Category Archives: Politics

November 26, 2011

The Three Necessary Ingredients to Getting Things Done as President

By Jer Clifton

A good friend of mine just wrote me, mentioned that she was a Herman Cain supporter, and asked my opinion on the Republican presidential nomination race so far.  In short order, I made this little schema for picking a president.

People are rightly obsessed with finding a presidential candidate who can “get things done” in Washington.  I know I am.  I believe that the ability to get things done is more important than the positions one holds on policy issues or having amazing character.  If you can’t implement and make stuff happen, who cares if we agree?  So, instead of picking the best person or the one most right on the issues, we should pick the best player at the game called “politics.”

First, we need someone who knows the system in Washington.  This runs against the grain for many who want a Washington outsider, thinking that outsiders are not “corrupted” by DC cooties.  In truth, you want someone who knows the system very well and can work the system very well.    Part of why Obama struggled as much as he did the first term, and perhaps why Clinton might have done better, is because Obama was not an experienced Washington insider, wasn’t really all that experienced at national politics generally, and had never been an executive (having executive experience, like that of a governor, helps too, though it is best combined with DC background).  So, I would rank Republican presidential candidates as follows with 10 being the best:

Newt Gingrich, 9, vast DC experience, former speaker of the House, has been around forever, he knows government and can work the system.

Jon Huntsman, 8, has no DC experience as a politican, but he has plenty of DC experience as a civil servant, a former governor, and seemed to be a successful one.

Mitt Romney, 7, no DC experience, but he was a governor, and is generally government savvy (I think).

Rick Perry, 6, governor, does not seem savvy like Romney.

Michelle Bachman, 3, has DC experience, but only in the House and no executive experience.

Hermain Cain, 1 or 2, no political experience.  It doesn’t matter if you agree with his 999 plan, or really anything he says.  He would likely be unable to implement it.

Secondly, most people long for their President to be a “real” guy and not some sleazy politician.  But the fact of the matter is that only sleaziness, or what some might call sleaziness, gets things done in politics.  We need a presidential candidate who is politician enough to not alienate themselves from their constituents and to hold different groups together.  This means, quite simply, being good at being a politician, at keeping a majority of people mostly happy with you.  This is why Herman Cain would be an awful president (I think), just like Michelle Bachman, or Rick Perry would be.  They say too many dumb things, which will erode public support (and in all three of their cases already has).  This would be a big blow to them especially, because if you are not good at working the system in Washington, you can make up for it by maintaining popularity.  But these politicans are not politician enough to maintain this sort of support over the long term.  Being a politican is hard, maintaining popular support is harder still, and that is why support has been swinging so wildly from Bachman to Perry to Cain and now to Gingrich.  Of course, I say dumb things all the time, as we all do, and we can give people the benefit of the doubt, but even a fervent Herman Cain supporter who loves how “real” he is has to admit that it is unlikely that he can remain self-controlled, prudent, on-message, a clever communicator, committed and also non-committal enough…politician enough to maintain popular support.  So, here is a cursory ranking based on political skills:

Mitt Romney, 9, super disciplined, has hardly had much of a gaffe, stays on message; he’s a smart robot, has experience being a politician.

Jon Huntsman, 7, has experience being a politician, and in fact just as much as Romney, though not as a frontrunner presidential contender for two election cycles, so he is still a little bit of an unknown.

Gingrich, 6, political experience but is also a gaffe machine.

Rick Perry, 5.

Michelle Bachman and Herman Cain, 2 or 3, woefully undisciplined.  Could unlikely maintain support over the long haul.

Third, successful presidents cannot be beholden to uncompromising constituents.  This means that the more idealogical your base, the less likely you are to be able to get things done.  That is simplistic, of course, but holds true generally.  In order to get things done, the President, like any politician, has to be positioned in such a way that he can compromise with his opposition, and even his own party, without fear of  losing his own supporters.  In a republic, leaders cannot get anything done unless they can compromise with others.  So the following ranking is merely based on how moderate the candidate’s base is likely to be:

Jon Huntsman, 9; he would be a 10, but he has been having to pretend to be more conservative than he really is to have even a smidgen of a chance in New Hampshire.

Mitt Romney, 7; I’m not sure where to put him really.  I can’t really predict how conservative he would be in the White House.

Newt Gingrich, 6.

Rick Perry, 5.

Herman Cain, 4.

Michelle Bachman, 3.

Once you have established who would be most unable to get things done, then you can cross them off your list (Herman Cain, Rick Perry, and Michelle Bachman are likely gone).  As for me, if I do not dismiss those individuals most unlikely to get things done, then I would have to seriously reflect on whether or not I care about my issues in the first place.  Too often, people are narcissistic and vote for the person most like them instead of the person most able to do good.  So, in order to be moral, let’s lose the likely losers.

I would probably then look at the top three, assuming they are all roughly comparable, which in this case they are (Huntsman, Romney, and possibly Newt, though he might have too much baggage), and pick the one who best represents your values, opinions, etc.

