What Obama Really Needs Is A Good LOSS

Politicians hate losing. For this reason, President Obama is contiunally counting congressional votes and pulling back from positions where it looks like he will lose if he pushes the issue to a final vote.

Because of this aversion to high profile losses, Obama has throughout his presidency pre-censored himself and avoided a prolonged push for, among other things, a Medicare option for all, elimination of the Bush tax cuts on the wealthy, a balanced approach to debt reduction, and a larger 2009 economic stimulus package. On those issues and others, the President has made his case briefly, if at all, and then quickly scaled back to win the necessary votes.

Presumably, Obama has done this because he worries that losing a big legislative vote will hurt his credibility. That’s valid, to a point. You don’t want to make a habit of losing legislative fights. But when the public is overwhelmingly on the President’s side, it’s an election year, and there is an important point of political differentiation to highlight, occassionally it is better fight and lose than to cave and “win.”

One issue where Obama should fight and lose is on a Fall 2011 jobs package. In the next few days, Obama should announce the kind of jobs package that he and his economic advisers believe will be best for the country, not the kind jobs package that can garner enough votes in a historically unpopular Congress. (At the same time, he should also announce longer-term deficit reduction proposals, to show that he also understands and values that long-term economic challenge as well.)

Recapping the Summer Campaign Season

Oh, what a difference a few months make.

At the end of May, loyal readers may recall that I gave you my sense of how the Republican field for president was shaping up.  At the time, I put four white guys – Romney, Huntsman, Pawlenty and Santorum – in the small category of candidates who could win their party’s nomination and could win in the general.

Turns out I was too generous by half.  Former Governor Pawlenty packed it in a day after a disappointing performance in the Ames straw poll and former Senator Santorum’s performance over the last couple of months suggests to me that he’s in it for the ideology not the office.  That leaves only former Governor Romney and former Governor Huntsman still in the sweet spot (with Huntsman there only out of courtesy as he hasn’t done much of anything since declaring in June).  Jeez, there’s a lot of former officeholders looking for work, isn’t there?

Overall, however, the dynamics of the Republican race haven’t changed much.  Romney is still considered to be the frontrunner by most pundits and many Republicans are still looking for someone else.  In just this year alone, we’ve seen flirtations with Donald Trump, Chris Christie, Mitch Daniel, Michelle Bachmann and – most recently – Rick Perry.  Even with the actual candidacies of the latter two, we’re still hearing wistful longing for more choices such as Paul Ryan, Marco Rubio and others.

As a result of all of this churn, my graphic representations of who’s best positioned to win the nomination and who’s best positioned to win the general have changed a little bit:

Among the most noteworthy changes:

• The rise and fall of Michele Bachmann.  I hope Ms. Bachmann has enjoyed her star turn because her best days on the campaign trail are behind her.  The entry of Rick Perry sucks away too much of her oxygen and her regularly scheduled lunatic ravings (“”I don’t know how much God has to do to get the attention of the politicians. We’ve had an earthquake; we’ve had a hurricane. He said, ‘Are you going to start listening to me here?’) are not playing well on the larger stage.  While she’s still in the consideration set, my perception is that she’s rapidly falling out of it.  If Michele Bachmann’s candidacy were something actually important – like, say, a nation’s AAA credit rating – we’d have it “under review with negative implications.”
• The entry of Rick Perry.  Governor Perry is an actual current governor so he’s got that going for him, but it’s interesting to note that after about a week’s worth of infatuation, the GOP intelligentsia started showing signs yet again of restlessness.  It will be interesting to see how the Aggie from west Texas holds up.
• The fall, fall, fall…fall of Newt Gingrich. Not since 1980 have I seen a major candidate as unprepared for a presidential run as Newt.  You have to go back to Ted Kennedy’s famous Roger Mudd interview in which he blew the softest softball question in presidential political history – “Why do you want to be president?” – to find a candidate screwing up so badly out of the gate.  Kennedy never recovered and Newt won’t either.
• The thud of Jon Huntsman.  Is he actually running for president?  Damned if I can tell.  Most days he’s invisible and when he does appear most of what he says is unmemorable.  Between his – relative – moderateness and his hesitancy to attack Obama as aggressively as others are doing, he’s often drowned out.
• The splitting of the field.  Discerning readers will note that the GOP field is bifurcating into a big mass of names around the pole marked “No Way” in terms of winning the GOP nomination.  This is a reflection less of ideology than of logistics.  If you ain’t in it now, the odds that you can get in it to win it are shrinking every day.  Running for president requires money, organization and strategy; if you don’t have a least 2 out of 3 by Labor Day you’re hosed.  Even Sara Palin though she may be crazy enough to think otherwise (that said, I’m about 90 percent sure she’s smart enough to stay out of this melee.

The weakness of the Republican field and the continued inability of its candidates to demonstrate how they can walk the whipsaw of the nomination and the general election continue to be the best thing President Obama has going for him as a re-election strategy. Usually, a sitting president with 9+ percent unemployment, sub-three percent economic growth, high gas prices and an unpopular war would be a one-term shoo-in.  The inability of the Republicans to come together around a viable candidate is the strongest reason he’s still in the game. Well, there’s the billion or so dollars he’s likely to raise, too.

Labor Day marks the unofficial start of the election season and the Iowa caucuses are just about five months away.  As Hank Williams Jr. might say, “Are you ready for some football?”

– Austin

Hey Democrats, Run this Ad.

So a very nice woman from the DFL calls the other night, asking for my help in the battle against those nefarious Republicans. Money help, you understand. Not any of my cheap deep thoughts about how to fight the bastards. And what do I do? … I go off on her. Maybe it’s the dog days of summer, maybe it’s seeing Eric Cantor’s face once too often in a given day, but there I am ranting crazy old three-day stubble geezer stuff at this (no doubt) unpaid volunteer, drinking bad coffee and working her way down a long list of “likely DFL voters”. (Think of that, the horror!)

