Education and Barriers to Entry

NOTE: This post also appears here at Time To Keep Score, a blog to which I'm grateful to have been invited to contribute. There's a good group of writers over there. It's a good read and I recommend it highly. Now to the post...

As I'm neck deep in finals and my eyes are growing dark and hollow in a Gollum-like manner as I've confined myself to the indoors to study, this topic is particularly near and dear to my heart. As I interact more and more with attorneys, it's become clearer and clearer that law school serves two essential purposes to the profession it supposedly prepares students for: 1) give law firms some sort of cheap and easy way of rating applicants by looking at alma mater and GPA therein, and 2) big, fat, yet-sometimes-porous barrier to entry (I saw porous because I don't think I've heard any breaking news lately about the dearth of attorneys).

Almost every attorney I speak with either can't remember much of what they learned, and certainly can't remember the last time they used something they learned, yet we all must go through it. I've heard similar complaints of the medical profession and others, though I get the impression that it's a bit different for you MBA students and the like who pursue advanced education while working.

Certainly, 3 years and countless thousands of dollars is something of a barrier, but I think the largest barrier to entry in any profession is our country's overall education system. Add to those three years the 4 (or 5 for those like me who took their time) years of undergraduate study and to those the years of secondary education that did very little to prepare or motivate me towards my career choice, and we have a system that, in the name of general education (read "liberal arts"), does little to help young people funnel their way into fulfilling and meaningful careers and mostly just prolongs that moment, that very real and frightening moment, when you have to decide what you're going to do with your life.

If you're lucky, you get to have that moment. For many young people, that moment passes them by as they end up working ten years at a job they took after high school, "just to make some money before they figured out what else to do," with a very low ceiling and very few options. Can't we figure out a way to move the process along some?

I'll be 30 when I enter, as I said, the lowest rung of my professional ladder. Couldn't I have been working in a law office during high school summers, reviewing documents, learning the basics of Internet research and the nitty gritty of filing court papers? Couldn't I have bypassed all of that liberal arts education during my undergraduate years that was really just there to hold me over until law school?

Just a thought. And really, it has nothing to do with how sick of my finals I am. I promise.

Good Clip Explaining a Mormon's Experience

Thanks to my friends at timetokeepscore.blogspot.com for bringing this to my attention.

The following video is of a Harvard undergrad from Blackfoot, ID, who was given the opportunity to share her perspectives as a Latter-Day Saint as part of a larger panel discussion series on religion at Harvard.

It's very well done and she's asked some tough questions. She's not speaking officially for the Church in any way, but I feel that she does a very nice job of representing the Church's viewpoints and that her personal take can be useful for anyone who's curious. Enjoy and let me know if you have any questions.


Day of Faith: Personal Quests for a Purpose - 3. Rachel Esplin from Harvard Hillel on Vimeo.

Next Time You Have 7 Digits of Disposable Income...

You might want to consider this purchase available at www.neimanmarcus.com.

Thanks to Jason Sobel of ESPN.com I now know that next time I have 7 digits to spend on something just for me, to say nothing of a yard big enough in which to build it, I can have Jack Nicklaus personally design a 3-hole practice course in my backyard. After designing it and supervising its construction, the Bear himself will even play a quick round with me.

Some of us can only dream the dream, I guess.

For those of us with a bit less to spend this Christmas, here's a nifty gift coming it at under 30 bucks. Apparently, it's real.

What happens to leftover campaign donations?

I caught an article today in the Wall Street Journal (always sounds pretentious to start off any form of communication that way, doesn't it?) talking about President-Elect Obama's incoming donations for his inauguration ceremony. I think the whole notion is a bit ridiculous, but I certainly don't mean to single out the incoming administration as all incoming presidents have used their inauguration as a fund raising opportunity.

But anyway, my question is what exactly do they do with leftover campaign donations? Do they manage to spend every single cent of what's donated, planning down to the closing of the polls? Somehow I doubt it, and it's more likely that it's retained by the party or by the campaign, though I did hear that some of Obama's campaign staffers were to receive some somewhat lavish gifts when it was all over.

I guess that's okay, but given how much cash he ended up with and given how much he was able to point to all of the low-dollar donations from "average people," wouldn't it be somewhat patriotic of him and his campaign to hook up some of those folks who donated less than $500 with some of the leftover laptops and other swag from the campaign, to say nothing of at least a partial refund? Just a thought.

Seriously, though, if any of you know the law about surplus campaign funds I'd be curious to know. I've done some research on campaign finance reform but haven't ever seen that come up.

Interesting Situation on Campus

I know I'm not going to get a lot of pity from folks a bit more to the left, but there's an interesting situation on my campus that I find troubling. Of all the student organizations here at the law school, there are four that I would classify as right-leaning: the College Republicans and the Federalist Society on the political side, and the Christian Lawyers and J. Reuben Clark Law Society (Mormon Lawyers) on the at least facially apolitical or moral side.

The school's student organization governing body technically requires that any student organization have a faculty sponsor. Here's the interesting situation: not a single faculty member is willing to support any of those four organizations. Anecdotally, what few faculty members I know to have a rightward lean are unwilling to publicly present themselves as such for fear of peer ostracizing.

That about blew me away.

To a certain point, I'm willing to just cope with the fact that leftish viewpoints will largely dominate the personal persuasions of faculty members at most universities. It only allows faculty members who make objectivity and political neutrality in the name of open ideas that much more worthy of respect. But as more and more academic institutions and private enterprises make diversity a mission and a cause to be won, I'm not sure that this fits the bill. And when a university's career development center offers internship credit for volunteering as a pollwatcher for a specific party (I'll let you all guess which one) with no mention of the other, I'm concerned.

Isn't a university obligated to provide a friendly environment for people of any political persuasion? How far do we need to go to ensure that this happens?

It's OUR Job...

I came across this bit of numbers from Pew, and thought I'd pass this on. According to a recent study, 57% of Americans either mostly or completely agree that it's the government's job to care for the needy.


I want to clarify one thing. It's NOT the government's job to care for the needy. That implies that it's "someone else's" job. It's all of our jobs to care for the needy. All of us.

This is about as preachy as I'm willing to get, but I despise the notion that conservatives somehow have it in for the poor, the less fortunate, minorities in difficult situations, etc. when that's not usually the case. What is the case is that there is a strong mistrust of the government's ability to create and administer effective programs for the kind of relief that's needed that will most promote permanent extraction from a bad situation.

That being said, we cannot nor should not allow the existence of such problems to provide an excuse for not doing our part, nor should we assume that the government bears that responsibility alone. It's our job.

Thougts on Mormons and Prop 8

There has been a bit of press lately covering both protests to the passing of California's Prop. 8 and the LDS Church's (Mormons') reaction thereto. I've followed the back and forth from afar as it's been several years since I've lived in California. But, I have sought out and appreciated the opportunity for good dialogue with friends who opposed Proposition 8, while at the same time saddened to hear of my niece's experiences being spat on and cursed at for supporting it.

There's not much that I can offer on the subject that hasn't already been both against (Stay classy, Roseanne) the Mormons' participating in Prop 8 and in defense thereof, but I would like to put out a few thoughts for those who are interested.