So who do I like these days?  My opinion has stayed the same.  If I was a Republican, which I am somedays but usually not, I would be a Jon Huntsman fan.

6 Comments   |  tags: , , , , , , | posted in Politics

November 12, 2011

Outliers (2008), Guns, Germs and Steel (1999), and Michele Bachmann–Part 2 of 2

By Jer Clifton

Outliers made me realize that lots of people are talented, work hard, and succeed (10,000 hour rule), but the bridge between success and wild success is built exclusively on fortune.  Because of this I cannot help but surmise that much of the wealth of the wildly wealthy belongs, in a way, to all of us.  Guns, Germs, and Steel took this line of thinking further: the “us” is larger than one country.  In other words, much of the wealth of wildly wealthy countries belongs to the world.

By 12,000 years ago, every continent and major area had been settled.  People were everywhere.  In Guns, Germs, and Steel, Jared Diamond asks this question: why did some societies develop faster than others?  In other words, why did the Spanish conquer the Aztecs instead of the Aztecs sailing to Spain and conquering the Spanish.  He notes, quite correctly I think, that if you do not have an explanation for this, it is difficult to uproot racism–even one’s own.  How could a couple hundred Conquistadors conquer millions of Aztecs?  Our minds immediately go to the first distinction: one group is Spanish, the other is Aztec.   To combat this, Diamond explains in detail why societies developed the way they did.  I want to point out just a handful of his observations.

In the long term, enormous benefits come to those who stop being hunter-gatherers and turn to food production.  I’ll mention three.  Because hunter-gatherers support population densities of 10-100 times less per acre than food producers, 1) food producers have more warriors and 2), and this cannot be overstated, high population density breeds diseases and disease-tolerant populations.  3) Also, food production will eventually allow some people to do something besides agriculture.  Food production allows for food supluses which can support an artisan class, a key to starting the process of rapidly ‘making stuff better.‘  Artisanship leads to specialization, expertise, academia, and ultimately to some form of scientific inquiry and space shuttles.

But these benefits are long term.  In the short term, the switch from hunter-gathering to food production can be very unattractive for at least these two reasons.

  1. In general, food producers have to work harder than hunter-gatherers, sometimes even twice as many hours in a day.
  2. The first food producers had, compared to what we had today, pretty shitty crops.   Have you seen a wild tomato?  They are tiny pathetic albeit beautiful things.  It would take a while for those to develop into something big enough to be worthwhile.  Likewise, after controlling the breeding of domesticated animals for thousands of years, we have developed chickens that create lots of eggs and lots of meat.  Sheep have more wool.  Cows have more milk.  All of these gains would be nearly non-existent when they first started.

Of course, hunter-gatherers did not switch to food production because they foresaw its benefits for distant descendants.  Indeed, because making the switch was so unattractive, food production only developed independently in 4 separate places around the globe.  The cultrual, and specifically agricultural, descendants of these areas would come to dominate the others.  For example, it is estimated that Spanish disease wiped out between 85-97% of the Aztecs in first 130 years of exposure to Conquistadors.  This incredible advantage was due directly to population density made possible by the switch to food production.

Switching to food production doesn’t really make sense until you have a package.  A food production package includes a number of different domesticable crops along with animals to eat, to use for muscle and for manure.  Why weren’t all aborigines able to develop a food production package from local flora and fauna?

Jared Daimond tells this story: He was hiking in the jungle of Papua New Guinea with a few aborigines and ran out of food.  They stopped for the night, and one of the men slipped off into the falling light.  He came back with arms full of mushrooms and starts preparing them.  “We can’t eat these,” Jared protests, “people get sick from mushrooms all the time.  Even scientists who study it their whole lives can collect the wrong mushrooms and die.”  The aboriginees turned to him, scolded him like a child, and then commenced to describe, by memory, the 87 different varieties of mushrooms that could be found in that area, how they could be recognized, where they grew, which parts were edible, what sort of sicknesses were caused by ingesting the wrong parts, etc.

It is reasonable to believe that 12,000 years ago everyone would have been just as familiar with the local flora and fauna as the aborignees in Daimond’s story.  Ok, so why did food production develop in some places but not others?  In short, some places, like the fertile crescent, had enormous local benefits.  Others, like Australia, had very little benefits.  What are these benefits?  Edible plants that were the easiest to domesticate, the “low hanging fruit,” were nearly all native to areas in which food production developed independently (e.g., wheat was native to the fertile crescent and was by far the best candidate for domestication).  Even more striking is that worldwide there are only 14 possible domesticable animals.  Of these, 7 were native to the fertile crescent.  None were native to Australia.

What facilitated the spread of food production across Eurasia is another thing that Eurasians cannot take credit for: their continent’s long east/west axis.  Crops and animals had a hard time spreading over North and South America.  The tropical jungle, the Isthmus of the Panama, as well as the vast climate differences associated with different latitudes, made the spread of food-producing crops and livestock very unlikely.  After all, a llama is not suitable to live in the Amazon.  Not until the present age were Llamas raised in North America where, it turns out, there has been appropriate environments for thousands of years.  In contrast, the crops originally developed in the fertile crescent, and the animals domesticated there, could be used everywhere from Spain to east asia (although east asia was blessed with rice varieties and water buffalo, upon which they developed their own agricultural package).  So why wasn’t there domesticable animals in places like North America?