I remember at least three uses of the word “hapless” in my rant, another demand to “at least get in the game” and various other indignant requests for her to tell me where the DFL party was when we needed a big Wisconsin-like rally out in front of the TV cameras to throw some pain in the faces of Kurt Zellers and Amy Koch as the shutdown loomed? It wasn’t my most dignified moment. If I were a classic Minnesota liberal I’d have said something like, “Well gosh, I just know that with my $50 you’ll talk some sense to those Tea Baggy people and we’ll get things all straightened out around here nice and tidy. Because, golly, I’m sure we’re all reasonable and want to do the best thing, don’t we?”

But I’m not (reasonable, about this stuff anymore). I didn’t give the DFL $50. In fact I think my last line was something like, “Call me back when you prove you can win something.”

So, guilty. Bastard-person. Crotchety, cranky, get-off-my-lawn, fast-slipping, borderline nutjob. Guilty.

But … being an old altar boy, after a day or two of marinating in guilt, I decided to become part of the solution and seek a kind of confessional renewal. So I created a TV ad that Democrats here and everywhere can have, free of charge, no royalties. All they have to do is play it twice a night in primetime and once on the late news in every Top 50 market in the country for, mmm, a month. Make it two months. After that I’ll cook up a new one.

Here’s the script:

Over a black screen … the Moog synthesizer solo from The Who’s “Won’t Get Fooled Again”.

Fade In: That still of good old dotty Ronnie Reagan in his Burbank backlot cowboy hat.

(Chyron … “1980”)

Voice over. (Either Sam Elliott or Jeff Bridges. Or a Rush Limbaugh impersonator).

“Ronald Reagan runs for president, promising a balanced budget.”

(Chyron … “1981 – 1989”) Under a fast montage of fired air traffic controllers, ludicrous Star Wars laser beams, the Nicaraguan contras, Ollie North, a happy looking Ayatollah Khomeini and Donald Rumsfeld shaking hands with Saddam Hussein … )

(VO): “With support from congressional Republicans, Reagan runs enormous deficits, adds $2 trillion to the debt.”

(Chyron: “1993”) Another montage of Bill Clinton’s first inauguration, a pouting Newt Gingrich and a screen shot of the House vote totals for the Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1993 …

(VO:) “Bill Clinton passes an economic plan that lowers the deficit. It gets zero votes from congressional Republicans. Not … one … vote.”

(Chyron: “1998”). Montage of stock market booming, McMansions, giant SUVs, Pamela Anderson …

(VO:) “The U.S. deficit disappears … for the first time in three decades. The national debt clock is unplugged.”

(Chyron: “2000”) Montage of Gore-Bush debates, “Brooks Brother rioters” storming election canvassers in Dade County, Dick Cheney …

(VO:) “George W. Bush runs for president, promising to maintain a balanced budget.”

(Chyron: “2001”) Montage of Antonin Scalia, Gore conceding, Bush inaugural motorcade being pelted with eggs …

(VO:) “The non-partisan Congressional Budget Office shows the United States is on track to pay off the entirety of its national debt — all of it — within a decade.”

(Chyron: “2001 – 2009”) Montage of Paul Wolfowitz, 9/11, “shock and awe”, Iraqi chaos, smiling Osama bin Laden, Tom DeLay, Karl Rove, Jack Abramoff and headlines of passage — by reconciliation — of a massive tax cut … ending with a sound clip of Dick Cheney saying, “Deficits don’t matter.”

(VO:) “Congressional Republicans agree. They approve huge new, ten-year tax cuts, two unbudgeted wars, and a Medicare expansion without even trying to pay for them. The effect is enormous deficits. Bush adds nearly $5 trillion to the debt.”

(Chyron: “2009”) Montage of Obama campaign, stock market cratering, Lehman Brothers bankrupt, McCain saying “the fundamentals of our economy are strong”, Sarah Palin winking, massive lay-offs and the inauguration …

(VO:) “Barack Obama inherits $1.3 trillion deficit from Bush and job losses of over 700,000 a month. Republicans immediately condemn Obama’s fiscal irresponsibility.”

(Chyron: “2009”) Montage of an unhappy looking Eric Cantor, John Boehner and Mitch McConnell, health care town hall confrontations, FoxNews talking heads railing about “death panels” …

(VO:) “Obama pushes several domestic policy initiatives — primarily including health care reform — designed to get a grip on the most negative drags on the economy, which will also lower the deficit. The GOP opposes every facet of reform, while continuing to demand deficit reduction.”

(Chyron: “September 2010”) Montage of headlines of Republicans abusing Senate filibuster rule at an unprecedented rate, Tea Party “revolutionaries” with misspelled signs, GM and Chrysler coming back from government protection …

(VO:) “In Obama’s first fiscal year, the deficit he inherited from George W. Bush actually shrinks by $122 billion. Republicans nevertheless condemn Obama’s fiscal irresponsibility and fight to maintain tax cuts for the very wealthy.

(Chyron: “October 2010”) Montage of signs of fledgling economic recovery … stimulus funds at work on roads, bridges, schools, laying fiber optic …

(VO:) “Standard & Poor’s reaffirms the nation’s AAA rating, saying the United States looks to be in solid fiscal shape for the foreseeable future.”

(Chron: “November 2010”) Montage of election disaster for Democrats. Smiling Mitch McConnell, Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Eric Cantor …

(VO:) “Republicans win a U.S. House majority, citing the need for fiscal responsibility.”

(Chyron: “December 2010”) Montage of Republicans wielding power … more McConnell, Boehner, Cantor, Michele Bachmann, Joe “You Lie!” Wilson …

(VO:) “Congressional Republicans demand extension of the Bush tax cuts, which requires tremendous new deficits. Simultaneously they continue to accuse Obama of fiscal irresponsibility.”

(Chyron: “March 2011”) Montage of debt ceiling images … more Cantor, Bachmann, McConnell …

(VO:) “Congressional Republicans declare their intention to hold the faith and credit of the United States hostage — a move without precedent in American history.”

(Chyron: “July 2011”) Sound clip of Obama offering a $4 trillion debt-reduction package … .

(VO:) “Republicans refuse the deal, because it would close loop holes for corporate jet owners and oil companies. The self-inflicted debt ceiling crisis rattles international markets, adding to financial instability. But they blame Obama.”