First off, although I'm bummed that the Mormons have become almost the sole face of Pro-Prop 8 California when the church itself paid out no institutional money in support of the proposition, when the anti-Prop 8 campaign was in total better-funded than the pro-Prop 8 campaign, when at best I figure there are 200,000* voters in California who are actively-practicing Mormons of voting age, I forced myself not to be surprised by that despite my initial bewilderment once I thought about how involved that extreme minority of voters became.

I can only hope that Mormons in California behaved themselves civilly and with class, if for no other reason than to do as little as possible to justify allegations of bigotry and intolerance that are being cast. I hope that pro-Prop 8 folks did and continue to follow the official direction given by the church with respect to the appropriate mode of support for that proposition.

What I do hope, most of all, is that we Mormons welcome the inevitable protests to Proposition 8 and other similar amendments nationwide as long as they are kept cordial and civil towards religious practice. The Mormon Church said this on the subject:

While those who disagree with our position on Proposition 8 have the right to make their feelings known, it is wrong to target the Church and its sacred places of worship for being part of the democratic process.

Once again, we call on those involved in the debate over same-sex marriage to act in a spirit of mutual respect and civility towards each other. No one on either side of the question should be vilified, harassed or subject to erroneous information.

But I hope that we Mormons welcome the opportunity for dialogue and understanding that healthy protest can foster. Being overly defensive or overly zealous typically does little other than reinforce viewpoints either in your favor or against you, and without good dialogue and perspective we will never reach an understanding of how best to handle this issue that has potential to be so terribly divisive. No matter how future elections shape the policies of the varying states or, as I feel is inevitable, the nation, there will be a large body of people who will feel robbed of something special and sacred, and we will be forced to reconcile those feelings to continue to exist as neighbors in a spirit of social compassion and of patriotism. Both parties are under obligation to work together in a way that allows us to agree to disagree in some measure of harmony. Otherwise, we undermine what we view as the righteousness of our own position.

*My estimated number is based on the just under 800,000 Mormons in California. Figure only about half are actively-practicing, half of that half are under 18, and that's where I get to 200,000. It's a dirty method, but I don't know of nor could I find any information as to Mormon voter registry or turnout, though my suspicion is that it's not tremendously different than any other group of potential voters. Also, I know at least anecdotally of several Mormons who did not vote for Proposition 8 and I imagine that they are not terribly unique.

Daylight Savings Time is a Crock

Once again, Freakonomics is there to tell us how it really is. Thanks to Freakonomics blogger Stephen J. Dubner for finding this article providing good science in support of the notion that Daylight Savings Time is, in fact, a crock and a waste.

It's an interesting premise, but sadly a bit of a boring read unless you're really in to quantitative analysis where the bulk of the writing is just explaining the methodology behind the research; it's important for good science, but painful to read. In a nutshell, these Ph.D. types reminded us all that, contrary to popular belief, Daylight Savings Time isn't about agriculture at all, but it's supposedly about keeping energy costs down by playing with the energy demand.

They did a study of Indiana who until recently left it up to the individual counties to decide whether they would practice DST. What's more, the poor hoosiers have the time zone divide going right down the middle of their state. Anyway, because they recently passed a law that all counties had to practice DST, they have a pretty good natural laboratory to compare average energy consumption.

Our main finding is that—contrary to the policy’s intent—DST results is an overall increase
in residential electricity demand. Estimates of the overall increase in consumption are
approximately 1 percent and highly statistically significant. We also find that the effect is not
constant throughout the DST period: there is some evidence for an increase in electricity demand at the spring transition into DST, but the real increases come in the fall when DST appears to increase consumption between 2 and 4 percent.

On a personal level, I've never liked the time change because I find the abrupt transition to standard time in the fall a bit jarring. It always happens just as the weather's starting to get cooler and the general look of the season a bit more bleak. The sun sits lower in the sky anyway, there are significantly fewer leaves on the trees, it's cold and flu season, etc. My personal favorite is when I arrive at work before the sun's up and don't leave until the sun's down. As a child of summer and something of a sun-worshiper, it's just too much of a change. I'm pretty sure I suffer from seasonal depression anyway and this isn't helping.

But wait: I discovered yet another reason not to love the time change: the Daughter pays more attention to the sun than the clock. So, while "fall back" used to be a refreshing time to get an extra hour of sleep before Sunday's obligations began, this year--the Daughter's first--it became an opportunity to have an extra hour to get ready in the morning as she was up by a little after 6:00 instead of her previous a little after 7:00. Yeesh.

So for those of you who may be struggling to find something to get riled up about now that the elections have come and gone, let's get riled up about this: Down with DST! It has all the components of a great cause: it's easy to put on a bumper sticker, a t-shirt, or a sign to be held up at a rally. You can even apply vague rhetoric to it that sounds profound: "Keep Us Out of the Dark!" "EnLIGHTen America!" What more do you need?

A Day Late and a Dollar Short: Post-Election Thoughts

Everyone else has already said things that are far more profound than what I can add to the aftermath of a very interesting election, but in the interests of getting my own thoughts in order, I should probably weigh in.

But first, you have to love The Onion for giving us the right kind of insight. I thought this was funny:


Obama Win Causes Obsessive Supporters To Realize How Empty Their Lives Are

Here are some initial thoughts. Overwhelmingly, I'm glad it's over. I'm sick of having a president who no one respects. Though I can't deny that it's easy to find fault with how he's handled things, I also can't deny that he had the deck stacked against him since 2004. After he defeated Senator Kerry, he implored people on both ends of the spectrum to work with him to keep America moving. I'm fairly certain that he knew that he won by the skin of his teeth even in the midst of a declining approval rating. I'm also fairly certain that he would not have wanted to win if he knew that his victory would only ossify the resolve of the Democrats against him while at the same time set in motion a pattern of steady abandonment by his own party. Before we talk about what a debacle his second term has been, let's look honestly at how much support he's been given.

I'm prepared for the arguments of whether he deserved any support. I'll only say that when a president that we've elected hasn't done anything worthy of impeachment, spending all our time griping about why he's not the best president instead of figuring out how to get things done with him doesn't help and isn't his fault. Thank you, Nancy and Harry. I'll remind everyone that Republicans hated Bill Clinton. Hated him. Up until he perjured himself into lame-duck land and subsequently faced potential impeachment, he wouldn't have been able to get anything done and make himself the savior of the 90s that he's remembered as without bipartisan support. Once he backed off of the dumb ideas of his first two years, he was able to get stuff done.

That being said, as much as I am about 180 degrees off of President-elect Obama's politics, I'm pleased to live in an America that has no qualms about electing an African-American president. I sincerely hope that no nut out there tries anything stupid and that President Obama takes care for his security. It's the small fraction of nut jobs out there that make it scary for all of us.

I think it's appropriate that he is of mixed heritage. It's sort of symbolic of a society with mixed backgrounds, varied values, struggling to find an equilibrium that works for most of us. I like it. I'm interested as to how this will affect the general tone of race relations and discussions thereof. My understanding is that something like 61% of white America voted for Obama and that of the remaining 39%, 38% of them would have been happy to vote for an African-American were he merely a Republican. Obviously, that's a big stride for our country.