The truth is, and I did not know this before I read Diamond’s book, there was.  Archeological evidence suggests that there were various animals that might have been docile, herd-like, sufficiently safe, etc.–that would have had all the qualities necessary for being a candidates for domestication.  Millions of these creatures covered North and South America, but they had a weakness.

Remember the Dodo bird?  It had developed without humans, and so had no fear of them.  Hungry explorers would literally walk up to them, grab their heads, wring them off, and make supper.  Such an easy food quickly went extinct when they were exposed to humans.  Now, unlike Eurasia and Africa, the flora and fauna of the American continents developed, like the Dodo bird, with no human contact.  But, 20,000 years ago, when humans crossed the Bering Strait, that isolation ended, and animals that might have done nicely as plow-pulling, milk-producing, manure-making, yummy beasts were killed and eaten.  Little did these newly arrived peoples know that they were killing their own descendant’s chances of food production and opening themselves up to Spanish conquest 20,000 odd years down the road.

In two recent Republican presidential debates, this question has been posed to Michelle Bachman: for every dollar that I make, how much do I deserve to keep?  She responded without hesitation: “All of it.  You earned it.  Of course you deserve it.”

Among hunter gatherers, without division of labor, there is in fact a surprising amount of equality, and decisions that the strong-man makes are generally arrived at by consensus.  Combine that with the previously-mentioned intimate knowledge hunter-gatherers had of their environment and this scene comes to mind:

Everyone had noticed: the mighty herds were gone.  A good many of the tribe were thinking that restraint might be necessary.  They were hoping that their strong-man would make a decree.  Others, no doubt, were indignant.  “How dare you tell me how to live my own life!”   This group despised any attempt at others to coerce them, which of course nobody wanted to do.  The tribe had grown large with the easy abundance of food, but now great swaths of land had to be combed over in an attempt to locate these animals, and some large families were already on the verge of starvation.  How could people be expected to limit consumption now?

So I imagine the opportunistic prehistoric politician/priestess, jumping around a fire in garments made of animal fur, preaching earnestly to her people.  “You killed it.  You dragged it back to camp.  You cooked it.  Of course you deserve it.”

“Therefore Joy,” Outliers, Guns, Germs and Steel, and my study of economics–and I would even say the Bible too–puts me in a different place.  For every dollar we earn, we probably deserve very little of it, and even less as one becomes more wealthy.  Nearly everything we are able to accomplish we owe to others, some living, most not, and all of us in one way or another owe God/fortune.

However, God and most people, past, present, and future, aren’t idiots; if individuals do not get enough gain from their labor, they will not work.  And so God and society are generally wise to approve of individuals and individual countries keeping a disproportionate amount of their profit.  But we must never think that anyone is entitled to cheap oil or tasty, slow-moving creatures.  Instead, all should be thankful for the gifts and advantages they have been given.

I imagine the global non-temporal society, which we are connected to in a weird and beautiful way,

  • from those who first switched from hunter-gathering to food production
  • to modern day Australian aborigines who never had a viable food-producing package
  • to our children’s children’s children who will live out the consequences of our actions,

…is genuinely thrilled to see us productive and rewarded for our work.  After all, present day production and innovation, though often dependent on the exploitation of natural or human resources, may ultimately do the most good.  But I also imagine this global non-temporal society beseeching us to be thankful and do our best to look out for their interests too.  Jesus might call it “loving your neighbor.”

These days, I might call it being a conservative Democrat.


1 Comment   |  tags: , , , , , | posted in Ethics, History, General, Ideas From Therefore Joy, Politics

November 7, 2011

Outliers (2008), Guns, Germs and Steel (1999), and Michele Bachmann–Part 1 of 2

By Jer Clifton

In the last few years, no book has affected my perception of the world and my own role in it more than Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell.  The book makes many points, but here I want to talk about just one.  Gladwell makes a compelling case that enormously successful people, the statistical outliers, are not off the charts because they themselves have amazing innate abilities.  Rather, the enormously and naturally talented are a dime a dozen, and those talented people who work very hard their whole lives are also common.  So what distinguishes the wildly successful?  Luck.  Those who make it really big (as opposed to usual, laudable, but still small-time success) usually benefited from a special set of circumstances over which they had no control.

Consider this, if you took the richest people ever (material gain being not a definition of success, but certainly a type of it), adjust for inflation, and make a top 100 list, you would find that at least 25% would have been born inside the United States in the past 200 years.  However, if success was based on individual talents, then that number should be much less (Here’s some of my own math: looking on the web, it looks like between 90-110 billion people have lived on the earth, so lets say 100 billion.  I think, to be very generous, there have not been more than 1 billion people who lived in the United Sates over the past 200 years, so I am guessing that, if wild success was due to innate ability, the number of Americans on the top 100 list should be under 1%).   Moreover, of these two dozen born in the US, about a dozen were born in one four year period; Rockefeller (1839), Carnegie (1835), and JP Morgan (1837), and the other dozen in another four year period; Steve Jobs (1955) and Bill Gates (1955).