(Chyron: “August 2011”) Montage of markets in turmoil …

(VO:) “Standard & Poor’s downgrades the U.S. credit rating citing Republican GOP refusal to consider new revenues. Republicans rejoice at “getting 98% of what I wanted” and blame Obama for fiscal irresponsibility.”

Sound up of Roger Daltrey’s scream … and fade to black.

* Thanks to Steve Benen at The Washington Monthly for the guts of this rant.

Five Reasons To LOVE State Fair TV News Coverage

On the other hand...

Follow yesterday’s nastygram about State Fair “news” coverage, a TV reporter challenged me to look at the bright side of the issue. So, I’ve dug deep into my dark heart, and taken my special pills, and this is what I came up with:

Reason #1. Tradition. Woody Allen said “tradition is the illusion of permanence.” In a throwaway world – 3D is out and aromascope cards are in…DVD’s are out, streaming is in…Angry Birds is out Camelot Smashalot is in…Pawlenty and Bachmann are out, Perry is in — we need all the sense of permanence we can get. The State Fair, in all it’s sameness, represents that illusion of permanence that comforts us. Yes, we’ve heard the “on a stick” jokes hundreds of times. Yes, we see the same exhibits year after year. But that repetition of tales we’ve heard before creates a treasured thread in our Minnesota fabric. Shmaltzy? You betcha. But it’s OUR shmaltz.

Reason #2. It’s August, so no news is happening anyway. August is arguably the sleepiest news month of the year. The Legislature isn’t in session, Congress is recessing, the Vikings haven’t started, the Twins were done two months ago, high school and college sports is dormant, and the entire world is on vacation, it seems. Yes, a lot of non-news gets covered as news during the State Fair. But since there is virtually no news happening in August anyway, eh, what’s the harm?

Reason #3. The news comes to the State Fair, so reporters don’t need to go to the news. The State Fair effectively is one big, long, laid back news conference. News makers – elected officials, bureaucrats, businesspeople, and local celebrities – are all in Falcon Heights, and arguably more available to reporters and forthcoming than they are in their natural habitats. So the fact is, it would be hard to cover the news AWAY FROM Falcon Heights.

Reason #4. State Fair news coverage merely replaces fluff with fluff. The week after the State Fair, local news stations will be covering the latest in back-to-school supplies anyway. In other words, as bad as State Fair news coverage is, our local TV news coverage never gets much better. (I’m afraid my special medicine can’t eradicate all of my snark germs.)

Reason #5. State Fair news coverage represents community glue. Some of us like Fringe Fest, some of us hate it. Ditto with hockey, opera, action hero movies, chick flicks, cooking shows, politics, NASCAR, marathons, etc. But the Minnesota menagerie in Falcon Heights is the closest thing to a universal statewide event that we have, and probably that any state can ever hope to have these days. If you get stuck in an elevator with fellow Minnesotans, what commonalities can you discuss? The State Fair is on a very short list, and it’s important to have community commonalities over which we can bond. For our fellow Minnesotans who can’t make it to the Great Minnesota Get Together this year, maybe it’s a community service to bring it to their living room TVs, to keep them glued them into our all too fractured Minnesota community.

– Loveland

Five Reasons To HATE State Fair TV News Coverage

I loathe State Fair TV news coverage. And just to preempt the question, yes, I’m not “from here.”

The State Fair begins tomorrow, but State Fair TV news coverage started in roughly February. I’ve already been through a lot, so allow me my primal scream.

Reasons to hate on State Fair TV news coverage:

Reason #1: Because it crowds out all other news coverage. If in the next ten days Kurt Zellers comes out for a 75% tax on all Tea Party members’ Medicare benefits, the Vikings trade a 73-year old groundskeeper for Aaron Rodgers and Charles Woodson, and space aliens colonize a Mahtomedi strip mall, this much I promise you: You will not hear about it. No chance. Why? Because during the last 10 days of August there is sameness happening in Falcon Heights, Minnesota. And there is an unwritten rule in Twin Cities TV newsrooms: All that is the same in Falcon Heights must crowd out all that is new in the rest of the state. (Though to be fair, the crop art turns over every year.)

“It could be that his head wasn’t screwed on quite right. It could be, perhaps, that his shoes were too tight. But I think that the most likely reason of all may have been that his heart was two sizes too small.”

Reason #2: Because skinny people repeatedly fabricating overeating stories is never that funny. One of the many recurring gags we will suffer through during State Fair TV news coverage involves willowy anchors and svelte reporters exchanging witty repartee about how grotesquely bloated and obese they are from going all Joey Chestnut on Commoner Food all day long. Oh, the humanity! Their image consultants tell them that pretending to be like the binging masses will help their Nielsens. But make no mistake, they are mocking us, as they spit and rinse their Sweet Martha’s at station breaks, and nibble the sensible sack lunches packed by their personal nutritionists.

“And they’d feast! And they’d feast! And they’d FEAST! FEAST! FEAST!”

Reason #3: Because even hilarious jokes lose their charm when repeated the 653,776th time. “On a stick.” “Jokes” using those three hideous words will be repeated hundreds of times over the next 10 days on TV news. Though even Ed McMahon wouldn’t laugh the 653,776th time, you can count on our TV news friends to guffaw uproariously at every “on a stick” utterance, as if they just heard it for the first time. To make things worse, every PR person in town will put their client’s product or service on-a- stick – long term care insurance on-a-stick, get it?! — because it is the one guaranteed way to get coverage for your otherwise non-newsworthy client.

“They’d stand hand in hand and they’d start singing.”

Reason #4. Because Def Leppard hasn’t been remotely newsworthy for at least twenty years. …yet we can be certain that there will be a full length news story about them by every station. Why? Because for the last ten days or August, anything within earshot of the broadast booth is automatically deemed newsworthy. Plus, it’s so adorable when Frank tosses “Pour Some Sugar On Me” segues to Amelia.

“They’d sing! And they’d sing! AND they’d SING! SING! SING! SING!”