Here is my prediction: President Obama will preach patience as he struggles to get every one of his ideas for change. The tail end of his campaign saw a lot of attempts by his people to bring the expectations down a bit in attempt to bring his supporters back down to Earth. Given how emotional support for him has been, I'm not sure what that will mean for how he's viewed. I'm not sure that his grassroots support is ready to acknowledge that some of what he's proposed could take years. We'll just have to see if they're willing to bear with him. No doubt he'll be able to vilify Republicans along the way for hamstringing his efforts, and no doubt the media will be happy to oblige him in that effort.

I'm very curious as to how the transition in Iraq will happen. I suspect that even generals friendly to Obama will suggest that the withdrawl from Iraq proceed about on the course upon which it is currently set--gradual and dependant upon Iraq meeting certain milestones. Taking that into account, how accountable will a President Obama be held for his desire and promise to withdraw troops from Iraq immediately? It's interesting that this particular platform was quiet in the waning months of the campaign.

I'm interested how a President Obama will claim credit for the economy's eventual rebound. Apparently Wall Street has no large degree of confidence in what an Obama presidency will mean as we've seen the worst post-election slide since the 80s during the last two days. I believe the economy will rebound because I believe in the forces that are at play in our system. But I very much doubt that it will have anything to do with the bailout that's already happened (I know I feel bailed out. Don't you?) nor with any other efforts the government will make. Nonetheless, it will happen during Obama's tenure and so he'll gladly take credit for it. I'm very curious as to how that will all pan out.

I'm interested as to what shape the Republican party will take in the next little while. Republican big-wigs are talking about a need to drastically reshape the party's direction, image, and core. I heard some commentary (on ESPN of all places) that I'd tend to agree with: they don't need to reshape anything. They just need to come up with a better face than Senator McCain. I respect Senator McCain and I think he would have made an adequate though largely-unremarkable president, but he's certainly not transcendent. Democrats had similar woes when Senator Kerry lost, and I don't think that they've really reshaped who they are so much as they found a very compelling candidate at a time when the country has been starving for a compelling leader.

This is getting too long, so more will come later. I lost most of you about three paragraphs ago. :)

Print Media Bias, or at Least Endorsement

I recently posted some opinions and links on media bias in elections. My buddy Mike made a good point in a comment that it's a little vague to make a claim about "media" without defining it a bit better.

Point taken. So, here's a good post on the New York Times blog, "Freakonomics," that at least gives some good numbers on how the print media, if not biased, clearly has a tradition of endorsement.

MAIN STATS

Percentage of Daily Newspapers Endorsing Obama: 67.8%

Percentage of College Newspapers Endorsing Obama: 98.4%

Just a thought. Take what you read with a grain of salt (blogs like mine included). Best of luck getting in and out of a polling place in under 90 minutes tomorrow.

Flu Shots are a Crock

The Wife and I have had quite a bit of difficulty with the field of pediatric medicine these days. We both have the image of our childhood pediatricians in our head as we are somewhat disappointed in McClinics and how they completely destroy any feeling of relationship and partnership with our baby's physician.

In general, the people we've interacted with at the local pediatrics clinic have been nice in an impersonal kind of way. But the Wife got something of a dirty look from a nurse the other day when she dared question her as to just how useful a flu shot can be when there are thousands and thousands of permutations of flu bug that can infect you.

Now in general we're pro-immunizations for babies. It sucks to watch a small baby get poked with 4+ shots in one sitting, though the nurses we've had administer the Baby her shots have been tremendously talented at making it as quick of an experience as possible with our help. Laying that aside, I'm not sure I'm sold on scientists who've attempted to link autism and learning disabilities to a higher concentration of immunizations at a young age. I'm not convinced that there's a causal link there and I haven't seen any study show more than correlation.

But I have to say, for now I'm convinced that flu shots are a crock. We were waffling about it last month when we gave the Baby a set of boosters and they asked us if we wanted to give her a flu shot, and our doctor pointed out how miserable it would be to have a sick baby. Well, not only did the Baby run a temperature for two or three days as a side effect of the vaccination, but she got sick last weekend. Just as she was getting better from being sick, she was due for her booster and then promptly burned a fever after getting it. I'm so glad we got that one extra vaccination.

Does anyone out there know of any legit studies on this? Any strong feelings one way or another? I'd be interested to hear them.

80s Moment: Footloose

I've had quite a few politically-oriented rants of late, so here's a blast from the past. I know that we've all had a moment where we were feeling so oppressed, so frustrated by being brought down by the man, that we just had to pull into a warehouse, put a tape into our VW bug with the volume turned way up, and dance until it's all better. For those of you who have yet to experience the joy and the wonder, or if it's just been a while, I give you Kevin Bacon in "Footloose." Enjoy:

Enlightened Thoughts from a Mormon Democrat: Preach On, Brother Card!

For those of you who are confused at my title, I understand. A Mormon Democrat is seen largely as a contradiction in terms, but there are more than you’d think. I happen not to be one of them, but some of my friends are. There’s even one in the Senate—the always lovable Brother Harry Reid of Nevada.

Orson Scott Card, a Democrat, writer, and Mormon recently wrote a fantastic bit of commentary about the current state of journalism in America and its overwhelmingly “forgiving” attitude of liberal politicians. Here’s the link. I tried for the life of me to excerpt it and I couldn't in good conscience leave anything out, so if you'd like to read it here, here goes:

Would the Last Honest Reporter Please Turn On the Lights?
By Orson Scott Card

Editor's note: Orson Scott Card is a Democrat and a newspaper columnist, and in this opinion piece he takes on both while lamenting the current state of journalism.

An open letter to the local daily paper — almost every local daily paper in America:

I remember reading All the President's Men and thinking: That's journalism. You do what it takes to get the truth and you lay it before the public, because the public has a right to know.

This housing crisis didn't come out of nowhere. It was not a vague emanation of the evil Bush administration.

It was a direct result of the political decision, back in the late 1990s, to loosen the rules of lending so that home loans would be more accessible to poor people. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were authorized to approve risky loans.

What is a risky loan? It's a loan that the recipient is likely not to be able to repay.

The goal of this rule change was to help the poor — which especially would help members of minority groups. But how does it help these people to give them a loan that they can't repay? They get into a house, yes, but when they can't make the payments, they lose the house — along with their credit rating.

They end up worse off than before.

This was completely foreseeable and in fact many people did foresee it. One political party, in Congress and in the executive branch, tried repeatedly to tighten up the rules. The other party blocked every such attempt and tried to loosen them.

Furthermore, Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae were making political contributions to the very members of Congress who were allowing them to make irresponsible loans. (Though why quasi-federal agencies were allowed to do so baffles me. It's as if the Pentagon were allowed to contribute to the political campaigns of Congressmen who support increasing their budget.)

Isn't there a story here? Doesn't journalism require that you who produce our daily paper tell the truth about who brought us to a position where the only way to keep confidence in our economy was a $700 billion bailout? Aren't you supposed to follow the money and see which politicians were benefiting personally from the deregulation of mortgage lending?

I have no doubt that if these facts had pointed to the Republican Party or to John McCain as the guilty parties, you would be treating it as a vast scandal. "Housing-gate," no doubt. Or "Fannie-gate."

Instead, it was Senator Christopher Dodd and Congressman Barney Frank, both Democrats, who denied that there were any problems, who refused Bush administration requests to set up a regulatory agency to watch over Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and who were still pushing for these agencies to go even further in promoting sub-prime mortgage loans almost up to the minute they failed.