This is already a strange coincidence, but it just gets stranger the closer you look.  The individual stories of these men tell a tale in which they were extraordinarily well-situated to catch each coming wave, the first being the American industrial revolution, the second being the personal computer revolution.  Of course, you had to be intelligent, talented, hard-working, and ambitious, but you also had to both not yet have a family to support, so you could afford (and have the time) to take risky business ventures, and also be old and experienced enough to see the wave coming.

Experience, it turns out, is absolutely key.  Gladwell popularized the 10,000 hours rule, which states that predictable success in any field takes about 10,000 hours of practice.  This holds true for premier violinists and computer programmers.  Bill Gates, it turns out, by the time he was 18, had more computer programming experience than anyone in the world his age.  Among other fortunate coincidences, he happened to have grown up  where there was an exchange program at a local college with one of the only computers that existed at the time.

Gladwell gave many more examples that left me with an overall impression of “wow, this changes everything.”  I saw it everywhere.  For example, no matter how brilliant and devoted a statesman is today, he or she cannot be a Founding Father.  If there would have been no American Revolution, John Adams would have just been a Boston laywer, and a struggling one at that.

As I reflected on this, I felt a weight fall off my shoulders.  I never wanted to be the richest man ever, but I suppose I want success.  I want to change the world–to make my mark.  Also, when I read the biographies of people like John Adams, I relate to them alot, I see myself in them, as many people do, and I realize that I could do something like what they did too.  But great accomplishment is just as outside of my control as it was theirs.  In my writing, in my nonprofit work, all I can do is my best, which, quite simply, might not be enough for wild success.  My best can likely secure success, but only of the more tame variety without some brilliant coincidence of fortune.  In fact, even the smaller amount of success that my abilities can most likely secure me is not really what I deserve.

For those of you who have read recent drafts of Therefore Joy, you will know that I view individual humans as incredibly affected by each other.  If so, we take part in each others joys and triumphs.  In other words, my work-ethic is not entirely self-created, and so the blessings that my work-ethic bestows on me, to be fair, must be partially distributed to, for instance, my third grade teacher, my mother, my childhood friend.  This is impossible of course, so we do not do it, but if we could we should.

Ultimately, the recognition of the prime role that fortune/providence/destiny/God plays in all this has allowed me to pursue my dreams even harder.  I realized that I cannot fail if I keep trying.  I became convinced that the most I can do is always continue to “give success a chance” for me that means that I will keep writing, trying to get my manuscript out there, keep working on poverty issues, and stop stressing about results.  Many of you may know this already, but I am just catching up:  Stress kills people. Humble work is freeing.

(See how this relates to Guns, Germs, & Steel and Michelle Bachmann in part two.)

2 Comments   |  tags: , , , , | posted in Ethics, History, General, Politics

August 10, 2011

The Debt Ceiling Debacle and the New Political Order

By Jer Clifton

In debacles of this sort there is usually plenty of blame to go around, but, this time, the majority of the blame is uncharacteristically concentrated.

Since 1917, the debt ceiling has been raised 102 times.  From what I can tell, these raises have been more or less bipartisan and routine.  More recently, both sides have flirted with playing chicken with the debt ceiling.  Indeed, Reid’s, Durbin’s, and Obama’s voting records in the Senate were nearly perfectly partisan, as they voted against raising the debt ceiling when Republicans controlled the Senate, and for it when Democrats were in the majority.  Shame on them!

However, the Democrats as a whole never really came close to stopping a debt ceiling raise except for a couple times under Bush (under whom it was raised seven times) when the votes were close.  Overall though, it is fair to say that debt ceiling nay votes were cast on both sides of the aisle nearly exclusively to make a political point.

This changed in 2009.  Here’s some numbers: 55 republican senators in 1997 voted for a debt ceiling increase, then 31 in 2002, then 50 in 2003, then 50 in 2004, then 51 in 2006, then 26 in 2007, then 34 in 2008, then 33 again in 2008.  In 2009, 2 Republican Senators voted in favor of it.  For the second time in 2009, there was 1.  Finally, in 2010, there was 0.  This is how things stood when Republicans took back the house and a showdown was set.  Furthermore, the Republicans returned to power in large part because of the rise of the Tea Party, the majority of which, and please correct me if I am wrong here, see compromising as unprincipled behavior.  No longer were the days when a few errant politicians used the debt ceiling to make a point.  Now it was, “give us what we want or we’ll blow the country up.”  Certainly, both parties were headed in the direction of giving this ultimatum, but the Republicans got there first.

This put the Democrats in the position where they would have to choose between default or letting the Republicans take control of government.