Reason #5. Because the 3.5 million Minnesotans who avoid the Fair every year are people too. One of the most fascinating parts of State Fair news coverage – and it’s quite a competition — is regular attendance updates. Spolier alert: The number will astound the reporters. Last year, it was 1.77 million. Though I’ve always suspected that’s probably the same 177,000 mini-donut addicts coming back each of the ten days, for the sake of argument, I’ll accept the number. Even using that number, that leaves something like 3.56 million of us — about two-thirds of all Minnesotans, I’ll have you know — who have chosen NOT to attend the State Fair. And maybe, just maybe, those of us who chose to stay away from the Great Minnesota SweatTogether would rather the news broadcast contain a little actual NEWS.

“Why for fifty-three years I’ve put up with it now! I MUST stop it from coming! …But HOW?”

There. I’m better now. Nothing like a good rant. On a stick.

– Loveland

In Praise of Corporations and Other Leviathans

Recently, I’ve had a series of interactions with large organizations that have been shockingly…pleasant.

Some of you may wonder why this qualifies as news, but I suspect more share my sense of wonder that I could string together enough positive experiences to break through my day-to-day mindset that it’s a good day when I only get roughed up a little by the large institutions in my life.

“Wait,” you may be thinking, “isn’t this supposed to be the ‘Age of the Customer?’ Didn’t all that harping in business books and by consultants about being customer-focused, customer-centric, service-oriented make every consumer a member of royalty? All that data they collect, all that processing power, all that data mining and real-time CRM tools available to frontline employees; isn’t that supposed to make sure that every facet of every organization recognizes us and our preferences? Didn’t the rise of the global supply chain, the Internet and the long-tail theory make the phrase ‘mass customization’ a reality?”

Yeah, right. Press or say “1” to hear polite guffawing. Press or say “2” to hear outright braying.

The reality, as most of us know, is way short of the ideal. The reality is that, despite the lip-service about how important their customers are, most businesses are customer-focused in the same way that Willie Sutton was bank-focused; because that’s where the money is. The reality is that the technologies that were supposed to let businesses find new ways to please customers are more likely being used to analyze the potential profit-maximizing strategy for each consumer. The reality is that the global supply chain is a wonderful thing…until it breaks and the seven businesses that brought you your widget decide the problem isn’t theirs. The reality is that Amazon is a wonderful embodiment of long-tail theory, but God help you if you want to get someone on the phone.

From a day-to-day perspective, the trends of the last two decades mean that end consumers are doing more work for themselves – we make our own plane reservations, pump our own gas, check out our own groceries, perform “some assembly required” tasks – and that more customer services processes are automated – we check our bank balances on line or over the phone, get money from ATMs, check the status of a shipment, all without a human on the other end of the transaction.

When stuff works, these trends have been good for most consumers (though not all; good luck, for example, if you’re one of the cohort of senior citizens who don’t like to use computers). I like – for the most part – being able to book my own travel and such. I don’t miss having to race to the bank by 3:00 or wondering when the FedEx guy is coming.

The system breaks down, though, when your issue or need falls outside the parameters of the system. When that happens – because something is unclear to you, because something got lost, something broke, because your needs are unique or your request is unforeseen – you’re sunk. If there are ten options on the phone tree and your issue doesn’t fall into one of them, odds are good that there’s no help for you. Pressing “0” for a human might work, but you’re just as likely in my experience to get a person who is about as rigidly scripted as the automated system you just ran from.  If there’s a page in their manual or in their knowledge base that pertains to your issue, great.  If not, though, you can pretty much expect bupkus in terms of satisfaction.

But, I digress.  I really did start this post with the intent of praising a few organizations who have made a positive experience in my life recently:

• Apple.  The company that Steve built (and saved) is far from perfect, but in the last two weeks Grace, a Genius in the company’s Uptown store, has given me two very positive experiences.  The first time I came in with two – that’s two – broken iPhones that I fully expected to have to replace because of the nature of the damage and the time left on the contracts.  Without being asked, Grace replaced them both…for free.  Yesterday, I brought my broken iPad into the store and received the same relaxed, positive “let’s just replace it” treatment.

Bless you Grace and kudos to Apple for giving frontline employees the latitude to make expensive decisions like that because they’re in the best interest of the customer.

• Mozilla:  If you use Firefox, you are a Mozilla customer.  Yes, it’s free and your expectations have to be set accordingly, but even so, you have the right to a certain level of performance.  Thus, I was thrilled – thrilled I say again – to find that in the latest version of their software, the developers have fixed the memory leakage problems that used to drive me crazy.  Huzzah to all the unpaid developers out there who contributed to the improvements.

• And, finally, to the Hennepin County Government Center in Edina for being a model of how local government can provide services efficiently and beneficially for their constituents.  I think the longest I’ve ever waited there is maybe 30 minutes and generally – like today – I’m in and out in 15 minutes or less.  Really, really excellent service.  Lest you Minnesotans take this for granted, please take it from someone who used to take a full day off from work to get his license renewed in DC that this is not the norm.

OK, enough about me.  What’s been your experience – good or bad – with large institutions lately?

– Austin

MnDOT Battles Minnesota Nice

Zip it.

Governments conduct public education campaigns on many important issues, but I especially have zeal for a righteous cause being promoted by our Minnesota Department of Transportation (MnDOT) – the Zipper Merge movement.

During Minnesota’s construction season, drivers are frequently required to merge due to a closed lane. And merge they do. In fact, they overmerge. Seemingly in a silent competition to showcase how doggone polite and law-abiding each of them is, Minnesota Nice drivers tend to merge the nano-second they learn of the lane closure.

The problem is, this early merging leaves vast expanses of unused road capacity in the merging lane. And as we all know, unused road capacity is a priceless commodity in a construction zone. Unused road capacity aggravates traffic congestion. It costs millions per mile to construct urban freeways, and yet we leave them vacant?

In this particular scenario, Minnesota Nice effectively becomes Minnesota Moronic.

But thank goodness, MnDOT has come to the rescue with it’s Zipper Merge campaign. Instead of the “early merge” the Minnesota Nicers use, drivers are urged by MnDOT to “zipper merge,” or drive to the very end of the merging lane before taking turns merging. When the zipper merge is done correctly, an aerial view of the lane looks like a closing zipper, with little-to-no unused road space.

