Thoughts on politicians and reality television

So I have never actually seen an episode of Sarah Palin's Alaska, not so much out of devotion to the principle that presidential candidates should possess gravitas, but more because I find that working the television is complicated and I am never sure which remote I am supposed to use to change the channel. It does occur to me, though, that there if there were to be a show called Barack Obama's Chicago, which would entail, like, candid interviews with the UChicago Law faculty and most importantly clips of Obama playing basketball with Richard Epstein, I would so watch that.

sotu (ii) -- reactions

10:25: Krauthammer: "strained and unctuous." "feel pain," channeling of Clintonism. Where is Kenneth Anderson to talk about therapy and the overclass, when you need him? Washington = seven times, as pejorative.

10:26: McDonnell, my governor, is doing the Republican response. Interesting choice.

10:28: Ilya: "My boss!"

10:29: Ilya: Scott Brown instead? Me: that would be glibly triumphalist.

10:30: A.B. Stoddard of The Hill, whoever she is -- shallow optimism? Ilya -- it's his job. You're supposed to be optimistic! Saying "things really suck" is impolitic.

Steve Hayes: no pivot centerward. Comprehensive climate legislation. Seriously? Ditto health care.

10:32: Ilya: this speech was missing a "drill, baby, drill."

10:33: Ilya: who are these people in the VA State House? Me: People cooler than us. Ilya: They don't look cool.

McDonnell's twin boys are fraternal. No?

Ilya: If you can avoid saying anything about how women should stay at home, I'll be happy.

McDonnell: meaningful work, dignity that comes with it. Am getting distracted, thinking of IJ right to work cases.

10:34: McDonnell has blue tie, Obama red. Did they plan the color reversal?

Ilya: there's an ethnically balanced group of people sitting behind him. Also, woman, and military dude.

10:35: Jefferson quote. Ilya: hear, hear!

10:36: Ilya: would that Republicans meant it about limited government a few years ago. Yes. Me too. Me too.

10:37: I don't want cooperation. But the VA State House building is nice.

Buy health insurance across state lines! YAY!

10:38: Why do we have to be energy independent, Ilya? Ilya: we don't.

10:40: choices, charter schools, all to the good.

10:41: commends daughter for military leadership. This is good, esp. given his earlier remarks about women.

Scott Brown reference.

10:42: "equal opportunity."

10:43: Me: "Republicans are so palatable when they're in opposition." Ilya: also, there are good Jefferson quotes. Would that they had ruled by these principles for the past eight years.

There is a Scripture quote, just so that the two of us don't sleep TOO easy.

10:45: liberty, property, and "innocent life." Me: just so that I don't find Republicans too palatable. Ilya: well, that was sufficiently oblique that it would appease the faithful, without a lot of people getting it.

Maybe.

10:47: Yes. Better than Jindal.

10:49: Juan Williams: McDonnell = pragmatist, someone who can find common ground. Yes, I agree.

liveblogging of State of the Union

9:00: Cannot remember how to work TV, due to not having watched anything but Netflix DVDs for four months.

9:01: Yell at Pnin to come upstairs and fix the TV. Pnin fixes it.

9:02: Start flipping around channels, trying to get to one that has the State of the Union. It occurs to me how much dumber the rest of the country that does not obsessively read the Volokh Conspiracy and the Atlantic is. Apparently, people are fascinated by thin, beautiful, and vapid teenagers, and also grotesquely, by the morbidly obese. Recall reading piece in Dartmouth Review kvetching about the anti-intellectualism of confusing St. Augustine of Hippo w/St. Augustine of Canterbury. Remember having read it and thought, "Yes, but, like, dude, what about reality television?" Renew this thought.

9:10: Am frightened by Sarah Palin's eye makeup. Perhaps more so than I am by her ignorance.

9:15: Grandiloquent historical appeal. Passing the health care bill is like the Civil War. Or someting.

9:17: Is doing annoying thing where he cites to specific towns in key battleground cities that are having hard times.

9:19: He's "never been more hopeful about America's future than tonight."