What would you do?  The Democrats, from what I could tell, mostly gave in to Republicans, but they did it too late, so we still had a credit downgrade.   If I was President, maybe I would have fought crazy with more crazy and said, “The debt ceiling is sacred.  If you attach any conditions on raising the debt ceiling, even if it is one lousy $25 appropriation for free Fritos at a movie night for disabled children of veterans who also happen to be Hurricane Katrina survivors, I will veto it.  I do not care.  Don’t f#ck with me.”    But who knows if that would have worked.

What all of this does reveal is what I see as an ongoing fundamental shift in contemporary politics.  While Republicans are being monopolized by their extreme right wing, especially the Tea Party, the Democrats are not being monopolized to the same extent by the extreme left.  What this means is that every moderate in America is now left with a choice: Am I a Democrat or not?  Regardless of your answer, moderates will be Democrats practically, but will bolt as soon as the Republicans uncrazy themselves.  Indeed, I am proud to be one of these reluctant Democrats.  With this perspective, I start to feel sick watching a slew of “I told you so” grins on the faces of 2012 republican presidential candidates.  You get the sense that, after breaking the government, Republicans are claiming, “See, government doesn’t work, so we should make it smaller.”

Yet Obama seems to be getting most of the blame, even from Democrats.  Sometimes it makes me think I am taking crazy pills, “Why do people hate this guy so much?”  and it gets me thinking that maybe I should hate him too.  Why doesn’t he stick up for himself more?  Why isn’t he as disappointed with this process as I am?  Why is he so quick to compromise?

And as I lie here, asking those questions, and thinking about the 2012 election at 7AM, I found this video and I realized this: Obama is still the man.    Seriously, watching it was a spiritual experience.

My conclusion: I need to calm down.  Everyone needs to take a breath.  It’s going to be OK, and we all need to keep compromising.

“Compromise” shouldn’t be a dirty word.  Alicia and I compromise with each other when we disagree.  If we do not, we jeopardize our marriage.  If politicians do not compromise, they jeopardize the country.  But, if they do, for many of them, they jeopardize their job security too, and this gets back to my point about the new political alignment: Republican politicians are dependent on people who think compromise is villainous, and that’s why, right now, all moderates are Democrats.

11 Comments   |  tags: , , , , , , , , , , , | posted in Politics

August 6, 2011

Am I Sexist?

By Jer Clifton

I am not sexist.  Really, I am not.  Also, I have never google-image searched naked pictures of the T-Mobile girl and/or tried to friend her on facebook.  But denials have a curious way of making people wonder why they are necessary.  Indeed, some have expressed concern over my alleged sexism, especially after watching my Fox5 interview.  Towards the end I make this unfortunate statement which, quite understandably, I have been asked to explain: “I also think I’m not special in this [this pulling people off the third rail business].  I think there are tons of men and boys out there that would have done the exact same thing.”

Yup.  Men and boys.  Exactly.  Good thing they did not include the rest of the interview, cause I go on to expound on how all women and girls are worthless cowards.  No.  That is not a true story.  The host, Angelique Proctor, understood what I meant when she said, “Jeremy…believes any of us would have had a similar reaction.”  So why did I say “men and boys”?

Obviously, cause I was a tad stupid.  I cringe when I hear the line.  Alicia cringed too while watching the interview from the other side of our living room.  This was my first interview, and my worst.  I was clueless.  This experience makes me extremely patient with celebrities and politicians who get in trouble because of sound bites.  I have been saying for years that if I was a celebrity I would get caught saying idiotic things all the time.  And, in my fifteen minutes of fame, I proved myself prescient.

Fortunately context saves me.  Often it will not.  I do, in fact, consistently say dumb things.  But this time context saves me.  At the beginning of the interview Angeligue had asked me why I grabbed the guy.  In my answer, I talked, among other things, about how I had been an adventurous, daydreaming boy, who often imagined the day I would rescue damsels in distress on a semi-weekly basis.  As I grew older and started lifting and working out, ostensibly for sports, I knew it was in fact secret superhero training.  Though overstated, I think this rings true for many other boys who, like me, grow up to be men but never quite lost those specific daydreams.  There are lots and lots of us out there.

The “men and boys” comment was meant to bring this context to bear in order to support the broader point that there are many others who would have acted similarly.  Some of these people would be, I think, the people who had developed the silly and noble psychosis that I had.  So I was in fact making fun of men and boys a bit, and my comment was inclusive, not meant to exclude others from being brave, but to note that one of the groups that would be brave in these sorts of situations is a group I have already mentioned.  Of course, none of this was clear from the interview.

There are those who had concerns before the “men and boys” comment.  I certainly hold beliefs and ideas that some find sexist-ish and I espouse them liberally (or conservatively?).  I do not think they are sexist, and Alicia does not think they are sexist either, at least not usually.  I plan on blogging about them and the reader can decide for his or her self.  In the meantime, please accept my apologies if you were offended by my comment on Fox5.  I assure you, in this case at least, I was not sexist, but merely dumb.