As Thomas Sowell points out in a TownHall.com essay entitled "Do Facts Matter?" ( http://snipurl.com/457townhall_com] ): "Alan Greenspan warned them four years ago. So did the Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers to the President. So did Bush's Secretary of the Treasury."

These are facts. This financial crisis was completely preventable. The party that blocked any attempt to prevent it was ... the Democratic Party. The party that tried to prevent it was ... the Republican Party.

Yet when Nancy Pelosi accused the Bush administration and Republican deregulation of causing the crisis, you in the press did not hold her to account for her lie. Instead, you criticized Republicans who took offense at this lie and refused to vote for the bailout!

What? It's not the liar, but the victims of the lie who are to blame?

Now let's follow the money ... right to the presidential candidate who is the number-two recipient of campaign contributions from Fannie Mae.

And after Freddie Raines, the CEO of Fannie Mae who made $90 million while running it into the ground, was fired for his incompetence, one presidential candidate's campaign actually consulted him for advice on housing.

If that presidential candidate had been John McCain, you would have called it a major scandal and we would be getting stories in your paper every day about how incompetent and corrupt he was.

But instead, that candidate was Barack Obama, and so you have buried this story, and when the McCain campaign dared to call Raines an "adviser" to the Obama campaign — because that campaign had sought his advice — you actually let Obama's people get away with accusing McCain of lying, merely because Raines wasn't listed as an official adviser to the Obama campaign.

You would never tolerate such weasely nit-picking from a Republican.

If you who produce our local daily paper actually had any principles, you would be pounding this story, because the prosperity of all Americans was put at risk by the foolish, short-sighted, politically selfish, and possibly corrupt actions of leading Democrats, including Obama.

If you who produce our local daily paper had any personal honor, you would find it unbearable to let the American people believe that somehow Republicans were to blame for this crisis.

There are precedents. Even though President Bush and his administration never said that Iraq sponsored or was linked to 9/11, you could not stand the fact that Americans had that misapprehension — so you pounded us with the fact that there was no such link. (Along the way, you created the false impression that Bush had lied to them and said that there was a connection.)

If you had any principles, then surely right now, when the American people are set to blame President Bush and John McCain for a crisis they tried to prevent, and are actually shifting to approve of Barack Obama because of a crisis he helped cause, you would be laboring at least as hard to correct that false impression.

Your job, as journalists, is to tell the truth. That's what you claim you do, when you accept people's money to buy or subscribe to your paper.

But right now, you are consenting to or actively promoting a big fat lie — that the housing crisis should somehow be blamed on Bush, McCain, and the Republicans. You have trained the American people to blame everything bad — even bad weather — on Bush, and they are responding as you have taught them to.

If you had any personal honor, each reporter and editor would be insisting on telling the truth — even if it hurts the election chances of your favorite candidate.

Because that's what honorable people do. Honest people tell the truth even when they don't like the probable consequences. That's what honesty means . That's how trust is earned.

Barack Obama is just another politician, and not a very wise one. He has revealed his ignorance and naivete time after time — and you have swept it under the rug, treated it as nothing.

Meanwhile, you have participated in the borking of Sarah Palin, reporting savage attacks on her for the pregnancy of her unmarried daughter — while you ignored the story of John Edwards's own adultery for many months.

So I ask you now: Do you have any standards at all? Do you even know what honesty means?

Is getting people to vote for Barack Obama so important that you will throw away everything that journalism is supposed to stand for?

You might want to remember the way the National Organization of Women threw away their integrity by supporting Bill Clinton despite his well-known pattern of sexual exploitation of powerless women. Who listens to NOW anymore? We know they stand for nothing; they have no principles.

That's where you are right now.

It's not too late. You know that if the situation were reversed, and the truth would damage McCain and help Obama, you would be moving heaven and earth to get the true story out there.

If you want to redeem your honor, you will swallow hard and make a list of all the stories you would print if it were McCain who had been getting money from Fannie Mae, McCain whose campaign had consulted with its discredited former CEO, McCain who had voted against tightening its lending practices.

Then you will print them, even though every one of those true stories will point the finger of blame at the reckless Democratic Party, which put our nation's prosperity at risk so they could feel good about helping the poor, and lay a fair share of the blame at Obama's door.

You will also tell the truth about John McCain: that he tried, as a Senator, to do what it took to prevent this crisis. You will tell the truth about President Bush: that his administration tried more than once to get Congress to regulate lending in a responsible way.

This was a Congress-caused crisis, beginning during the Clinton administration, with Democrats leading the way into the crisis and blocking every effort to get out of it in a timely fashion.

If you at our local daily newspaper continue to let Americans believe — and vote as if — President Bush and the Republicans caused the crisis, then you are joining in that lie.

If you do not tell the truth about the Democrats — including Barack Obama — and do so with the same energy you would use if the miscreants were Republicans — then you are not journalists by any standard.

You're just the public relations machine of the Democratic Party, and it's time you were all fired and real journalists brought in, so that we can actually have a news paper in our city.

This article first appeared in The Rhinoceros Times of Greensboro, North Carolina, and is used here by permission.

For Those of You Who Doubt the Power of Media on Perception

Today I came across yet another study quantifying the man-crush the media has on Barack Obama. (Thanks to the L.A. Times for bringing it to my attention. It's an admirable self-indictment as it's as liberal an institution as any of the major cities' newspapers.)

The study was done by the Pew Research Center. They're legit. Rupert Murdoch doesn't own them or anything. The article found that news media coverage of Obama has been about a third positive, a third negative, and a third neutral or mixed. McCain's received coverage that has been about half negative, 20% positive, and the rest neutral or mixed.

The media's crush on Obama is well-documented and has been the substance of some of SNL's best routines of the current campaign. Though I'm typically among the first in line to indict the media generally for having a leftist slant, the article reminds us that McCain's current pattern of coverage is parallel to Gore's in 2000.

It's a good study, and it puts out there an interesting question to which it makes no pretense at having the answer: is the particular media coverage a cause or an effect of public opinion? Theoretically, it could go either way. I'm curious as to your thoughts out there.

I did want to post this, though, because it again could be seen of evidence of the power of the way events are portrayed over our perceptions of it. I've referenced that phenomenon more in relationship to how the recession's been incorrectly labeled in the name of fear, but certainly those who didn't decide months ago whom they would vote for would do well to take a step back from the hype one way or the other and find a means that they're comfortable with to get information on the candidates.

Though I'm more of a party man is cache to admit, I've gotten a lot of information from Project Vote Smart and The League of Women Voters. They do a pretty good job of just providing information, which I like.

P.S. Are you kidding me?

Political Bumper Stickers: Always Make You Think

It's an election year, folks. That means that in addition to forgetting about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to pay attention to which small town the candidates decided to pretend to care about today, in addition to highly-scripted-and-negotiated-beforehand-debates-crafted-to-appear spontaneous, in addition to pretending that these folks can actually influence the economy, and in addition to some of the best material those zany folks at SNL can provide, it's bumper sticker time! I'm not the first blogger to weigh in on this wonderful phenomenon, but here's my two cents.

I know what you're going to say. Nuts who are willing to deface the back of a perfectly good car that may have cost as much as $4000 need not wait until election season to do so. Maybe I just notice them a bit more during election season. I think the nuts might take it up a notch for those leap years, and this year is no different.