9:20: The American people need "a government that matches their decency." I agree, but I don't think that that phrase means what Obama thinks it means.

9:21: Now he's talking about shoring up banks.

We all hated the bank bailout.

Me: Didn't he vote for it?

Ilya: Yes.

Obama: I hated it like a root canal.

Me: What was the polling on it?

Ilya: 60/40.

Hm. Root canals don't poll that well.

9:22: We've recovered most of what we spent

Me: Did we, really?

Ilya: That's an exaggeration.

Biden is grinning.

Everyone is standing up applauding.

9:23: If we're going to have an anti-bank populist for president instead, couldn't we please have Andrew Jackson instead?

9:24: Did we cut taxes for 95% of working families, Ilya?

Ilya: Probably not, though a lot depends on definitions.

9:25: I think Megan McArdle had a good post on the 2,000,000 figure of people working who otherwise woudln't be. Will Google shortly.

9:27: Can't find post. Maybe it was someone else. Wake up briefly because O. has just started calling for a new jobs bill.

Am briefly debating abbreviating his initials as "BHO," then realize that I generally stop reading anything by a conservative who uses the Hussein.

9:28: The "small business" thing reminds me of my old job.

He is pandering to Allentown, Pennsylvania. Oh good. My parents will be flattered to know that they're real Americans.

9:29: Something with banks and credits. Couldn't he just do an across the board payroll tax holiday? Wouldn't that be better?

Also, a tax credit to businesses that hire people or raise wages. But would it not make more economic sense for some to invest in capital or r and d instead? Thus, payroll tax holiday, rathe than futzing around with jobs.

9:30: Eliminate capital gains tax on all small businesses. This is actually something I think I might be able to support.

He's building infrastructure.

9:31: You could also just create jobs by paying people to dig holes and then fill them in again.

9:32: Or you could just have a tax policy that treated out sourcing and in sourcing equally. And not be a bloody protectionist. Grrr.

Calls for Senate to pass jobs bill.

9:33: Can't afford another "expansion." I am thinking of the Hayek rap video. I normally try to disassociate myself with "End the Fed" libertarians, as they seem kind of crankish, and I am somewhat invested in trying to be reasonable and Vulcanish and not a crank. But maybe they are right about the boom and bust cycles. C.F. the Keynes v. Hayek rap video that like every one of my Facebook friends has posted to her news feed in the last two days.

9:36: What financial info do consumers need that they do not already have? What are they not disclosing to the SEC? Are they already not one of the most regulated sectors of the economy?

Also, miracles of aggregation?

9:37: Can we just leave innovators alone? Can we not encourage them that way?

9:38: I may actually be sort of okay with expanding the use of nuclear power. And at least he says "nuclear" right.

Also, w/opening new offshore areas for drilling.

9:40: More stupid protectionism about keeping jobs in the country.

9:41: There is truth to what he just said about trade deals.

I'm fine with enforcing the rules and making sure trade partners live with the rules. I say this. Ilya points out that this is a code word of protectionism. As opposed to the non-code words for protectionism he's been using all evening.

9:42: National competition to raise schools. Will fund only "success." This is problematic: it's hard to divert away money from schools that are struggling and failing. Poor kids tug on people's heartstrings. Even mine. But if he actually follows through on this, I might support it.

9:44: He has causation backwards re: education, I fear. The reason college grads do well is in part because they're a disproportionately talented group.

9:45: This thing about student loans is kind of pandering to me, but I'm not buying it.

9:46: Why do we want to encourage re-financing of mortgages, exactly?

At minute 36: Finally, health care. Notice how he ducked it til now.

9:47: He didn't take on health care because it was good politics. Ilya: maybe he THOUGHT it was good politics, but he was wrong.

9:48: Michelle Obama is taking on the problem of childhood obesity. Ah, the nanny state.

9:49: How do you extend coverage and drive premiums down? Only if more healthy people come in, Ilya says. But if the people who don't have health insurance are disproportionately unhealthy are out of the pool, should not the opposite happen?