14 Comments   |  tags: , , , , , | posted in Politics, Random Thoughts, Sexism/Feminism/Masculinism, Subway Incident/Nature of Bravery

July 6, 2011

Jon Huntsman

By Jer Clifton

Huntsman was a Mormon missionary to Taiwan, where he learned fluent Mandarin and Taiwanese, so obviously he’s going to be of interest to me (I just found out that Bill Clinton also likes him).  After dropping out of high school to play keys in a band with his friends, he got his GED and went to the University of Pennsylvania where he got a BA in international politics, and he served as staff assistant in the Reagan administration.  Under Bush 1 he was Deputy Assistant Secretary of Commerce focused on trade development in east asia and pacific regions, and then US Ambassador to Singapore.  Under Bush 2 he was the Deputy United States Trade rep.  He also worked in Daddy’s business, the Huntsman Corporation, which allows him to laud his business acumen, but it is also a liability, as he is the son of a billionaire (though first generation) and, like any big business, the corporation seemed to have been involved in some shady things at times.  Governor of Utah from 2005-2009, he won reelection with 77.7% of the vote and had approval ratings in the 80s and 90s.  However, this is Utah we are talking about.  Finally, Obama asked him to be US Ambassador to China, the post he resigned in 2011 to run for president.

His time working for Obama will also be an asset and a liability (see his note to Obama), but I think it will be more of an asset.  For one, in a general election, Obama can’t overly attack Huntsman’s competence or integrity, since he, after all, picked him to be his ambassador to an extremely important nation.  Also, the liability of working for Obama is only a big deal for the crazy wing of the Republican party (the 50% of the party who thought Obama was not born in the US) who aren’t going to be excited about his reasonable and calm demeanor in the first place.  He also is happy to answer when asked why he worked for Obama that he “served his country and would choose to do so again.”  He seems entirely unwilling to cater to the Tea Party element and that is why, of all the Republicans, I like him the most (though I’m still not a rabid fan).  In sum, he has substantial executive experience, kicks everyone’s butts at foreign policy (though a desire to distance himself from Obama is what I fear has affected his statements on Libya), wants to be the candidate of reasonableness and respect, and I love that he recently told Iowans that he’s not going to campaign there because he thinks ethanol subsidies don’t make sense.

So that is why I hope he does not get the nomination.  Though I would love to see some respectful and intelligent Huntsman/Obama debates, I don’t think he can beat Obama in 2012, though he or Romney would be the most likely to, and I don’t want the Republicans to nominate another moderate like John Mccain and lose.  Then the crazies in the Republican party will gain even more legitimacy in their narrative that we need even more ideologically entrenched politicos.

Instead, we need their standard bearer to win.  So, I declare, go Michele Bachman!  If she gets the nomination she’ll get creamed in the general.  Subsequently, that wing of the party will be demoralized and weakened.  Moreover, she is not articulate enough to create long term party transformation, as Goldwater did in the 1964 election in which he lost spectacularly but articulated a call to conservative principles that have lasted more than a generation.  Realistically, her nomination and loss will advance the American cause more than anything I see on the horizon at the moment (which is not saying as much as it sounds).  The national debate will become a little more thoughtful as the Republicans are forced to get a little less ideological.  Bachman, it seems to me, is just good medicine.  It might make you feel a bit nauseous going down, but ultimately it’s for the best.

Finally, what I am saying depends on Obama being quite likely to win.  Some of you have expressed disagreement.  I invite you to articulate how Obama could lose in 2012.  My two biggest reasons are as follows: I think Americans have gotten more negative in how they express opinions.  Therefore, lower than expected approval numbers do not necessarily translate into higher than expected approval numbers for somebody else.  In other words, everyone gets seen more as a cheap hack.  Our political economy is suffering a period of deflation. : )  Also, though Obama’s approval numbers stay hovering in the high 40s, I suspect (I have no evidence) those who are approving of him are centrist democrats and indpendents.  Those disapproving are mostly conservatives, but plenty of liberal democrats are as well.  In other words, the man is hogging the center, which means the only way for the Republicans to expand would be to beat Obama in the center or grab some liberal Democrats.  They could do the latter by being consistent with a libertarian platform by, for example, legalizing drugs.  That’ll get a few liberal democrats singing, but I don’t think it would work.  So, like always, it’s a fight for the center.  Ultimately however, what will likely tip the scale in the center is the state of the economy, which, though improving slowly, is improving.

In personal news, I’m starting to write again.  I miss Alicia.  Eric is in training.  I am housesitting at a friend’s.  Family will be visiting soon.

1 Comment   |  tags: , , , , , | posted in Politics

July 3, 2011

My Favorite Republican Hopeful

By Jer Clifton

Now that I am done with my Habitat temp job, it’s time to get down to what’s really important: crudely assessing the Republican presidential field.  I tend to think it’s pretty weak, and, to be honest, a bit embarrassing for Republicans.   Three big heavyweights are sitting out this round: Mike Huckabee, Marco Rubio, and Chris Christie.  I think the main reason is that they realize how little of a chance anyone stands of beating Obama in 2012.  Chris Christie and Marco Rubio are young, and despite what Christie recently said to my old pals on Fox & Friends, they both would make great VPs.  However, let’s look at who’s running.