This utilitarian MnDOT video won’t win any cinematic or soundtrack awards, but it explains the concept well enough.

So, my oh-so-nice Minnesota neighbors, please repeat after me: Zipper Merging is our friend. Zipper Merging is not rude. Zipper Merging makes maximum use of the merging lane, and consequently reduces construction-related congestion. Therefore, Zipper Merging is what good neighbors do for each other.

But despite MnDOT’s best efforts, the Zipper Merge remains a VERY challenging concept for most Minnesotans. It still feels naughty to them, like budging in the school cafeteria line on Tater Tot hotdish day.

The situation isn’t helped by vigilante drivers, who are apparently so convinced that the Zipper Merge represents highway robbery that they straddle the two lanes so as to clog the zipper, and force inefficient, self-defeating early merging. Needless to say, sometimes the communications between the Zippers and the Minnesota Nice vigilantes gets Minnesota Nasty.

So anyway, you go, MnDOT. I’ll happily march with you to right this wrong.

– Loveland

Sound the Horns of Armageddon!

As dizzy as I am at the thought that anyone — anywhere — sees yet another not particularly bright, ultra-right wing Texas governor as the solution to all the problems rung up by the last not particularly bright or hard-working Texas governor, you know the $5 trillion in debt from a combination of a tax revenue giveaway to the richest of the rich, two unfunded wars, a huge unfunded prescription drug benefit (to major pharmaceutical corporations) and a grinding recession largely inspired by crony-capitalism and the systematic gutting of federal financial regulatory agencies, “The Solution” has arrived. He is here folks, and his name is Rick Perry, the guy most likely to face-off against Barack Obama next year.

In a normal world I try to restrain myself from hysterical, apocalyptic prophesying. But in this case … what the hell? Everyone else is doing it, and Perry is about to launch a national campaign on it. And it works.

As we saw when all eight of the previous GOP candidates raised their hands in Ames last week and vowed to reject a deficit-reducing plan that included as little as a 10-to-1 ratio of spending cuts to revenue increases, the prevailing stratagem in GOP politics today is the refusal by all involved to be out-hyperbolized by any of the others. Put another way, however radical the statements of any of the others may be — and we’re talking Michele Bachmann, Herman Cain, Ron Paul and Rick Santorum for chrissakes — there is always room even further out for a candidate willing to go there … and they all are, except maybe Jon Huntsman.

But in Rick Perry … oh lord, (and I do mean “Lord”) … the Republicans now have a nearly ideal caricature for the modern conservative movement. Here is a guy who is truly post-rational, post-accountable and post-shameful in his rhetoric and tactics, and someone so shamelessly sold off to the biggest money interests in Texas he won’t worry for a second where his next barrage of God-inspired attack ads will come from. In any other time, Perry would be a non-starter based any of a dozen absurdly flagrant abuses of logic and influence. But this is not that kind of time. Much the contrary. As long as the talk radio/Tea Party ethos maintains control over the Republican party there is no penalty and only benefit for breathtaking fabrication, hysteria and demagoguery. (Have you seen his first TV ad?) This stuff is selling, and Rick Perry, much more than “weird” Mormon Mitt Romney (for whom 25% of base Republicans say they “could” never vote) is the strutting apotheosis of everything the New Republican desires most.

Ladies and gentlemen, Rick Perry not only will be the Republican nominee, his candidacy will ignite the afterburners on the culture wars in the good old USA. And he could easily win. All his gaffes and sell-outs to major business interests are irrelevant to those who want nothing more than the defeat of Barack Obama and a restoration of a corporate-fueled theocracy of George W. Bush. The crowd that wants Obama destroyed simply don’t care if anything … anything … their standard-bearer says is true, much less whether he has any concerns whatsoever for their day-to-day well-being. The defeat/destruction of Barack Obama is a matter of apocalyptic necessity to the new GOP base and of the current crop, only Rick Perry brings enough of the ammo to get the job done.

We are about to behold a media spectacle of unprecedented irrationality and rabble-rousing … and it will unfold under the banner of God himself.

Other than that, have a great day.

Third Parties: 2012 Election’s Critical Missing Piece

In the wake of the Iowa straw poll – a particularly charming incarnation of the poll tax– and the late entry of Texas Governor Rick Perry, the news media is telling us that that the 2012 presidential field is starting to congeal.

Except that it’s not. Not even close. Because we don’t yet know what will happen with third parties. In the end, third parties might very well impact the selection of the next President more than the outcome of the GOP primaries and caucuses that are dominating the news.

At a time when the American electrate is about evenly divided between the two major political parties, and huge numbers are turned off by both parties, this 2012 presidential election could hinge on which third party, or parties, emerges to relative prominence. If it’s a liberal-friendly third party ticket that dominates the third party space in 2012, Obama will almost certainly lose. If it’s a conservative-friendly third party dominating, Obama could still pull it out, despite the environmental mega-trends – lack of peace or prosperity — working against his reelection.

A third party ticket led by Ron Paul, Sarah Palin, Donald Trump or their ilk looms on the right, and a ticket led by Ralph Nader, Dennis Kucinich, Bernie Sanders or their ilk looms on the left. I’m as interested in those melodramas as I am about the more high profile Perry, Bachmann, Romney scrum.

And beyond the third party machinations on the left and right fringes, keep your eyes on a new third party wild card this year – Americans Elect. Americans Elect looks like it will be a centrist party, and is being promoted by center-left voices like syndicated columnist Thomas Friedman. Here is how they explain themselves.

Eco-Unfriendly

The big winner in last night’s GOP presidential debate was, of course, none of the above.  The big loser was the planet we inhabit with those knuckleheads. Not surprisingly, the all-Fox panel of interrogators didn’t pose a single question about the environment.  And, with one exception, none of the candidates had anything to say about the subject.

The exception was Jon Huntsman, the whiny and lethargic former governor of Utah and Obama ambassador to China, who referred…not once but twice…to an “EPA reign of terror.” Mr. Huntsman didn’t offer any specifics, but made it clear that the one of the major obstacles standing between our country and longterm economic prosperity is the pollution agency’s heavy-handed, soul-destroying, business-drowning regulatory oversight of…well, again, he didn’t really say. But let’s give him full marks for going all in.

