David Frum: What Inflation?

David Frum continues to amaze me because he keeps pointing out that the emperor has no clothes. In this case, that we don't have an inflation problem, we have a deflation problem. We are in a depression. It's refreshing to read and consider thoughts of someone who considers himself a conservative but who has an open mind. It shouldn't be that way. What we call conservative thought (free market, limited government, etc.) isn't crazy, it has some sound points. But the current crop of Republican presidential candidates are like Stepford wives, all parroting the same contra-factual mantras. It's really crazy, and really sad. Frum should run!

Alexander McCall Smith: The Sunday Philosophy Club

On whim I picked this up @ ICPL, and I found it a delightful read (and it has nothing to do with WWII). If you know Smith from the No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency, you'll find that his manner transforms well to his native Scotland. Ms. Dalhousie, the protagonist, is a rather appealing character. She edits the Journal of Applied Ethics, having studied philosophy at Cambridge, and her comments on life, philosophy, and any manner of subjects are light and engaging. You rather feel that you'd enjoy knowing this woman (and feel badly that the love of her life--who hardly seems worthy in retrospect--passed her by). Smith has a way of making his characters engage you, much like Precious Ramotswe does in the No. Ladies Detective Agency series. (Does Smith have some special insight into women?). Anyway, an engaging and fun read. No action packed adventure, just lots of careful people assessment, hypothesis development and testing (and discarding), and appreciation of this small slice of humanity. I'll read another one!

John Lukacs: The Hitler of History

After reading about the events of 1938 leading up to the Munich Conference of that year that gave the world "appeasement", I went back to the great historian John Lukacs's consideration of Hitler in this book. (I'd read it about a decade ago on a trip to Montreal with Iowa Guru & Africa Girl. Memories associate well with places.) As with virtually all of Lukacs's work, it bore re-reading. Lukacs treats Hitler for what he was: a human being, a politician, and even--perhaps--a statesman. After all, Hitler had political aims in his war (and WWII was his war, Lukacs argues). As with most of Lukacs's work, it's hard to summarize because he throws out nuggets of insight here and there like he's blithely sowing seeds along a garden path. This is a book about other books and historians as much as Hitler himself, and this, too, makes it different, interesting, and well worthwhile.

Am I Smitten? More on Rick Perry

Am I smitten with Rick Perry, or what? This guy intrigues me, and as this post by Michael Tomasky contends, he makes George W. Bush look wise, intelligent, and informed. Wow--now that's a talent! Whereas W used to whisper some of his nonsense, Perry uses a bullhorn to advertise his ignorance and prejudice. If you think about it, from George H.W. Bush to George W. Bush to Rick Perry: isn't this a strong argument for devolution? Darwin in reverse?

The other point of this article is another call to arms for President Obama. As a fellow b-ball player, I understand that Obama doesn't want to get into an elbow swinging match with his opponents, that's sucker stuff. Obama, however, shouldn't want not get even, but to get ahead (thanks Walter "Clyde" Frazier). The greats, like Jordan, Magic, Bird, West, Robertson--they didn't put elbows into opponents mouths, they put stilettos between their ribs. Obama is a cool guy (in more ways than one), but he has to coolly put it to his political opponents, with just a touch of fire. Maybe Obama needs to spend some time watching NBA Classics.

David Frum on Sarah Palin & The Lesson We Should Learn

David Frum is lining up as my second favorite conservative writer behind David Brooks. We might disagree about a number of things, but I imagine that I would have a very enjoyable conversation with the guy if we sat down to talk shop. In this particular article, he tells us the brains are important in choosing presidential canidates, character and not demographics are important in choosing presidential candidates, and that women weren't fooled by Sarah Palin, but men, apparently going all instinctual, were. Three points that make a lot of sense to me. His asides in the column about Mitt Romney and Rick Perry are right on point as well.

I Told You So Edition--Thank you, Christina Romer

In follow up to this post, I can't help but point out this article by former Obama administration economist Christina Romer (and now Berkley econ prof) about FDR's administration and its errors, including the budget-balancing business of 1937 (along with Fed money restrictions). I guess great minds think alike. I'm glad that I posted before her article appeared. :)

If Karl Rove thinks this . . . . ?

My goodness, if Karl Rove thinks that Perry is off his rocker, what should the rest of us think? This adds to my sense that Republicans are utterly bankrupt when it comes to compelling leadership, and the rank-and-file are dominated by the Christian Right (which out to be an oxymoron, but sadly isn't). How sad! How different from the British Conservatives. David Cameron strikes me as intelligent and reasonable, albeit misguided with his current austerity program. Do the Republicans have anyone in that league? If they do, they're hiding for fear of the Tea Party types. Sad and scary.

Et Tu, China? Niall Ferguson's Assessment

Courtesy of Walter Russell Mead's blog: Ferguson seems not so sure that China won't hit the same problems that we did with a real estate bubble of its own. Very interesting! Bubbles, everywhere, all ready to pop!

Rick Perry: Could This Guy Become President With These Views?