In general, I think that there are three types of candidates.  For the first, it’s a publicity stunt, a way to sell books, raise your profile, and advance your career (think Michelle Bachman and Herman Cain).

In the second group are those that have very little or no chance of achieving the nomination, but they hope to shape the debate.  Ron Paul is the quintessence of this group.  Gary Johnson joins Paul in his love for most things libertarian, and I tend to like him.  He seems interested in solving problems and is refreshingly thoughtful on policy issues.  For example, in the June 13th CNN debate he proposed a kind of “amnesty” for illegal immigrants which centered around making it easy to achieve work VISAs.  I find it sad that it takes guts to suggest this in the Republican world of absolutist solutions (e.g. send everyone back!).  He’s also a fan of legalizing many types of drugs, which I agree with wholeheartedly.  Newt Gingrich has such high negatives that he really has little chance of being president, but he hopes to shape the discussion and be the Republican ideas man.  This hope betrays an intent that indicates a firm footing in the first group as well, as he hopes to sell more of the 21 books he’s published.  Really, the guy has very little chance, and you better believe that he knows it too.  Finally, Rick Santorum is in this group as well.  He wants to shape the debate by bringing the pet issues of the religious right to the forefront.  The problem is that he cannot distinguish himself as everyone seems on board.  There is no front runner like Rudy Guiliani who is pro-choice.  Nonetheless, I do believe that Santorum thinks Santorum has a shot at winning everything.

The third type of presidential candidate is actually running for president.  So far, only three people populate this group: Mitt Romney, Tim Pawlenty, and Jon Huntsman.  Mitt is the frontrunner I suppose, but these early polls are extremely meaningless.  I think he’s the frontrunner in large part because he is the only one of these three with larger name recognition, a holdover from the last presidential contest.  However, I remember him primarily for conveniently flip-flopping on abortion, viciously attacking John McCain in the primary debates last time around, and spending a shit-ton of money in Iowa and losing to an insurgent, relatively poor, and likable Huckabee.  I am comforted by the fact that even Romney’s supporters don’t really seem to like him, and may easily defect.  These numbers won’t be replaced, because he can’t get much tea party support with his record on health care reform, which is so toxic to the extreme elements in his party.  Tim Pawlenty seems like a serious candidate, but he seems to be continually trying to feign outrage in order to grab some share of the Tea Party.  But he’s not an angry guy, and he’s not really that confrontational, as was shown by how he sidestepped his Obamneycare line at the June 13th debate.  Also, I just disagree with him about most things he says.  So that leaves us with Jon Huntsman, my current fav.  I’ll talk about why in my next post.

6 Comments   |  tags: , , , , , , , , , , , | posted in Politics

May 8, 2011

Birther Brilliance

By Jer Clifton

I just want to mention some of the profound ways that not being born in the United States would have affected the quality of Obama’s presidency.  He clearly would not have been able to truly understand the country or be capable of talented, decisive leadership.

My confidence in this knowledge stems from observing my own inabilities brought on by not being born in the US.   It has rendered me an imbecile in regards to all things American.  For example, I sometimes get the words wrong when saying the pledge of allegiance.  Americans even think that I stutter, when really I am just talking like everyone not born in the United States.

I’ll miss the Birther movement.  I find crusades for meaningless truths amusing (or depressing, depending on my mood).  Who could have better publicized the idea that citizenship jus soli (by the soil) is an idiotic idea in the first place?  I remember in 8th grade Social Studies when I found out that an illegal immigrant can have a kid in the US and that kid is automatically a citizen.  I thought my teacher was joking, but apparently dirt has magical properties, at least in America.

At the same time, there is a myth in the missionary kid world that those like me who were not born in the US can’t be President.  From what I can tell this isn’t true.  I did some research for the sake of Obama and I.  Please, correct me if I am wrong.  Article 2 section 1 of the Constitution says this:

“No person except a natural born citizen…shall be eligible to the office of president.”

Ok.  What is a “natural born citizen”?  In the fourteenth amendment, section 1, it says this:

“All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside.”

That didn’t really help.  Finally, title 8 of the US Code fills in the gaps in section 1401. It says a couple of things but most importantly for our purposes it gives citizenship at birth to:

“a person born outside of the United States and its outlying possessions of parents both of whom are citizens of the United States and one of whom has had a residence in the United States or one of its outlying possessions, prior to the birth of such person.”

Ok.  This means that I am good to go right?  My mom grew up in Ohio and my Dad in Virginia.  Yay!  I can be president.  What about Obama even if he was born outside the country?  Secion 1401 of title 8 goes on to say that someone is born a citizen if he or she is:

“a person born outside the geographical limits of the United States and its outlying possessions of parents one of whom is an alien, and the other a citizen of the United States who, prior to the birth of such person, was physically present in the United States or its outlying possessions for a period or periods totaling not less than five years, at least two of which were after attaining the age of fourteen years.”

Shouldn’t this apply to Obama also?  His dad was from Kenya who came to America to study.  His mom was from Kansas where she lived, presumably, more than five years.  What am I missing?