Apparently, it’s republican gospel that a healthy economy is fundamentally incompatible with clean air and water, inconsistent with the careful licensing of pesticides, and forever at odds with any attempt to limit the production of greenhouse gases that have already set in motion catastrophic climate change. Well, it’s their religion and they are welcome to it.

But put me down as doubtful that EPA actions can be fairly called a “reign of terror.” Just over four decades old…the EPA was established by President Nixon in 1970 after his administration conducted a lengthy review of federal policy on environmental matters…the agency has a checkered history. In the early days it aggressively cancelled a number of dangerous pesticides. But eventually the chemical companies…who are responsible for the safety testing of their own products…learned how to game the system. Potentially dangerous products can remain on the market for years as the EPA reviews study after study.  And the agency now confronts a whole new category of safety concerns over compounds that mimic or interfere with hormones. The EPA has developed new assays for such effects, but it has been slow going and will likely remain so.

As for the idea that the agency will one day begin to regulate greenhouse gases…we’ll have to be patient. Very patient. Republicans in congress have proposed legislation to block any such regulation…again operating on an article of faith that global warming is either a hoax or something that would cost too much to do anything about.

So if you have a concern for good old planet Earth, President Obama must be your man. Because unlike the republicans, he is deeply committed to protecting the environment. Just look at everything he’s done for it during his first term. You have to look hard, I’ll admit. Okay, really really hard. You’ve gotta try. Go ahead. Try.

Minnesota Execptionalism

Miracle Man.

Texas Governor Rick Perry is the news media’s Flavor of the Month. He’s getting rave reviews, much of it focused on the miracle economy he has reportedly engineered. When you Google “Rick Perry unemployment rate” this morning, you will be treated to several thousand articles gushing that Texas’s unemployment rate is a point lower than the national unemployment rate.

So, Rick Perry is all in. As the great Texas anthropologist Jerry Jeff Walker observed, “when a Texan fancies, he’ll take his chances, chances will be taken.”

Perry’s rave reviews have to rankle Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty. Because when you look at economic and quality of life numbers through Minnesota goggles, Texas doesn’t look so miraculous.

• MN unemployement rate is 6.7%. TX is 8.2%. US is 9.1%.
• MN median household income is $54,403. TX is $53,009. (adjusted for cost-of-living)
• MN heath insurance rate is 91%. TX is 76%. US is 85%.
• MN infant mortality rate is 4.8%. TX is 6.5%. US is 6.9%
• MN high school graduation rate is 85.4%. TX is 65.3%. US is 70.1%

Texas envy?

So, remind me again, why do we want Minnesota and the whole nation to become like Rick Perry’s Texas?

Yes, taxes in Texas are lower than in Minnesota, and just about every other place on the planet. If your life’s ambition is to pay as little taxes as possible, Mr. Perry might well be the low bidder. But I lived in Texas as a poor student – hook ‘em Horns — and I can tell you that you get what you pay for. If your life’s ambition is for your family to have a decent income, good health care, and healthy, smart kids, Perry may not be your guy. The numbers tell the story.

Of course, Tim Pawlenty is no miracle worker either. Under Pawlenty, Minnesota took a dramatic step backwards. Thanks to Pawlenty’s cuts in state health coverage programs, uninsurance rates went from 6.6% to 9.1, a 29% freefall. Real median income has declined by 9%, which is twice as fast as the nation as a whole. Minnesota fell from 8th in the nation in per capita income to 14th. And despite throwing $150 million in handouts to business owners through his aborably named JOBZ program, job growth under Pawlenty was 0.5%, lowest of any of the former Governor’s seeking the presidency.

But give Governor Pawlenty his due. It’s not like he drove us below Rick Perry’s Texas.

– Loveland

Wings

I don’t yet number myself among the 40,000 or so Minnesota duck hunters who have abandoned the sport. But it’s increasingly obvious that duck hunting is abandoning those of us who still have the patience to hunker down in a frozen slough for hour after hour, waiting for a moment that never comes. More often than not now–on gloriously beautiful fall days as well as on those gray, stormy ones duck hunters love–the skies are empty and the whistle of wings overhead is a memory.

To be sure, on the best day any duck hunter ever had the act of pulling the trigger and taking a bird from the air was a miniscule part of the whole experience. Duck hunting is almost entirely about watching and waiting…a Zen-like activity that is only intermittently interrupted for a few seconds of actual shooting. The minutes and hours pass by and you talk to your hunting companions or to your dog or to yourself, always hoping that in the next instant you’ll be brought into action. These are the spaces that make up a duck hunter’s lot, and in recent years they’ve grown longer and longer as fewer ducks come this way.

Everyone says the flyway has moved west…or at least the ducks have moved to one further in that direction. Maybe so. Things change. And if that means I’ll soon change too, that I’ll trade days on the water for days in the field going after other birds in other places, well, I’ll miss the ducks.  But mostly I’ll miss the waiting and watching. Duck hunters see great things.

I remember one morning years ago, as my brother-in-law and I were pushing a duck boat through a vast stand of wild rice far ahead of the dawn, when a huge meteor blazed across the sky, an almost blinding streak of green-and-yellow fire so intense and so seemingly close that I half expected to hear a hiss as it fell into the lake we were on.

And I remember another morning on that same lake when we shoved off at 3 a.m. to make sure we got to our favorite hunting place ahead of some local boys who’d figured it out too. The black night was warm and close and clear. Overhead the Milky Way was bright enough to cast your shadow on the ground and the aurora borealis was shooting undulating ribbons of purple and green and red across the sky from horizon to horizon. Away from the landing we opened up the motor and slid between a series of small islands that seemed to float darkly on the water. It was dead calm and when I looked down at the perfect mirror that was the surface of the lake it reflected the whole universe above. I looked down and saw stars and the northern lights streaming by below me, and when I looked up toward the edge of the world I couldn’t tell where the earth stopped and the sky began. It was like flying through space.

When we got to where we were going to hunt as the sun came up we cut the motor well offshore and rowed silently toward the sounds of ducks dabbling and quacking among the rushes. We drifted there for a long time, with duck music heralding the imminent arrival of daybreak. I can’t remember if we got anything that day or not.