On the surface, it seems that the nuts are actually trying to persuade their readers to see the folly of their ways. I think that, in honest moments, the nuts will be ready to admit that they're not going to persuade anybody, but rather they're there for a laugh, or at most, to annoy those who disagree with them. Though most of my exposure is to zany left-wing ignorance via bumper sticker, I've seen my share of zany right-wing ignorance as well.



There are a few rules for living in Denver. 1) You're not hard core politically aware unless you drive a Suburu that's at least 7 years old. 2) You're not doing your part to raise awareness unless you tattoo the back of the thing with bumper stickers designed to annoy the Right. If you're using said medium to annoy the Left, you're more likely from the suburbs.

The Wife and I are not yet in compliance with the above regulations as we choose only to use our car to market (with no compensation, of course) body boarding products from Southern California that no one here will recognize or ski resorts we've frequented.

I found an interesting article on some of the results of said annoyance. If you look collectively at the tone of the bumper sticker messages, there's definitely an underlying feeling of bitterness that the opposing viewpoint dare coexist within our great democracy. According to some folks at Colorado State, while aggressive driving is the result of 2/3 of all auto accidents, drivers with politically charged bumper stickers are significantly more likely to be the causers of those accidents. Interesting, huh?



If I may again put on my glasses, bow tie, and leather-elbowed tweed blazer for a minute, I suspect that bumper stickers are the modern incarnation of America's tradition of pamphleting. Before the days of modern media, if you wanted to get your political viewpoint across, you'd make a pamphlet. It was occassionally brilliant political discourse with authors among the best and brightest of our country's Founding. But more often than not, it was a zealot arguing often under the guise of religious moral right (as in good, not right-wing per se) who penned these little gems. They'd be paid for by political parties, political machines, and even churches, and people couldn't get enough of them.

Other modern incarnations of the pamphlet include ever-so-persuasive-for-their-clarity television and radio commercials paid for by political action committees, talk radio, and my all-time favorite: the email forward that you send to people who already agree with you.

On the election generally, I was sick of this election about 10 months ago when I entertained myself on a drive from St. Louis to Denver by following the Iowa caucuses. There was little else I could follow on the way across Kansas. That was January after visiting the In-Laws for the holidays. Keep in mind that our taxes are paying the salaries and benefits for our good friends in our respective capitols to run for reelection this year instead of actually doing their jobs. It's getting to the point where I'd just rather it end.

Good Perspective on the Economy

The following is an excerpt from a recent article by professor, writer, etc. Gregg Easterbrook. I enjoyed it because it is a cry for perspective on the current financial situation, and I happen to wish that there was more of a cry for perspective from the media. I made the claim recently that this sort of down is just a part of modern economics and got called to the carpet for it by an old friend. Here's some additional reasoning for my position:

Gasoline Plentiful, Perspective Scarce: "Financial chaos is sweeping the world," a New York Times lead story said last week. I didn't notice any chaos in my part of the world -- every business was open, ATMs were working, goods and services were plentiful. There are economic problems to be sure. But chaos? Collapse? Next Depression? Please, media and political worlds, let's stop hyperventilating and show some perspective.

What is going on is a financial panic, not an economic collapse. Financial panics are no fun, especially for anyone who needs to cash out an asset right now for retirement, college and so on. But financial panics occur cyclically and are not necessarily devastating. The most recent financial panic was 1987, when the stock market fell 23 percent in a single day. Pundits and politicians instantly began talking about another Depression, about the "end of Wall Street." The 1987 panic had zero lasting economic consequences -- no recession began, and in less than two years, stocks had recouped all losses. (See John Gordon's excellent 2004 book on the history of financial panics, "An Empire of Wealth.") Perhaps a recession will be triggered by the current financial panic, but it may not necessarily be severe.

Politicians and pundits are competing to see who can act most panicked and use the most exaggerated claims about economic crisis -- yet the fundamentals of the U.S. economy are, in fact, strong. Productivity is high; innovation is high; the workforce is robust and well-educated; unemployment is troubling at 6.1 percent, but nothing compared to the recent past, such as 11.8 percent unemployment in 1992; there are no shortages of resources, energy or goods. Here, University of Chicago economist Casey Mulligan shows that return on capital is historically high; high returns on capital are associated with strong economies. Some Americans have significant problems with mortgages, and credit availability for business could become an issue if the multiple bank-stabilizing plans in progress don't work. But the likelihood is they will work. When the 1987 panic hit, people were afraid the economy would collapse; it didn't. This panic is global, enlarging the risks. But there's a good chance things will turn out fine.

Why has a credit-market problem expanded into a panic? One reason is the media and political systems are now programmed for panic mode. Everything's a crisis! Crises, after all, keep people's eyes glued to cable news shows, so the media have an interest in proclaiming crises. Crises make Washington seem more important, and can be used to justify giveaways to favored constituent groups, so Washington influence-peddlers have an interest in proclaiming crises.

An example of the exaggerated crisis claim is the assertion that Americans "lost" $2 trillion from their pension savings in the past month, while equities "lost" $8 trillion in value. "Investors Lose $8.4 Trillion of Wealth" read a Wall Street Journal headline last week. This confuses a loss with a decline. Unless you cashed out stocks or a 401(k) in the past month, you haven't "lost" anything. Nor have most investors "lost" money, let alone $8.4 trillion -- crisis-mongering is now so deeply ingrained in the media that even Wall Street Journal headline writers have forgotten basic economics. People who because of financial need have no choice but to cash out stocks right now are really harmed. Anyone who simply holds his or her ground with stocks takes no loss and is likely, although of course not certain, to come out ahead in the end. During the housing price bubble of 2003 to 2006, many Americans became much better off on paper, but never actually sold their homes, so it was all paper gains. Right now many Americans holdings stocks or retirement plans are much worse off on paper, but will be fine so long as they don't panic and sell. One of the distressing things about last week's media cries of doomsday is that they surely caused some average people to sell stocks or 401(k)'s in panic, taking losses they might have avoided by simply doing nothing. The financial shout-shows on cable tend to advise people to buy when the market is rising, sell when the market is falling -- the worst possible advice, and last week it was amplified by panic.

We've also fallen into panic because we pay way too much attention to stock prices. Ronald Reagan said, "Never confuse the stock market with the economy." Almost everyone is now making exactly that mistake. The stock market is not a barometer of the economy; it is a barometer of what people think stocks are worth. These are entirely separate things. What people think stocks are worth now depends on their guess about what stocks will be worth in the future, which is unknowable. You can only guess, and thus optimism feeds optimism while pessimism feeds pessimism.

There is no way the American economy became 8 percent less valuable between breakfast and morning coffee break Friday, then became 3 percent more valuable at lunchtime (that is, improved by 11 percent), then became 3 percent less valuable by afternoon teatime (that is, declined by 6 percent) -- to cite the actual Dow Jones Industrials swings from Friday. And the economy sure did not become 11 percent more valuable Monday. Such swings reflect panic or herd psychology, not the underlying economy, which changes over months and years, not single days. For the past few weeks pundits and Washington and London policy-makers have been staring at stock tickers as if they provided minute-by-minute readouts of economic health, which they do not. It's embarrassing to see White House and administration officials seemingly so poorly schooled in economic theory they are obsessing over stock-price movements, which they cannot control and in the short term should not even care about.