I thought that George W. Bush was one of the least qualified and least capable individuals to have been nominated or elected president. Events, I contend, bore me out. Now we have this guy Perry. Why on earth would we vote him into office? If his views that Yglesias quotes from his book aren't enough, note this Krugman analysis of his supposed big selling point. Are we as a country really going off the deep end?

Munich, 1938: Appeasement & WWII by David Faber

David Faber's book (2008, 437 p.) focuses on the events leading up to the Munich Conference of 1937 wherein Neville Chamberlain and the French (with Mussolini looking on) bargained away parts of Czechoslovakia to Hitler in return for "peace in our time". Well, it didn't work. In fact, Faber's book, which focuses primarily on Hitler's actions (and luck) and British diplomatic efforts, shows how Hitler ran the table of Austria and most of Czechoslovakia without firing a shot. Chamberlain does seem clueless in the face of Hitler. Faber's narrative is detailed and interesting, but I would have appreciated more background on the primary players, like Chamberlain & Halifax, and those in the Foreign Office, in addition to Eden, who questioned appeasement. The diplomatic efforts were intense, but no one in power was willing to call Hitler's bluff, if it was a bluff (an interesting historical question). An interesting book, but not one to approach without a firm background knowledge. (I believe my background knowledge to have been adequate but I would have benefited, as I mentioned, from more scene and character setting.)

1937: Deja Vu All Over Again?

I've been saying (even if no one is listening) that FDR took us into a severe downturn in 1937 with his budget-balancing mania (Keynes apparently didn't get his message across in time), and it looks like the Obama administration is doing the same thing. Of course history doesn't repeat itself (exactly), but sometimes you can see the same pattern.

Krugman: A Sense of Humor Amid the Wreckage

Krugman's sense of humor today is worthwhile, one post on "academia nuts" and this cartoon. Krugman, one senses, has an appreciation of the "animal spirits". Anyway, I read him for laughs as well as insights.

E.J. Dionne in London on London (and the other cities)

Interesting follow-up to the last post (on Goldstone). Here we have Dionne talking the politics of all of this (in GB). We (democracies) have a problem having an adult debate. Yes, condemn, arrest, and punish. Stop rioting, but riots don't just grow on trees, they grow out of bad conditions. No rioting here on Magowan Ave. Wonder why not? We can't condone or reward, but we (and I say "we" because it can happen here) or the Brits would be dumb not to address causes. We'll see.

Goldstone on London

Jack Goldstone's New Population Bomb, certainly a great new blog, has another interesting post today, and it's about London. Simply put, we only describe the situation when we say that people (some) are acting reprehensibly, criminally, etc. Of course, but the question we really need to ask is "why?". How do we explain this outbreak of violence? Goldstone has the credentials, and as his recent post on the French Revolution demonstrates, we can (in some measure) learn from history. I believe that his conjectures about London (and Greece earlier) are very persuasive. The police shooting in London was just the match: without fuel, the match doesn't do much of anything. Compare London today to the Rodney King riots in LA: another match in a blighted area. With increasing economic volatility, if not outright downturn, expect to see more of this type of social unrest. (BTW, consider similar underlying conditions in the Arab Spring.)

Krugma on Weston on Obama

Okay, if you've ever read this blog more than a few times you know that I think that Paul Krugman is usually right. I think that events have born him out on most significant issues. And, if like me, you read him in 2008 when Obama was running, you know that he was skeptical, and his skepticism has been born out. I suggest that you not only read this post, but the post he wrote at the time of the inaugural. Also, as an added treat, he gives a shout-out to Keynes that leads me to a new Keynes insight that I thought was original to me: that a depression or severe recession, then, as now, isn't marked or caused by some natural catastrophe (unlike, say the effects of the Japanese earthquake and tsunami), but by a faulty system. Damn, I think this Keynes guy was pretty smart!

Jack Goldstone on the Tea Party

Jack Goldstone offers a very perceptive appreciation of what's going on with the Tea party phenomena. In essence, he's saying that folks have reasons to be unhappy, but that their unhappiness is being funneled into an old Republican agenda that really doesn't address the reasons for their unhappiness very well. His attitude and perceptions judging the U.S. government and how it ought to work--and had worked successfully in the past--is on mark for my money. Like me, he understands that limits on government and on government regulation are important considerations, but that government and government regulation are often quite good. It's not an either/or proposition, but a balance. A fine piece for grasping the dynamics of our changing world.

Jack Goldstone's Advice to Obama

Jack Goldstone, a social scientist @ George Mason, has started a blog & today I note that he referenced the Drew Weston article in my previous post. But he does one better, in the linked-post, he explains what Obama could have and should have done in response to the Republican bargaining tactics. He's making some sound suggestions here that we all can wish that Obama would have pursued. For right now, the U.S. is getting the reputation of a deadbeat nation (with the rating downgrade), but we're still paying our bills.

Drew Weston on Obama

Drew Weston's lead article in the NYT today really hits on some important points in general and about Obama in particular:

1. The importance of narrative (the fancy word for story). As a trial lawyer, this important mode--the most important mode of conveying information--has been drilled into my head by communications experts and fellow trial lawyers. Weston makes the point:

Stories were the primary way our ancestors transmitted knowledge and values. Today we seek movies, novels and “news stories” that put the events of the day in a form that our brains evolved to find compelling and memorable. Children crave bedtime stories; the holy books of the three great monotheistic religions are written in parables; and as research in cognitive science has shown, lawyers whose closing arguments tell a story win jury trials against their legal adversaries who just lay out “the facts of the case.”