Simple Certainty and “The Tree of Life”

I went to see “The Tree of Life” again the other night. I had seen it up in Duluth a few weeks ago and, as a lifelong movie fan, someone who has seen literally thousands of movies and by Oscar time every year has seen all the Best Picture nominees and most of the foreign films, I sat in the theater afterward, with lights up and the end credits rolling stunned at the richness and density of the intellectual and emotional experience of the previous two hours and fourteen minutes. It was an experience similar to only a handful of films in lo these many years.

By most of the standard definitions, “The Tree of Life” isn’t a “movie” as we commonly think of such things. It is wholly unconventional, despite the conventional-seeming characters at its core. It makes essentially no attempt at escapism for escapism sake, at least not in the sense that you pay your $10 to spend time in a dark theater in the company of beautiful people saying clever things while having amazing adventures, after which you depart remembering virtually nothing other than that you didn’t think of your knucklehead boss, the VISA bill, that rattle under the car or why your spouse was sulking around the day before. Yet “the Tree of Life” is a thing, a flowing object, of true beauty, perhaps for being so appreciative of the beauties of both the natural and human-fabricated world.

Offered as a sensory exploration of the purpose of existence/life, it is profoundly religious, as all great art is, with none of the simple certainties and superficial pieties that have sapped organized religions of their credibility in the minds of everyone who respects the relentless, dispassionate accumulation of science-driven knowledge in human life.

Suspecting the Duluth moment was an aberration, a felicitous convergence of extraneous factors in my life projected by me into a film aspiring to something more than parent company stock price-boosting boffo blockbuster box office receipts, I was stunned again watching it in vivid digital at the Showplace Icon theaters in St. Louis Park. “The movies” (like so much of our organized religions) are a chronically underachieving, self-debasing art form, rarely aspiring to more than making a buck by reiterating the stock platitudes of pulp drama and comedy. Evil exists. If you persist, good will win out. Even the most wretched among us, morally or economically, can emerge “victorious” in the end. We’ve seen it all thousands of times.

“The Tree of Life” is a decades long project, assembled bit by bit before actual production, with actors (Brad Pitt, Sean Penn, Jessica Chastain) in Texas in 2008, by 68 year-old Terrence Malick, one of the very rare American film directors who has no interest in the Hollywood celebrity mill and a lot of interest in vast number of ways film can inspire imagination, reflection and continued fascination with the endless facets of life in the universe. And this from a movie whose “story” is nothing more unusual than that of a decent, loving, normal middle-class family in small town America in the late 1950s.

As the obsessive fan I describe above, Malick is well-established in my Pantheon of film artists. Up there with Ingmar Bergman, Federico Fellini, Luis Bunuel and Stanley Kubrick. A similarly vivid memory, from a hot day in 1974, was leaving the State Theater in downtown Minneapolis after seeing Malick’s film, “Badlands”, loosely based on the Starkweather-Fugate crime spree of the late ’50s. At a much more tender age than now, I was convinced I had seen something different, richer and better than almost anything else calling itself “a movie”.

Just one of the qualities of “The Tree of Life” that impressed me was Malick’s continued growth as an artist. Film “art” is so much about the sequencing of compositions. Compositions of imagery based on observation and imagination, underlaid with natural sound, the spoken word and overlaid with music. Using all the technology available to a 21st century filmmaker — Steadicams, Hubble Space Telescope photography, CGI animation, digital sound and projection — it is tremendously reassuring to see that Malick has continued his growth through the decades.

Like Kubrick, who he has cited as a significant influence on his work, in terms of both meticulous attention to craft and audacity of concept, (a key criteria of art), Malick finds intellectual renewal and revitalization in the complexities of life. A summa cum laude philosophy student at Harvard, a Rhodes scholar and a teacher of philosophy at MIT, Malick finds it in a scientific examination of the origins of perceptions and values and the exploration of his and the audiences’ layers of consciousness. Layers that may … may … lead at least to acceptance of powers (biological, atavistic) greater than us, in lieu of the more commercial, but invariably futile promise of simple, certain understanding.

Point being, and this is where all this folds back to the familiar context of this blog, simplicity and certainty is a fraud. A salable fraud, to be … certain, as we see in the worst excesses of organized religion and demagogic political rhetoric, but a fraud none the less. Worse, the assertion of simple certainties has a dulling effect on popular imagination, effectively slowing and shutting off the curiosity that sees beauty and challenge in complexity and ambiguity.

“The Tree of Life” suggests a constant wavering of balance between the state of nature, our aeons-old biological instincts, and the state of grace, our recently acquired consciousness, capable of recognizing and responding to both beauty and death.

At a moment when vital footings of culture — government and finance — are on the verge of stagnation, largely because of a fear of the ever accelerating expansion of complexity in a world of unprecedented new knowledge and interconnectivity, the appeal and propagation of simple certainties seems very much like the dinosaur we see in one sequence of “The Tree of Life”. It comes upon a fellow member of the species injured, perhaps dying, in a shallow stream. Through it’s testing gestures it seems capable of the faintest spark of empathy, but it simply isn’t at the point of evolution, in the growth of the tree of life, to do anything other than observe another creature’s misfortune and go on about its predatory hunting.

Grace — the application of art on nature — is still millions of years in the future.

Visual Editorializing

I concur with the Star Tribune’s take on U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann’s Newsweek cover photo. The Strib’s Jill Burcum wrote:

The photo isn’t just unflattering. It goes way beyond that, making the three-term Congresswoman look unbalanced. It’s the kind of photo you expect to see in a political attack ad, not on the cover of a mainstream news magazine.

After its photo shoot, Newsweek surely had a large stock of flattering proofs, along with some unflattering ones. Newsweek chose a bad one, and that constitutes a cheap shot.

Burcum also maintains that the Newsweek cover photo decision had a gender component:

Conservative blogger Michelle Malkin is also raising fair concerns about unflattering photos of other conservative women, among them Condoleeza Rice. I’d say that the many ghastly shots of Democrat Hillary Clinton’s cankles and pantsuits through the years suggest gender is the issue, not politics.

