation of what’s theirs. That’s been conservative dogma for decades, with a powerful hold over many Americans. But this year it’s grown considerably weaker. Obama allows (as did Joe the Plumber, at least in this moment of their conversation) a role for chance, the blind vagaries of the global market, and the sheer unfairness of human fate. It’s an important insight into Obama’s political economy and moral philosophy.

Just in case you feel this is socialism, Obama cites Warren Buffet in his book, 'Audacity of Hope' as having said of his fellow billionaires:

They have this idea that it’s “their money” and they deserve to keep every penny of it. What they don’t factor in is all the public investment that lets us live the way we do. Take me as an example. I happen to have a talent for allocating capital. But my ability to use that talent is completely dependent on the society I was born into. If I’d been born into a tribe of hunters, this talent of mine would be pretty worthless. I can’t run very fast. I’m not particularly strong. I’d probably end up as some wild animal’s dinner. But I was lucky enough to be born into a time and place where society values my talent, and gave me a good education to develop that talent, and set up the laws and the financial system to let me do what I love doing—and make a lot of money doing it. The least I can do is help pay for all that.

Judge for yourself how reasonable his positions are.

The most consistent trend in Obama's personal record is that while he leans liberal, he tends to look for middle ground and compromise. The good news for conservatives and the bad news for liberals is that he is likely to prove significantly more conservative and less liberal than his opponents are portraying. It is the liberals who will be disappointed.

Making and remaking of McCain and more

This is a fascinating article on John McCain's campaign. It provides perspective as to why John McCain lurched from issue to issue. It seems, his campaign manager missed one of the most important lessons of Bush/Rove strategy - message consistency, a lesson that Obama took to heart. Also, the selection of Palin was even more shockingly unresearched than I had first imagined. Here is the most telling exchange as recounted in the article:

The following night, after McCain’s speech brought the convention to a close, one of the campaign’s senior advisers stayed up late at the Hilton bar savoring the triumphant narrative arc. I asked him a rather basic question: “Leaving aside her actual experience, do you know how informed Governor Palin is about the issues of the day?”

The senior adviser thought for a moment. Then he looked up from his beer. “No,” he said quietly. “I don’t know.”

This is a fascinating perspective on Barack Obama from David Duke, former Louisiana state lawmaker, grand wizard of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan and onetime presidential aspirant. I probably need to make several corrections to David Duke's assertions. Suffice to say facts and statistics were bandied about by David Duke in ways that were often entirely incorrect.

A review of conservatism

David Brooks, in this article, explores a missed opportunity for McCain. He points out that McCain could have rejected Burkean conservatism (which in its modern incarnation posits the role of government is to promote individual liberty of the kind later espoused by Ayn Rand), and FDR styled liberalism (which posits that the role of government is to provide equal opportunity and equality), for the centrism of Hamilton and Lincoln (which posits that the role of government is to enable people to progress, by providing a helping hand). It's a fascinating exploration. He says, McCain essentially ceded the center to Obama.

The interesting nugget of news in the opinion piece is that Obama's economic team actually had a project called the Hamilton project to actually create a centrist economic plan.

The one shortcoming of Brooks' analysis is his complete avoidance of a discussion of social conservatism. Brooks' explanation seems to conflate the Burke and Goldwater conservatism with social conservatism, and view the more extreme positions of Sarah Palin as being the exception or the fringe, rather than the norm. This is a misrepresentation of history.

Social conservatives posit that government has a moral responsibility to use its power to protect their values. This is somewhat consistent with Burkean conservatism. However, modern social conservatism goes further. It is based on the belief that America is a Christian country whose values are evangelical Christian and ultimately draw from white traditions of America. They posit that the role of government is to protect those "American values". The unstated undercurrent of these assertions is that non-white non-Christians are less moral and less American.

Historically, due to Lincoln's role, the GOP was the party of liberty and the DNC attracted the social conservatives. After FDR, though, the central value of the DNC became equality. After the Brown v. the Board of Education decision in the mid 1950s, Eisenhower moved to impose Civil Rights, but hesitated. The mantle of Civil Rights was taken up by the Democrats, who saw this as an issue of equality that seemed a natural offshoot of FDRs philosophy. After initially moving slowly, after Kennedy's death, Lyndon Johnson was able to get the support needed to pass the Civil Rights Act and Voting Rights Act. With that decision, the DNC lost their hold on the social conservatives. Nixon moved in to capitalize, with his Southern Strategy.

It was not until Reagan though that this strategy was built into a significant movement. The Reagan team's brilliance was to conflate two extraordinarily different political philosophies (Burkean Conservatism and Social Conservatism) into one movement by using some touchstone issues that they agreed on: Roe v. Wade and taxes.

This brings us back to the current elections. The McCain camp seems to be talking about simple issues in fiscal conservative voice. However, people who understand the history, know what the actual statement underneath is for the Social Conservatives. Here are some examples:

• "Spreading the wealth around" in the social conservative code that government will take your money and give it to undeserving un-Americans (read African Americans, liberals, non-Christians, Hispanic, etc.)
  
• "American exceptionalism" asserts America is the greatest country in the world and the naysayers and those who criticize America are not patriotic. This, of course, is about saying to the Southerners that America does not have to apologize for slavery or segregation.
  
• "Real America" and "pro-American regions" is a direct reference to the social conservative belief in the evangelical Christian, White values of America.
  

A successful Obama in many ways would challenge the fundamental precepts of social conservatism. Obama, after all, is not white and is not of the evangelical Christian movement in the same way as say Sarah Palin. The social conservatives are reacting heatedly to the crumbling of their ideology.

There are three interesting aspects to ponder:

• David Brooks' discomfort with the social right is symptomatic of the fissure between the social and fiscal conservatives in the GOP that this campaign has exposed. The question for the Obama camp is: 'Can they bring these disenchanted conservatives into the DNC fold?'
• Secondly, the Hamilton-Lincoln progressive conservative center that was captured by Reagan, Clinton and Bush, seems to be veering to Obama. The question is: 'Can Obama consolidate the center for DNC?'
• Thirdly, we see in the social conservative reaction, the vituperative attacks that will plague an Obama administration. They will be waiting for a slip-up. The question is: 'How far will Social Conservatives go?'
  

Obama's win is definitely not in the bag. However, if he wins, he will have an opportunity to redefine the political map. We will need to wait and see whether, if he wins, he is able to grab the opportunity and achieve a new coalition.

Is Obama an American?

This is an old smear that is making the rounds again. It seems Philip J. Berg, Esquire, of Pennsylvania filed a lawsuit recently seeking a Declaratory Judgment and Injunction that Barack Obama does not meet the qualifications to become President of the United States. The fact is that Obama is an American citizen by virtue of his birth, as can be seen from his birth certificate reproduced here. What is interesting is that Mr. Berg goes on to claim that Obama "lied and cheated his way into a fraudulent candidacy and cheated legitimately eligible natural born citizens from competing in a fair process." Fascinating.

What's up with the polling?

One of the interesting things about the election coverage are the polls. Like most people, I am intrigued by the daily movements, and love to speculate why the polls are moving. But, taking a step back and contemplating the polls a bit more rationally, you begin to realize that something is seriously wrong.

Most of these polls are supposed to have a +/- 3.5% accuracy. The 3.5% represents the 95% confidence interval. That means, that there is supposed to be only 5% chance that the actual result is outside the predicted range. Except that, when I look at the polls, the number of outliers are far more frequent, and the spread is far more than would be expected. So, it would appear that there is something seriously wrong.


I don't have a precise answer for why this is happening, I do have three potential hypothesis:

• The first is that the polls try to forecast "likely voters". A closer examination of the polls suggest that the polls that have Obama up by large margins tend to skew in favor of people who claim in the form that they intend to vote. In contrast, the polls which have Obama down in the dumps, appear to be overweighting prior election turnout ratios. Essentially, this suggests if the same people who voted lasted were to vote this time, this race would be a toss-up and Obama would probably have a high chance of losing. On the other hand, if all the voters who say they will vote turn out in large numbers, this could be an Obama landslide. They key uncertainty, therefore, is voter turnout, and the polls frankly are just getting at what will happen on this front.