9:50: Americans will lose their health insurance during this speech. Briefly picture my commissioner firing me in a fit of displeasure, possibly incurred by having to listen to this speech; shiver at prospect. Take sip of drink to feel better.

9:51: If anyone has a better idea for how to reform health care... I want to be the Cato publicity coordinator right now. HELP PEOPLE BUY INSURANCE ACROSS STATE LINES. SEVER INSURANCE FROM EMPLOYMENT. Ilya points out McConnell is smirking. I can never remember which McConnell is the federal judge and which one is the Senator.

9:53: Did the wars drive up the deficit that much? Ilya points out, at least he mentioned the prescription drug benefit.

9:53: Obama: CRISIS! Thus... LEVIATHAN! (With apologies to Higgs.

9:54: Is freezing government spending, except for the huge entitlement programs that he isn't. This is kind of against self-interest to care.

9:56: Bipartisan commission to reform Social Security. Ilya: what was wrong with the one chaired by Daniel Patrick Moynihan a decade ago, except that it recommended privatization? Also, it is against interest for me to say too much about the words "bipartisan commission."

9:57: There are random women in the audience wearing bright yellow suits. Am thinking of Nicole Kidman in Kill Bill.

9:58: No, we didn't cut spending for eight years. We INCREASED IT, as you JUST SAID A FEW MINUTES AGO.

9:59: Common sense. You, sir, are no Thomas Paine.

10:00: I don't know what I think of stepped up lobbying disclosure laws. And people organized as lobbying organizations are people too for First Amendment purposes.

10:01: Ilya: so you, Mr. Obama, should not be influencing elections, since you're among America's most powerful entities.

10:02: Congress publish earmark requests online. A minor gimmick. Ilya: this is not bad, but it won't change anything.

"None of these things will happen if we don't reform how we work with one another." Ilya: then don't reform anything.

10:03: We disagree about the role of government in our lives. Well... yes.

10:04: Well... the parties are vicious because the stakes are so high. And the more powerful government, the higher the stakes.

10:06: Monthly meetings with both Democratic and Republican leadership. Ilya: it would be fun to be at one of those meetings. Yes.

10:07: Ilya: is not protecting our people one of our values?

I have always felt sort of bad for Janet Napolitano. Her remarks about the system may have been inartful, but I worry she was right. Optimal number of terrorist attacks may be higher than zero, hard truth though that is.

10:08: Nancy Pelosi looks a bit maternal as she's looking over his shoulder.

10:09: Combat troops out of Iraq by August. Are combat troops the same thing as troops? Ilya: they are not, in fact, the same thing.

The war is ending, and all the troops are coming home. Eventually. Note the lack of an end date.

10:10: Suddenly start wondering: what writers do I like are liveblogging this?

10:11: When she's not fighting childhood obesity, MO is helping military families. Because politicians opposed military families before this, as Ilya says.

10:12: I don't actually know anything about security policy, so this part of the speech is sort of tolerable.

10:14: Haiti. Who is dude the camera is zeroing in on? Ilya; maybe Haitian ambassador.

10:15: Ilya: exit rights! Let the Haitians vote with their feet! You know, we stand on the side of freedom and dignity, except when letting people come here.

The Constitution doesn't actually say anything about people being created equal. Just to be clear.

10:16: There were two sentences about civil rights. I screamed and writhed in physical pain and could not type because of said writhing. So there's no substantive commentary on them.

10:17: Or we could have an immigration policy that is actually logical and therefore enforceable, and then we could enforce it. That could work, too.

10:18: Democratic v. Republican values -- echoes of Washington's Farewell Address. Say what you will, he's a good rhetorician.

10:19: Sometimes, bankers take risks, and they get rich. And they invest their profits! Or spend them and funnel them into the economy! And that is wonderful.

10:20: Returning to broadly historical theme.

10:22: Ilya and I are getting distracted from all the high-minded rhetoric and are looking at Google Image photos of Scott Brown on my laptop.

Also, camera zeroing in on Harry Reid.

10:23: I want to be one of those people who is inspired by politicians. I envy supporters their euphoria. I haven't been since the mid-90s, when I defended Thornburgh against Wofford. Someday, I will get excited about an actual politician. Today is not that day.