I agree that female politicians’ looks get over-analyzed. But then again, Mitt’s plastic hair and expensive suits, Newt’s girth, Huck’s weight loss, Pawlenty’s mullet, John Edwards’ dazzling dental assets, Obama’s shirtless beach shots are hardly ignored in the news media.

Moreover, Bachmann is not the first politician to be portrayed by the media in photos that are markedly less flattering their official photo. Some of the others are liberal, and men.

Visual editorializing cuts across gender and ideology. It is more insidious than verbal editorializing, because it is more subtle and subliminal. News outlets aren’t obligated to use leaders’ official glamour shots every single time. But there is no good reason to go out of the way to show them at their visual worst.

– Loveland

Give the Enemy a Name.

Ok, I’ve settled down. But there is nothing to be happy about. My biggest problem in constructing a response to the debt ceiling debacle and the “bi-partisan” deal that put a momentary end to the recklessness and nihilism is trying to say the same thing in a different way. Because, frankly, I’ve pretty much melted down my thesaurus over the argument that there is nothing … nothing … “bi-partisan” about the modern conservative political strategy. The Republicans are playing a zero sum game, in D.C. and in virtually every state, and Democratic leaders are looking like feckless chumps as they maintain their “adult in the room” posture.

In the final days of the debt ceiling idiocy I was fascinated by the ethical dilemma facing Barack Obama. While I was personally in favor of an LBJ-style move, like invoking the 14th amendment and basically saying, “Fuck it, sue me”, that is exactly what the GOP would have done. They would have launched another all-out, all-consuming impeachment crisis, led by Rush Limbaugh and the echo chamber, with Teabaggers clogging DC for months to come. Talk about a steroid speedball for the semi-literate.

But that aside, Obama had two choices, neither of which served the best interests of the country, which is pretty much what he swore an oath to do.

1: Beat the Republicans at chicken and let the country/world experience what they wrought. Sean Hannity, Michele Bachmann and the other intellectual leaders of modern conservatism were convinced that nothing really so bad would go down. A few delayed checks to grannies (who would blame “the government”/ i.e. “Obama”) but none of the rest of that hysterical stuff about inflating mortgage and revolving credit interest rates. (Not that they really knew or cared.) If you take the view, as I do, that none of this obstructionist stuff is going to stop until a calamity stamps it on the public mind as the indisputable result of the work of Eric Cantor, Americans for Prosperity, FreedomWorks and Mitch McConnell we are doomed to repeat these self-inflicted crises month after month after month after … .

But given that Obama takes his oath and responsibilities seriously, and there was no way of knowing every consequence of a default, he couldn’t, within his Constitutional code of ethics, allow such a thing to happen.

2: With any unilateral action unavailable to him, the ethics of conceding to a budget negotiation over the debt ceiling became Obama’s principal challenge. He knows, like every responsible economist, and hell, even the reliably cynical analysts at J.P. Morgan that about the worst thing you can do to the country at this point is suck still more money out of the economy, whether through entitlement “reform” (which is code for replacing lower-cost government services for much higher-cost, but well-lobbied, private coverages) or even defense spending. The latter needs no end of reform, but the sad fact is that it pays for a lot of high-tech, professional jobs, a better proposition than the GOP’s vision of full-employment via McDonalds and Wal-Mart greeting. (What we need is a WPA-type project that converts the tech-savvy industries away from building yet another aircraft carrier or joint strike fighter to reconstruction of the energy grid and any of hundreds of long-overdue economy-boosting infrastructure improvements. Same tax dollars, much bigger bang.)

Given the votes, Obama chose the latter. No default. Life functions “stable”. Live to fight another day. I get that.

But as in Minnesota, where Mark Dayton essentially let the GOP walk away singed but not scarred, Obama continues to fail at use clear, precise and entirely fair and accurate language from the bully pulpit. (Not that he ever comes close to being an actual bully, unfortunately.) Hell, even yesterday he’s on TV describing the FAA shutdown as a problem of “Congress leaving town without doing its job”. No … when you’re the President of the United States and you have the microphone you tell the public that airline safety is imperiled, thousands of workers — “jobs”! — at airport/infrastructure construction projects are left without a paycheck, and the Treasury is losing millions of dollars in revenue, because THE REPUBLICAN PARTY is playing the hostage game again, this time because it wants to bust up union rights within the FAA.

Put another way, you stop pretending that eventually, if you maintain your dignity, the Republicans will come to their senses and return to the spirit of the 1960s and 70s. They won’t. Especially when they’ve tasted blood like they have in this latest fiasco. As long as you, the face of the government, continue to let them off easy as, “part of the Washington problem”, or “Washington playing politics” or whatever the gauzy euphemism-of-the-day, the 60% of the public who have no idea who John Boehner is, much less Cantor and — no chance here at all — Karl Rove’s FreedomWorks, have no other name to fix their animosity on … other than you, Mr. President, for not doing something about it all.

The opposition, which Obama persistently refers to as “having the best interests of the country at heart”, is single-minded. It has one goal, and one goal only. His defeat. What consequences ensue are acceptable collateral damage. And Obama continues to behave as though he is unaware of that.

Damned blood pressure.

Expecting More From News-Sponsored Polls

Last week, MinnPost released its inaugural public opinion poll, another step in it’s maturation as an increasingly central part of the Minnesota news landscape. I maintain polls are an important part of news coverage in a democracy, and Minnpost proved it last week when it was the first to tell the story of the public blaming Republicans, by a 2-to-1 margin, for the bitterly debated government shutdown. After months of wonky budget debate coverage, it was interesting to read about the public verdict, as measured by a random sample survey. Our little MinnPost is growing up.

But I have higher aspirations for MinnPost. In the future, I hope MinnPost polls will focus on more than just “approval,” “blame,” and “if the election were held today” questions. Goodness knows, that ground is already covered ad nauseum by the Star Tribune, Pioneer Press, Minnesota Public Radio, University of Minnesota Humphrey School, St. Cloud State and many others.

I hope MinnPost, or someone else in that pack, also asks questions that probe the values underpinning the opinions. For example, they could ask something like this: