No one can legitimately deny that 2008 was an interesting year.
Any presidential election year is bound to draw disproportionate attention, but this year particularly so. The US electorate elected its first African-American as president, Senator Barack Obama. Most importantly, the electoral race did not center on the question race. With the exception of a couple of ill chosen remarks about looking like the faces on currency [1], Obama avoided playing the “race card.” No one of any stature suggest that race disqualified Obama as president. There was no so-called “Bradley effect” where Americans would publicly say they would vote for a black candidate, but in the privacy of the voting booth allow a latent racism or fear prevent them from casting a vote for a black person. Americans were nearly as unprejudiced in the private deliberations as in their public statements. Americans clearly deserve more credit than they deserve. It is hard to imagine any other country that would elect a racial minority of that country as its chief executive.
Early in the year, Shelby Steele, was not enthusiastic about chances for a black president. In his view, any black had to be non-threatening to the white majority and not appear to be a candidate whose primary message was race. On the other hand such a candidate would not seem as an authentic black to fellow African-Americans. As it turns out, once it became clear that Obama had a realistic opportunity to win the presidential election, the prospect of a black American president excited African-Americans. There was no litmus test of authenticity.
This was embarrassing year for journalism. The enthusiasm for Obama was so great that many lost even the appearance of objectivity. The first victim of this bias was Senator Hillary Clinton who was regularly portrayed negatively by MSNBC. Hillary even began to appreciate Fox News. Actually, the Democratic primary was an amusing battle between the politics of gender and the politics of race with both candidates anxious to claim the mantel of representing a victim class without the weakness of appearing to be victim.
After the election there were media mea cuplas. The ombudsman of the Washington Post wrote:
“The Post provided a lot of good campaign coverage, but readers have been consistently critical of the lack of probing issues coverage and what they saw as a tilt toward Democrat Barack Obama. My surveys, which ended on Election Day, show that they are right on both counts.”
There were similar self-analysis from other organizations. The real question is why such retrospection and assessments were not forthcoming when they could have improved coverage during the campaign. The behavior of the main-stream-media is not healthy for democracy.
The biggest news of the year may have been news that fell off the front pages: the Iraq War. Largely because of the troop surge and the associated strategy, the War in Iraq is succeeding. Perhaps the most important measure for Americans, the increased security in Iraq has resulted in dramatic reductions in American lost of life. This month thus far 14 Americans had died and only seven from hostile actions. Of course, any loss is devastating for the soldier’s family, but no one can deny that Iraq is largely now a settled issue — mostly as a consequence of the effectiveness of the American military.
Unfortunately, the victory will be a silent one as American troops are allowed to slowly return home as Iraqis become more and more responsible for their own security. In part because the media does not want to grant President Bush the credit for an important success Americans and troops will not enjoy the satisfaction of victory — just compensation for their sacrifice.
Finally, this is the year that the economy fell into a dramatic recession which has dramatically reduced stock values and real estate prices. Certainly, the business cycle has not been repealed and we can always expect episodic recessions. This particular recession was initiated under a complex interaction between public and private mistakes. The housing market was oversold largely under the encouragement of government to extend loans to people who could not afford them — the “sub-prime” crisis. The increase in oil prices helped trigger some of the defaults.
This crisis was then magnified by credit default swaps where companies in a non-transparent fashion had traded risk. This radical increase in liability brought down many investment houses. As a consequence, the federal government had to intervene with massive bailouts (with dubious salutary effect) to rescue irresponsible behavior by large Wall Street investment house. We can hope that 2009 with mark the beginning of the recovery.
[1] Barack Obama: “Well, you know, hes got a funny name and he doesnt look like all the presidents on the dollar bills and the five dollar bills and, and theyre going to send out nasty emails.”
George Bush – A Literary Man
January 2nd, 2009It is always amusing to run across a story that tells us as much about the people commenting on a story as about the immediate subject of the story. The recent Wall Street Journal column by former Bush presidential adviser Karl Rove represents just such a story. In the column, Rove reveals that President George W. Bush is not just voracious reader, but a competitive industrial-strength reader, averaging over a book a week. Apparently, Rove and Bush competed on who could read the most books in a year. Rove was the victor, but Bush was able to find time to read:
“… biographies of Abraham Lincoln, Andrew Carnegie, Mark Twain, Babe Ruth, King Leopold, William Jennings Bryan, Huey Long, LBJ, Genghis Khan. ” Other nonfiction included “Andrew Roberts’s A History of the English Speaking Peoples Since 1900, James L. Swanson’s Manhunt, and Nathaniel Philbrick’s Mayflower.” Bush’s reading tastes also extended to “eight Travis McGee novels by John D. MacDonald, Mr. Bush tackled Michael Crichton’s Next, Vince Flynn’s Executive Power, Stephen Hunter’s Point of Impact, and Albert Camus’s The Stranger, among others.”
What is most interesting is how people reacted. Of course, some simply did not believe the column because it ran so counter to the image of Bush in the media and painted by his political enemies. How could such a dolt or disinterested frat boy be so attracted to books? The best way to deal with inconvenient evidence is to ignore it or dismiss it. Interesting, no one questions whether Rove, also a very busy person, read the number of books he reports reading. But, of course, Rove is an evil genius.
For Bush supporters, the story does provide some evidence of the intellectual capacity of the President. However, their opinion of the President would not have changed if he had read only a few books while President. A president is a very busy and might be expected to primarily read work-related material. He would have to rely on the well of intellectual capital acquired before reaching office.
For those who dislike Bush — at least the ones who believe Roves’s reports — are compelled to spin the news negatively. On the basis of this evidence, you don’t here anyone saying, “Perhaps I was wrong in my estimation of Bush’s intelligence.” One approach is to criticize Bush for reading too much and not spending enough time actually implementing policy. Another is to criticize his reading list as not sufficiently introspective or is in some other way inadequate. Yet another is to assert that Bush feigned being a good-old-boy to hide his trues intentions.
The truth is that the Left and the press has always found it rhetorically convenient to paint Bush as an idiot. The problem is that for the most part, Bush politically defeated his opponents, winning the presidency twice. To reconcile this success with the caricature, Bush had to have clever evil henchmen who did his thinking for him. The usual candidates where political adviser Karl Rove or Vice-President Dick Cheney.
If the same story came out about Barack Obama, with the same list and volume, we would all be amazed at his commitment to pursuit of intellectual enrichment. It would be additional evidence that he is a thinking man.
Anyone who followed Bush carefully with an open mind should have realized how profoundly he is affected by books. Natan Sharansky, was a former Soviet dissident who managed to emigrate to Israel and rose the position of Deputy Prime Minister of Israel. Sharansky advocated a compelling thesis articulated in his book The Case for Democracy. The argument is that many of the world’s political problems were a consequence of the lack of true democracy, freedom, and the rule of law. The lack of these was the source of political disruption that leads to war and terrorism. Democracies do not fight one another.
Hence, one goal of American foreign policy should be to encourage democratic ideals. These arguments are part of the underpinning of Bush’s policies in Iraq and Afghanistan. One working definition of an intellectual is a person who takes ideas seriously. By this definition, Bush is an intellectual who put into practice ideas he acquired through reading, study, and reflection.
The tactic of painting a political adversary as not just wrong, but stupid, was applied to President Ronald Reagan. Lyndon Johnson’s Secretary of defense Clark Clifford once referred to Ronald Reagan as an “amiable dunce.” Ironically, Clifford died just ahead of an indictment in a scandal surrounding Bank of Credit and Commerce International. He whined that in his defense, “I have a choice of either seeming stupid or venal.” Claiming stupidity (not even amiable stupidity) was Clifford’s best defense. By contrast, after Reagan left office, a compendium of his writings revealed a thoughtful and eloquent person.
Similarly, former President George H. W. Bush (41 to friends) was ridiculed for his mangled verbal expressions while in office. However, it turns out that Bush was an inveterate letter writer. The collection of these letters also reveals a delightful and intelligent writer, not consistent with his public persona.
Posted in Politics, Social Commentary | No Comments »