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AP Photo/Richard Drew

"It's a crisis! A calamity! The end of civilization! Say, is the limo with my champagne here yet?"

Consider this. On Black Monday in 1987, the market fell 23 percent. If you had invested $100 in a Dow Jones Index fund the following day, it would be $460 now, a 275 percent increase adjusting for inflation. That's after the big slide of the past month, and still excellent. So don't panic, just hold your stocks. And if you'd invested $100 in real estate in 1987, it would be $240 today, a 30 percent increase adjusting for inflation. That's after the housing price bubble burst. A 30 percent real gain in 20 years isn't a great investment -- until you consider that you lived in the house or condo during this time. To purchase and live in a dwelling, then come out ahead when you sell, is everyone's dream. Not only do stocks remain a good buy, America on average is still coming out ahead on the housing dream. (This example uses the Case Shiller Index for the whole country; because housing markets are local, some homeowners have lost substantial ground while others enjoyed significant appreciation.)

Economic problems are likely to be with us for awhile, but also likely to be resolved -- the 1987 panic and the 1997 Asian currency collapse both were repaired more quickly than predicted, with much less harm than forecast. Want to worry? Worry about the fact that the United States is borrowing, mainly from foreign investors and China, the money being used to fix our banks. The worse the national debt becomes -- $11 trillion now, and increasing owing to Washington giveaways -- the more the economy will soften over the long term. It's long-term borrowing, not short-term Wall Street mood swings, that ought to worry us, because the point may be reached where we can no longer solve problems by borrowing our way out. TMQ's former Brookings Institution colleague Peter Orszag, now director of the Congressional Budget Office, was on "Newshour" last week talking about the panic. Orszag is a wicked-smart economist -- for instance, he is careful to say pension holdings have declined, not been lost like most pundits are saying, as if there were no difference between decline and loss! The below exchange occurred with host Jeffrey Brown. Remember these words:

PETER ORSZAG: One thing we need to remember is we're lucky that we have the maneuvering room now to issue lots of additional Treasury securities and intervene aggressively to address this crisis.

JEFFREY BROWN: Wait a minute. Explain that. Lucky in what sense?

PETER ORSZAG: That people are still willing to lend to us. If in 20 or 30 years we continue on the same path, with rising health-care costs and rising budget deficits, we would reach a point where we wouldn't have that ability.

Senator ___________ for President?

In part of my ongoing "political science moments" series, I caught an interesting article on Drudge that made me think of something interesting about this campaign. First off, look at the last 52 years of presidential face-offs, and see what pattern there is:

2004 - Pres. Bush def. Sen. Kerry
2000 - Gov. Bush def. V.P./Sen. Gore
1996 - Pres. Clinton def. Sen. Dole
1992 - Gov. Clinton def. Pres. Bush
1988 - V.P. Bush def. Gov. Dukakis
1984 - Pres. Reagan def. Sen. Mondale
1980 - Gov. Reagan def. Pres. Carter
1976 - Gov. Carter def. Pres. Ford*
1972 - Pres. Nixon def. Sen. McGovern
1968 - Former V.P. Nixon def. Standing V.P. Humphrey**
1964 - Pres. Johnson*** def. Sen. Goldwater
1960 - Sen. Kennedy def. V.P./Gov. Nixon
1958 - Pres. Eisenhower v. Gov. Stevenson

Of the 13 elections mentioned, the last time a non-executive defeated an executive (President, V.P., or Governor) was when, thanks in no small part to Nixon's cold versus Kennedy's dynamic personality (and willingness to wear makeup) on the first televised presidential debate, Senator John F. Kennedy defeated former Governor-then-Vice-President Richard Nixon.

In 6 elections where an executive went up against a Senator, 5 were won by the executive. The numbers jump to 8 and 7 respectively when you take into account that Vice President Humphrey only served a short time and was previously a Senator and that President Ford was never elected to an executive office and only served a short time as president.

You have to go back to 1928 when former Cabinet member Herbert Hoover defeated former Governor of New York Alfred Smith to find another instance of a non-executive (though telling that he'd served in the executive branch for some time) defeating an executive. Before that, candidates' backgrounds were a bit more diverse and it becomes more difficult to discern patterns.

The theory is that Senators aren't as well-equipped to run a good campaign as are executives, that they're not as experienced at running the size of staff required to organize on a national level, that they're more likely to be career politicians than to bring other experience to the table, and that they've not had to cater to independents like executives have had to. JFK's success doesn't even necessarily refute the theory since you could argue that he was uniquely equipped to overcome these challenges as he came from a political machine family. And he was just a good guy--a social liberal but a Cold War Hawk. All things being equal, it's a pretty good predictor of who will win any given election.

So, if you're a poli sci geek like yours truly, you should be fascinated by this election for the simple reason that it's so rare for two Senators to face off. Even though Sen. McCain has no executive experience, he's no stranger to presidential elections, so maybe that will be to his benefit.

The above-mentioned article refers to something of a behind-the-scenes evidence of experience v. lack thereof. It's a reporter's description of the Obama campaign compared to the McCain campaign. Apparently, Obama's campaign staff is having a bit less success at staying on top of the logistics of a complex national campaign than is McCain's. If conditions are how the reporter describes, it's interesting that the press seems to have as much of a crush on Obama as it has.

I'm eager to see how it all turns out.

*President Ford was a Representative before being appointed as V.P. to replace Sprio Agnew after his resignation. He then succeeded Pres. Nixon after Watergate, never having been elected to either position.
**Vice President Hubert Humphrey was originally a Senator before succeeding Lyndon Johnson as V.P. after President Kennedy was assassinated.
***President Johnson was a Congressman before serving as President Kennedy's V.P. and succeeding him as president.

A Couple of Good Reads for Dads

Both to a credit and to a fault, we have no shortage of reading and discussion material on raising a family. It's funny. I'm fairly certain that the Mom and the Dad essentially brainwashed me into being a pretty decent kid. I can only remember one instance of being grounded in the conventional sense, I have no memory of being yelled at, I can think of no instance of being physically disciplined (though the Mom tells a story of me taking a Marks-A-Lot to her freshly-applied wallpaper and giving me a swat), nor can I think of any instance where my parents were in disagreement. And I paid attention.

And yet, I rarely got into significant trouble, didn't use drugs or anything like it as a teenager, got good grades, kept busy, and got into college. When I talk with the Mom about how it is that she and the Dad pulled this off, she typically shrugs and says things like, "Your dad and I always were just on the same page." In short, she gives me little to work with.

At a time when the traditional family faces many challenges to the point that the "traditional family" is almost quixotic (though worth aspiring to), as a society we also have never had more access to opinions and ideas by experts or otherwise. Searching for "parenting" books at Amazon.com yields 97,607 results.

I've been frustrated by two things: 1) they're all ridiculously contradictory to the point of being little more than hotbeds of parental insecurity and fodder for arguments with other parents, and 2) they're often marketed more for mothers than fathers.

As to the first problem, that just comes with the territory. With my limited experience I've come to the conclusion that you just have to take what you can from what you read or hear and mix it in to whatever recipe you're comfortable with. There's a certain amount of trial and error for which I'm sure we'll have to beg forgiveness someday of our firstborns.