• The second reason has to do with demographics. The historical polling data used a segmentation scheme that was appropriate for a white man running against a white man. Having an African American and a woman on the tickets has completely changed which demographics are relevant. For instance, do pollsters know which groups tend to be racist and which tend to be sexist? Pollsters have got better as they can extrapolate from state and local elections. However, it seems that different agencies are using different weights and samples of the various groups, thereby skewing the results differently.
  


• Finally, there is a systematic methodological error that may be hugely significant this time. Most polls are telephone polls, conducted over land lines. Unfortunately, land line use in the US has dropped dramatically in the last four years, particularly among young people. Pollsters were still confident in their results as they assumed that there were no statistically significant systematic differences between those with land lines and those without. That may not be true this time. If the people who use land lines behave differently from people who don't, then the polls could be wrong. Different pollsters have been oversampling different demographics to adjust for this, which may explain some of the variance.

Overall, all I can say is that currently the polls suggest that this race is anything from a toss up to an Obama landslide. It all depends on who votes. Beyond this, any inference from any poll, is pretty much meaningless.

One interesting side note is this article, which shows that the polls actually mirror Google Trends. Here is how McCain, Palin, Obama and Biden track on Google trends in October:

(Obama - Yellow, McCain - Blue, Palin - Red, Biden -Green)

Is it racism?

There is probably widespread consensus that a white person who votes against his or her economic and other interests because of the color of Obama's skin, is a racist. The question is whether the overwhelming support that Obama receives from minorities can also be classified as racism.

It is clear that the very fact that someone uses race in the decision could be classified as racism. Having said that, what race represents to white people cannot really be compared to the experience of minorities. This is an extraordinarily thought provoking examination of what Obama's race means to minorities. It's a trifle long, so, while I strongly urge you to read the whole article, here are some quotes that'll give you flavor of the article:

In describing how the author, a Hispanic, felt about his drive to succeed, he says: "I needed to succeed because I was a minority -- which meant there was no failure like success, what with the doubt and resentment that shadow one's accomplishments. (Was it because of affirmative action?)"

...

"Anyone who has ever felt in his own body the hot shame that awareness of color brings could not escape the myriad emotions that emerged in the course of Obama's campaign. There was cynicism. I certainly believed the axiom that my generation -- and who knew how many generations more to come -- would not live to see a black man become president. (The realization that I'd abandoned all hope shames me to no end.)"

...

"Obama's victory in the Iowa caucuses brought an oh-so-cautious optimism, and resurrected the ghosts of the past in fears over his safety. Then came Wright, and Obama's "A More Perfect Union" speech in Philadelphia. My wife and I watched it live as we spoon-fed our twin baby daughters. Obama's attempt that morning to span the distance between his black pastor and his white grandmother -- to span the distance between all of us "others" in America -- brought tears to my eyes. (But I held them back.) It was a speech that addressed the confused kid who ran for student body president and the adult who'd endlessly wrestled with the contradiction of color."

...

"Much has been said about a "post-race" generation that Obama would seem to herald. But the very presence of the "r" word in the moniker tells us that there is more road left to travel. By insisting that we are past race, we betray how much it is still with us.

Which brings us to the intangibles of an Obama victory. What would it mean for the subject of race in America? Surely, some will see it as an opportunity to continue to open the kind of discursive space Obama himself did in Philadelphia. Others will no doubt declare the end of the story: If Obama can become president, then truly all barriers have fallen.

What difference will it make for my daughters to grow up pledging allegiance to a flag next to which hangs a portrait of Obama? Maybe, given the confluence of the economic crisis and this "historic election," America will finally be able to speak about race and social class at the same time.

In focusing on these things, perhaps I reveal myself as hopelessly trapped in the world of color I grew up in. Or maybe I'm pointing out the possibility that instead of "post-race" we are actually "pre-race" -- that is, on the verge of truly engaging the legacy of America's "original sin" and the way its reverberations affect us even today.

But right now, days before the election, I feel more than I think. I am my body, my color, with all the great weight of its shame, with all the anger about how I came to believe what others believed about me, and yes, the hope that survived my cynicism.

I am taut with tension -- as if I'm expecting a blow, as if I'm waiting for a storm to pass."

Extreme racists coming out of the closet

If anyone had any doubt what the whole "Who is Obama campaign" is about, here is a video that should dispel them.



I often wondered where the racists were. Well, now we know. By the way, this is the type of report the Arabs are seeing.