Educated class failure?

Noemie Emery has an interesting column this morning in The Washington Examiner, arguing that Obama's failures as president epitomize the failures of a certain kind of educated class. Emery is of course writing about the failures of people like me, which naturally gets my attention. (Some of my best friends write for magazines for a living.) Also, I have a German father and a Ukrainian mother, so I suppose I'm hard-wired for self-loathing and thus inclined to read articles about why I should hate myself sympathetically. (See also David Brooks's tea party movement column, which made a substantively similar point.

Except a problem jumps out at me when I read this paragraph:

It [the public] has also moved strongly against his [Obama's] -- and the educated classes' -- ideas. It is more pro-life, more anti-climate change, more free market, less statist, more inclined to favor "harsh" measures against terrorism suspects, more in favor of "waterboarding" the terrorist caught in the brief-bombing effort, more opposed to the closing of Guantanamo Bay.

Actually, I'm not so sure this is right. I do not study political ignorance, but I live with someone who does. My understanding is that, contra Emery, voters with more education are more pro-free-market than those who are not. Similarly, I'm not sure what set of public policies she's referring to when she says "less statist," but I do recall that more educated voters favor fewer restrictions on immigration and trade, which would make more educated voters less statist than less educated ones. Leave aside for a moment that I'm not sure what being anti-climate change means. Presumably everyone is against the idea of climate change; it's just that some people think that it is happening, and others are skeptical. Also, others disagree about whether the issue can best be addressed through market-based or top-down approaches.

None of this is to say that today's educated class is perfect or without real flaws. Nor is it to say that the public policies Obama has chosen to pursue in office are right on the merits. In fact, I do think my own class has plenty of flaws, and I also disagree with nearly all of Obama's policy agenda. I'm merely skeptical that conservative intellectuals' navel-gazing about what is wrong with our class is the best means of coming up with an effective opposition strategy, narcissitically satisfying though it may be.

Time is tight at the moment, but if anyone has a link to some nice and short piece covering correlations between education and political views, please comment. I looked around briefly on both Bryan Caplan's blog and Volokh, but couldn't find one.

ETA: My Artist Formerly Known as Ilya notes that he discusses these issues in a Volokh post. He adds that "Knowledge and education are not the same thing, but they are highly intercorrelated. In general, more educated people tend to be more pro-free market, and also more socially liberal." I suspect that the latter would also displease Emery, though elite social liberalism doesn't displease me.

But Obama's most ambitious -- and most problematic -- policy initiatives haven't invoked social issues like gay marriage or abortion. Rather, it's the stimulus package and proposed health care bill that have really gotten conservatives, libertarians, and tea partiers screaming. If his popularity has taken a hit, it's more likely because of his fiscal or regulatory stances.

Obama and our post-modern race problem

Shelby Steele has an interesting column on "Obama and our post-modern race problem." A quote providing the meat of it:

...Mr. Obama always knew that his greatest appeal was not as a leader but as a cultural symbol. He always wore the bargainer's mask—winning the loyalty and gratitude of whites by flattering them with his racial trust: I will presume that you are not a racist if you will not hold my race against me. Oprah Winfrey, Michael Jordan and yes, Tiger Woods have all been superb bargainers, eliciting almost reverential support among whites for all that they were not—not angry or militant, not political, not using their moral authority as blacks to exact a wage from white guilt.

But this mask comes at a high price. When blacks become humanly visible, when their true beliefs are known, their mask shatters and their symbiotic bond with whites is broken.

The above reminds me of one of my favorite essays ever, Edith Efron's "Native Son" on Clarence Thomas. If you have not read it, then you should set aside what you are doing and go read it now. Period.