As to the second problem, I've made it my crusade to find good books on fathering. If anyone out there has a recommendation, I'd love to hear it. In the meantime, here are mine, each with an accompanying short description and review:

Strong Fathers, Strong Daughters: 10 Secrets Every Father Should Know, by Meg Meeker


I just finished this one and really liked it. Dr. Meeker is a practicing pediatrician and pediatric therapist specializing in working with young women. As such, she has some anecdotes that are enough to make this big lug a bit dusty. It's pretty empowering and is adamant that, if done well, a father can make a huge difference in a young woman's development. As a man who's terrified of the number he'll do on his daughter, it was reassuring. It is, however, not for the uber-liberal who doesn't believe that things like rules or guidelines are good for children.

Mack Daddy: Mastering Fatherhood Without Losing Your Style, Your Cool, or Your Mind, by Larry Bleidner



This was written by just an average schlub. After rolling my eyes at the title, I picked it up before the Daughter was born out of frustration at being able to find much else on the subject and was pleasantly surprised by it. It's tone is very conversational, even occasionally (though rarely) a bit crass. (When crass, it's almost like when/if a college professor drops a cuss word--you can tell they're doing it for cred but it's totally unnecessary and even a bit awkward.) It has no analysis or anything, but very much de-mystifies having a baby and does it with good humor that, for me, helped the whole thing sound very doable.

Be Prepared: A Practical Handbook for New Dads, by Gary Greenberg and Jeannie Hayden


This is the Boy Scout Handbook of new dad books. It's illustrated, it's very how-to, it's a bit tongue-in-cheek, but it's helpful. Best bit of information I got out of that thing was how to swaddle a baby, though it wasn't long before the Wife figured out how to do it better. There's a pattern forming there....

My Belated Two Cents on the Financial Crisis

I thought this was funny and worth sharing. Thanks to my buddy from the Mo-Row and neighbor Dave for passing it along.

Oddly enough, I don't have a ton to say about the crisis, so sorry if this is anti-climactic. Though who'm I kidding? It's not like anyone out there was particularly dying to hear my opinion. Besides, my buddy Bitner and his new clan of commentators have had ample to say about the crisis that trumps anything I could add.

I will say this. I'm concerned that the bailout is now being called bigger than the New Deal, when I'm at least mostly convinced that the New Deal had little to do with bringing us out of the Great Depression; World War II did that.

Naively or not, I tend to believe that these things happen and they happen every 10-15 years or so, regardless of what the politicians do. I don't believe that tax policy can affect much more than the margins of the economy. We get a bit of a confusing message, though, because when the economy goes well, whoever initiated the last big tax policy/spending plan claims victory. When it goes south, whoever opposed the plan pulls an "I told you so."

That being said, the best thing we can all do is hang in there. Resist the temptation to look at your portfolio every day to watch it wither and die, and if you've smartly saved a few extra bucks and manage a budget, if anything dump a bit more into it now. It'll bounce back. It always does. Investing in something now will make you part of the solution and you'll become a beneficiary of the relatively low prices out there now.

Idiomatic Pet Peeve

I have a pet peeve. Well, it's more likely that I have many. But I have one in particular that's on my brain right now. Choose which is correct:

"I could care less."

OR

"I couldn't care less."

Though I can't remember the last time I've heard someone say the latter, it happens to be the correct usage. Let's break this down: If you say that you could care less, you are saying that you care. In other words, you are saying that you could care quite a bit less than you care right now. That's not what people mean when they say that. What they mean to say is, "I care so little that I could NOT care any less than I do right now. In other words, I couldn't care less."

If anyone doubts, I did look it up here. Thanks for listening. Yes, I know I'm anal-retentive when it comes to these things, but that's okay.

Used Car Ads and One Guy I Want to Punch in the Hereafter

So, I think that it's safe to say that there are a handful of people whom we're all eager to punch in the face when we all meet up in the hereafter. High on my list is whoever the guy is who first decided that all used car ads have to be obnoxious, belie all intelligence, and slightly resemble South American TV all around. This is the guy who decided that balloons, cameras with no filters, random farm animals, cowboy hats, cheesy graphics, clowns, and the sacrilegious butchering/parodying of beloved oldies and classic rock was the appropriate way to generate interest in checking out a used car lot this weekend? It genuinely raises my blood pressure.

I give you a man who made such ads great, Southern California's Cal Worthington:



What blows my mind is the stark contrast between used car advertising and new car advertising. As an example...



New car ads are, with few exceptions, clever, well-produced, often exciting, and at worst just not any more annoying than any other commercial. Smart dealerships just buy the rights to tack their dealer's name and location on a screen at the end of the manufacturer's commercial.

TV watchers of the world, unite! Change the channel and let's hope that the collective antipathy will change this horrific trend for future generations. But who am I kidding? As long as there are morons in the world, there will be plenty of marketing folk to pander to them and sell them stuff.

Of Strange Brew and the Two Party System

I got some good response from my last post sort of defending party politics. I'd like to respond to a response to a response. :) If you have no interest in intellectualizing over party politics, this may not be the post for you. You've been warned.

(Original post and comments here)

By his comments and general tone, my buddy Mike seems concerned about the adversarial nature of the two-party system. I agree that's always a concern. I took a good class in my undergrad called "Principles of the Founding." The class's objective was to understand the cultural roots of American government by understanding common threads and priorities basically from the Pilgrims through the modern era. The ironic thing was that it was taught by a Canadian-born, naturalized American. I can't tell you how odd it was to hear about theories as to the core of American culture as told by a guy who sounded, essentially, like a hockey nut in a bar at best and Bob or Doug McKenzie from Strange Brew at worst. (Sans the beer, of course. It was BYU, after all.)


My buddy moved from a more bold suggestion that we move to a multi-party format in order to foment a more conversational, collaborative tone, to merely pleading for that attitude generally. I would submit that the latter is more crucial, but at the same time, more difficult, given our political/cultural heritage.

One thing that I'd never realized until I took this class was how completely the rhetoric of right v. wrong, black v. white, us v. them is embedded into our culture. We looked at some sources that gave us a more realistic vision of the pilgrims, for example, who didn't truly come to America seeking a land of tolerance. Rather they came looking for a land of opportunity for them to put forth their vision of an ideal society. They became annoying in Britain for their desire to convert the British into a more ideal society and got kicked out for it. Hence, in America, you have wonderful conventions such as the stocks, scarlet letters, and witch hunts.



When we Americans make up our mind that we're right, we don't typically look for compromise, for better or for worse. We've always had an interesting religio-political scene wherein the sermons of the pulpit intertwine so curiously with the speeches from the polls. The rhetoric of the French and Indian War, of the War of Independence, and of the Civil War was preached in chapels as much as it was in town halls, and with the arguments of fire and brimstone. The great whore of Babylon and the Apocalypse was used in reference to the French, the British, and the Union/Confederacy in succession.

Looking at some other sources, it becomes clear that one of the reasons why we won our independence was because Britain was so fully unprepared for the depth of our resolve. They couldn't figure out why we were so upset and weren't a bit more willing to come to the table and ride it out. (In an interesting contrast, Professor Canada's short version of the story of Canadian independence was that a bunch of guys got together in a tavern late at night, had a few beers, signed some papers, and boom! There's Canada.)