Obama was elected--in very large measure--on his story: the story of a bi-racial kid raised by a single mother in exotic locales, but he maintains close contact with his Midwestern grandparents,and those he learns to bridge multiple worlds and makes good, moving away from divides of race, etc. A great story. But what is his story now?

2. Weston contrasts Obama with the two Roosevelts, and Obama lacks in comparison. Both were fighters, both willing to take on "the bad guys". Now really, there are bad guys (not many, but some), and there are always those (virtually all of us) who will not give up the advantages and privileges that we have (a/k/a greed). If you want to take something away from say, Wall Street, or the rich, or seniors, or whomever, you're going to get a fight. You must fight. Fight and then negotiate. I do it every day. Obama only seems to want to negotiate. Weston contrasts Obama's lack of a fighting story with the attitude exhibited by the "Happy Warrior":

In a 1936 speech at Madison Square Garden, he [FDR] thundered, “Never before in all our history have these forces been so united against one candidate as they stand today. They are unanimous in their hate for me — and I welcome their hatred.”

3. Weston notes that Obama took many of his bearings from the work of Martin Luther King, Jr., surely a strong and relevant choice, but as Weston notes, King, too, fought--in the streets as well as with his moving oratory--for the cause that he championed. Obama seems to lack a cause and the will to champion it. Weston writes:

Those [Roosevelts'] were the shoes — that was the historic role — that Americans elected Barack Obama to fill. The president is fond of referring to “the arc of history,” paraphrasing the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s famous statement that “the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” But with his deep-seated aversion to conflict and his profound failure to understand bully dynamics — in which conciliation is always the wrong course of action, because bullies perceive it as weakness and just punch harder the next time — he has broken that arc and has likely bent it backward for at least a generation.

4. Weston goes on to argue that mere "centrist" positions are not enough, and that Obama may be bewitched by this siren song that seems to pull many Democrats, and then he goes on the raise potentially more fundamental flaws that Obama may suffer:

A second possibility is that he is simply not up to the task by virtue of his lack of experience and a character defect that might not have been so debilitating at some other time in history. Those of us who were bewitched by his eloquence on the campaign trail chose to ignore some disquieting aspects of his biography: that he had accomplished very little before he ran for president, having never run a business or a state; that he had a singularly unremarkable career as a law professor, publishing nothing in 12 years at the University of Chicago other than an autobiography; and that, before joining the United States Senate, he had voted "present" (instead of "yea" or "nay") 130 times, sometimes dodging difficult issues.

This is a troubling perspective. For all his gifts, he was (and largely is) a young man. He has not led a fight like this before. As a fellow lawyer, I have to note that he was a law professor (obviously very capable), but never (I think) a practicing lawyer, never an advocate. Lawyers who represent clients in court have to deal with real issues, take stands, make arguments--fight (compete) within the rules of the game. Often no one is happier to settle a case than me, as I know the risks of failure, but as I never tire of telling clients, the best settlement comes from the best trial preparation. You need to let the other side know that you'll fight and risk loss than settle cheap. (Sometimes you settle cheap if you have no case, but that's a different story.)

5. Having said all this, and expressed my reservations, I will of course support Obama's reelection. At his worst he's better than anyone that the Republicans will nominate. The Republican party is reverting to it's no-nothing roots of the 1840's. It is not the party of Lincoln, TR, Ike, or even Reagan. But to make his reelection count, Obama must stand up and push back.

The Perils of Openess

I'm posting this because I think Zakaria has a some good points, but mainly because he highlights the dangers of "openness" and "transparency". Yes, these can be good, but not always. A law professor of mind, who Arthur'd the Iowa Administrative Procedure Act,wrote some time ago in our local paper recommending further openness in state government. I didn't write a response, but I should have. In fact, sometimes you need the quiet of closed meetings to entertain matters, to float trial balloons and the like. He argued that "mold grows in the dark recesses", but I would counter with a different metaphor: seeds need the dark, damp hidden recesses of the soil to grow and sprout. Expose a plant to the sun too soon and it will shrivel-up and die. A good example of this is the constitutional convention of 1787: it was closed. Did it create a perfect constitution? No (for instance, it condoned slavery), but the convention probably would have failed if it had been open and transparent. Of course, the constitution did eventually go through an extremely detailed vetting before adoption (thus giving us the Federalist papers). Contrast this with the French convention in 1789 (or thereabouts): it was open, and its creation could not last. (Thanks to Jon Elster for this insight.) Anyway, openness and transparency have their downsides. Beware of reformers bearing gifts!

Fareed Zakaria on Defense Spending

I knew that military ("defense") spending has always been out of control, but I didn't realize by how much until I read this article. Incredible. While now might not be the time to take the ax to this overgrown tree, we should start trimming now with the thought of a whole new look over time.