Going back to Steele, while his analysis on how Obama's "bargainer" approach has influenced his entire approach to politics, there is one paragraph with which I do have a serious quibble:

Our new race problem—the sophistication of seeing what isn't there rather than what is—has surprised us with a president who hides his lack of economic understanding behind a drama of scale. Hundreds of billions moving into trillions. Dramatic, history-making numbers. But where is the economic logic behind a stimulus package that doesn't fully click in for a number of years? How is every stimulus dollar spent actually going to stimulate? Why bailouts to institutions that only hoard the money? How is vast government spending simultaneously a kind of prudence that will not "add to the deficit?" How can such spending not trigger smothering levels of taxation?

I agree with Steele on the underlying merits of Obama's economic policies, of course. At the same time, the real issue here does not seem to be how Obama's racial background has uniquely influenced him, but rather that he is doing what nearly any other Democratic politician would do in his place. Tragically, nor do the Democrats have any real monopoly here on economic ignorance. Need I remind anyone that Mike Huckabee seems equally clueless about the pernicious effects of government spending, and that plenty of Repubilcans voted for the bailouts? Part of the problem is that Obama faces the same bad incentives that nearly all other politicians do. Steele's piece would be stronger if he teased this out more.

Obama and Girondinism

This NRO article is sufficiently over the top that I probably should leave it alone. Except a single line -- the crack about the Obama administration's "attempt to realize the vision of the 1960s" -- grated in a very particular way that led me to want to get out something I've been thinking for a while.

Which is that Barack Obama is a Girondin according to the idiosyncratic typology I set out in this post. This demands full-on, Atlantic Monthly-style exposition, but Obama may be one of the purest Girondin figures in our national life. Much of his rhetoric about post-partisanship and post-racialism might have been fluff, sure, but it was fluff tailor-made to appeal to Girondins' penchant for compromise and moderation. As annoying as David Brooks often is, I find him indispensable because he understands Girondinism better than any other writer of comparable stature. He wrote the book on Girondinism, after all, which is why he "gets" Obama better than most conservative writers.

Back circa 1999, a high school friend of mine and I were sitting around the lounge of our school, fretting about where we'd go to college. I wondered aloud if, somewhere, there was some American high school senior so perfect that he or she didn't suffer from any of our anxieties. The two of us started sketching this imaginary person's profile. High SATs and grades were necessary, of course, but plenty of our friends had those credentials in spades and we still didn't sleep easy at night. Our ideal applicant should be "diverse," which probably meant black. No, wait, biracial might be better. Having lived abroad at some point would have been good. And he should also an excellent athlete -- maybe a basketball player -- and naturally charismatic and gifted at public speaking. It was disconcerting, some five years later, to see how closely Barack Obama approached the left pro-meritocracy Word made Flesh.

The corollary to Obama's being Girondin, of course, is that he is not a Montagnard. Kahane -- and plenty of other writers -- seem eager to assume that Obama is. It's the wrong tactic. Girondins and Montagnards shouldn't be fought the same way. Better that what's left of the American right focus on trying to understand Girondinism and attack it for what it is, rather than re-fighting the Montagnard battles of yore.

Hypothesis

About 90% of the Barack gear actually peddled on the streets of D.C. is being purchased by Republicans to give as joke gifts to other Republicans. 

See, e.g., the "Everything Obama" store that sprang up recently in a basement at 15th and U. I stumbled on this establishment this morning on the way to brunch. Want a black baseball hat that says "OBAMA" on it in silver sequins? It's yours for $30. A bright yellow T-shirt with a photo-applique of a grinning Michelle that says "She's Our First Lady Now?" It's yours for $15. 

Also, I missed this phenomenon, but there were "Obama cookies" being sold outside my office at 12th and F on Wednesday for $2 apiece. I overheard a co-worker mention that the guy on the cookies doesn't even look much like Obama, but rather like "any generic black guy in a suit." I'm reminded of the Office episode in which Kelly crowed that her black boyfriend looked "just like Barack Obama!", when in fact he looks nothing like our President elect. But I digress.

But, really, are there actual Dems somewhere who think that this stuff is tasteful? Who would actually spend that kind of money for this stuff?

Also, I imagine this stuff is probably made in sweatshops in the Third World. By child labor, i.e. by people for whom making this stuff is their best option. I acknowledge, however, that my idiosyncratic minority views on "social justice" are a discussion for another day.