Now we live in a world where religion is a bit more removed from the political scene, though not as much as we'd think. (Think Jeremiah Wright, Billy Graham, Jerry Falwell, Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson, etc.) But even those issues which we don't argue from the pulpit, especially as we become more secularized as a society, we argue with the zeal of religion. We argue with them as though people are evil for thinking differently. It's just how we're wired.

I said it before, we need to remember that we're arguing about things at the margins. In large part, we've settled most of the main issues that other countries struggle with: What are we going to be about? What is to be our identity? What are our values? We argue more about the expressions of those values than on those values alone, except we never learned how to NOT argue in terms other than us v. them, right v. wrong, etc. So it seems like we're arguing about issues that are the end of the world. I'm not going to belittle how important subjects like abortion, gay marriage, or the second amendment are to people. They're important to me.

What I will point out, again, to keep things in perspective and to, hopefully, encourage a more conversational, collaborative atmosphere, is that we realize that although we argue about these things as though they're life and death sometimes, we're arguing about them from within the context of issues that have been settled. We're arguing about them all in terms of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, issues which we've already decided. Maybe that'll be the sign of our nation's maturity when we can accept that common expression of the American Dream and recognize that we're often talking about what's best for the country, which is different than what's right for it.

The Election and Independents

Defending the Party System

I haven’t taken the opportunity to rant about the elections or the candidates, and although we’re still about six weeks out (I’m pretty sure this election has been going on for at least 5 years), My buddy Bitner’s recent election post and some good commentary I heard on the radio got me thinking.

I’ve got a good friend who fancies himself something of an independent. He maintains that he thinks it’s more important to vote for the person he thinks is best qualified for the job, regardless of party lines. This is a pretty common mentality and is all well and good for some people, and I’m sure that there are a good many who are sincere.

But I personally think that a lot of people like to claim that level of independence for two reasons: 1) They’re really conservatives but it seems like everyone around them is a liberal; claiming to be a liberal would make them throw up in their mouths, but they don’t want to be written off as ignorant (common liberal-to-conservative attack) or otherwise stigmatized by their liberal friends. 2) On some level they’ve convinced themselves that the party system is evil. These are the folks who don’t like being pigeonholed or made to feel like they’re being pigeonholed. In the end, if they even decide to vote, they’ll probably do so with one party or the other the vast majority of the time. They just won’t register with the party and thereby avoid the accompanying phone calls and letters soliciting donations. Good for them.

The bottom line is this, and allow me to dust off my political science degree to explain: the party system isn’t as big of an evil as it’s sometimes hip to act like it is. Specifics of the way our legislative and executive election process are designed contribute to a two-party only system. As such, each party represents a myriad of interests, none of which apply to every member thereof. Although this can provide some frustration as no one elected official seems to harmonize exactly with your interests at any one time, I suggest that it should be embraced for the convenience that it is.

For example, the relative strengths and weaknesses of Obama’s or McCain’s character is fun to talk about and can do a lot to inspire or deflate the enthusiasm of lukewarm voters. But it’s largely irrelevant to the policies they will be able to enact, for two reasons: 1) Who runs Congress is a vastly underrated question when it comes to domestic policy. Ask Slick Willy how easy it was for him to get things done under Newt’s regime. And 2) Once Mr. Personality motivates the right amount of voters to get him or her elected, Mr. Personality becomes, quite simply, Mr. President and, with few exceptions, acts like most other presidents of their party would under the same set of circumstances.

So don’t hate on parties. I’ve had a couple of buddies and family members say that this election boils down to which candidate will do the least amount of damage for the next 4 years. Cynical, yes, but that’s probably a pretty good summation. In the end, I think you’ll answer that question by picking the one who belongs to the party that, generally, has a coalition of values, special interests, and platforms that most align themselves with your viewpoint. Isn’t that about the best you can ask for in a president?

Miscellaneous Golf Thoughts and the Ryder Cup

I was chatting with my buddy Bitner earlier this morning and we were getting to talking about the Ryder Cup before we were both rudely interrupted with actual responsibilities to attend to, it being the middle of a work day and all. I hadn't hit on golf yet, so I thought I'd take a moment to give my thoughts on the Ryder Cup and on golf generally. For some good preview reads on the tournament, check out ESPN Rick Reilly's article (here) and Jeff Bradley's comparison of the two teams' approaches to the tourney (here).

Patriotic-type events are always fun. It's probably the biggest reason we like the Olympics, even when we have no interest in gymnastics any other time of year. (Thank goodness for reality TV's ability to provide subjectively-judged inane competitions--otherwise what would we do?) American athletes generally with American golfers as no exception typically are among the top in the world. Nonetheless, in the Ryder Cup, the American team is winless since 1999 in this biennial event against the European team. (As a note, if you believe in karma, the 1999 American team provided a pretty poor display of sportsmanship after that victory.)

U.S. Ryder Cup Team courtesy ESPN.com

The big story is that Tiger's not going to be participating, though his record in the Ryder Cup is surprisingly dismal. It's definitely not what you'd think from THE Tiger Woods. So, with the American team as quite an underdog, the consensus is that even if Tiger were there, the European team trumps the Americans in chemistry year after year after year, and that translates to a far superior performance in this team-oriented tournament.

Bradley's article spends a good time dealing with that, and he points out that while the Europeans grow up playing team-oriented golf, the Americans grow up as favored sons trained in a more individual mindset. On the Euro tour, it's apparently not uncommon for all the players to end up at the same hotels, eating at the same restaurants, and drinking at the same bars, it's more common on the American tour for players to charter private jets and travel with their own family entourage of family, nannies, etc. and stay at any number of hotels.

I think that's just sad.

Not that I'm expressing any pity for the uber-wealthy PGA tour golfers, but I think it's a shame that the professional golf experience is so disconnected from the average-joe golf experience. I think that in pickup basketball or beer league softball, there is some relationship between what the professionals enjoy about their sport and the amateurs enjoy about their sport, regardless of the disparity in talent and compensation.

Now, one of the things I enjoy most about golf is that it's the ultimate competition of self against self. Few of us are good enough to provide real competition against each other, and while golf is easily the greatest sport around for reconciling divergent skill levels to provide genuine competition via the handicap system, most of us concede that the occasional friendly bet is about all the competition we really can handle. For the most part, you play against yourself. You play against your last round or your best round, or even your last best shot.

That being said, the reason that most of us stick with golf despite how poorly we play is the camaraderie. Most of our rounds look a lot more like this...

3 European Team Players courtesy ESPN.com

...than like this:

2 American Team players courtesy ESPN.com

In the end, the poor American team performance is embarrassingly bad any way you look at it. It'd be bad enough if they just lost. It's worse that they lose and have that loss explained by a selfish, spoiled, "I'll-find-a-way-to-put-an-I-in-team" mentality that reflects the worst of American stereotypes. Some American players lately have even complained that, since it's not a paid event, they feel like "slaves" for a week. Never mind that they're wined and dined for the whole week, get the opportunity to be ambassadors for and representatives of our country, and play some of the most competitive golf available. That sure sounds like slavery!

I hope that this year's different. There are some good young players on the American team this go-around. The tournament's at a great course, the weather's supposed to be good, and the whole setup should favor the American strength of driving distance and putting. Best of luck, boys! Try not to embarrass us too badly.