I’ll miss the Birthers.  They were off-base technically (I think Obama would still have been eligible for president), meaningfully (Obama would still have been capable of being president), and factually (Obama was in fact born in the US).   Nonetheless, in March one quarter of all Americans believed Obama was not born in the states, the majority of Republican primary voters believed he was not, and 49% of all Republicans nationwide.  Obama and his advisors must have been wondering when to release the long-form birth certificate. This would have been the best opportunity ever to make your political opponents look dumb.

What do you think?  I think he blew it.  He played his ace prematurely.  If he would have waited, I think he could have painted an abysmal picture of the entire Republican party right before an election (BTW, 83%/12% of Republican birthers viewed Palin favorably compared to 41%/52% of republican non-birthers).  Some Republicans, Karl Rove for instance, did try to discourage this preposterousness, but most leaders, such as John Boehner, did not.  When asked about it on Meet the Press he said, “it’s not my job to tell the American people what to think. Our job in Washington is to listen to the American people.”

That’s the sort of inspiring leadership that magic soil is capable of.

3 Comments   |  tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | posted in Politics

May 4, 2011

Assassination Rocks!

By Jer Clifton

Most of the world is celebrating Osama bin Laden‘s death.  Some, however, are recoiling from that celebration and mourning the loss of life.  Both groups annoy me, but only if both groups are as single dimensional as my single dimensional description of them.

On the one hand, bringing an end to bin Laden’s exploits is a wonderful thing.  He killed lots of people and would kill more.  It also is a good morale booster and makes the West look and feel less incompetent and idiotic (“Seriously?  This guy walked free for almost 10 years after masterminding the single biggest terrorist attack in world history against the most powerful country in the world?”).  I am happy that we have ended this rallying symbol for Islamic fundamentalism.  However, I regret that we could not have had a trial for him as I think that would have been cathartic for society.  Trials are what separates societal civil justice from street gang vigilantism, and, since street gang vigilantism is no doubt a major goal and modus operandi of Islamic terrorist organizations, it’s too bad we couldn’t nab Osama and be rub-it-in-your-face civil to him.  But assassination is better than nothing.

On the other hand, assassination celebrations are weird things.  As a Christian, I believe that bin Laden was loved by Jesus just as much as me, you, or Mother Theresa.  God’s grace is as offensive as shit.  When Jesus died on the cross, he died for bin Laden.  He thought of bin Laden’s despicable actions, but also how beautiful he was as a human being and how passionately he would pursue his beliefs.  Yes, Osama had good qualities.  He will join the ranks of amazing people who did bad things like Hitler, Lenin, Stalin, Genghis Kahn, Napoleon, etc.  All these men had incredible talents that are admirable.  Even douche-bags of less grandeur, the local annoying jerk say, has admirable qualities.  He or she has a mother.  He or she is beautiful.

However, I barely have time to mourn for those who have not killed thousands of people indiscriminately out of some crazy religious calling.  I barely have time to mourn child hunger, the African Aids epidemic, or my friend’s problems with depression.  In fact, the only reason that I can see to single out bin Laden’s death as something to mourn is because other people are celebrating it.  In other words, it’s a stellar opportunity to act morally superior.

Finally, as many of you know, I am not a fan of punishment or anyone, especially Christians, who want to deal it out.  Justice is God’s to do, and he does it in the afterlife I’m pretty sure if at all (note “Vengeance is mine, I will repay” and Christ’s parable about the workers in the field).  So, I see Osama’s death as a means to an end and not an end itself.

So, I think our appropriate response to Osama’s death is celebration with a moment or two to pause and say, “Ok, assassination is not ideal.  Ok, God loved bin Laden just as much as he loves me.  Ok, I like his death’s good effects more than just the fact of his death.”  Then we drink a beer (or two), come up with a few cheesy movie lines to use as toasts (e.g. “Hijack this!” and “To the liberation of bearded men everywhere”), and wake up the next day and go about our business in arresting the suffering of others and the depravity of ourselves.

…in other news, Donald Trump called Seth Meyers a stutterer in what appeared to be a somewhat derogatory way.  Of course, I have an opinion, as I am deeply concerned with what Donald Trump thinks of me.

10 Comments   |  tags: , , , , , , , , , | posted in Ethics, Middle Eastern History/Politics, Politics, Theology, War

April 26, 2011

Ron Paul & Republican Reluctance

By Jer Clifton

It looks like Ron Paul is running for President again.  Why not?  There is no way he can actually get elected, so round #2 is another campaign of ideas hoping to repeat and strengthen the success of round #1.

But if your goal is actually to get elected, and you happen to be a Republican, 2012 might be a bad year for presidential campaigning.  Ron Paul notes this point, and it is one I have been thinking about for a while: where are the Republicans?  This time last election cycle we had several major names who had already thrown their hats in.  I think Republicans are wary because even if they get the nomination, I think it is highly unlikely that anyone beats Obama in 2012.  Here’s my 2 main reasons:

1) The economy is doing better.  This point cannot be overstated.  If the economy does better, Tea Partiers are less excited; there are fewer angry people with time on their hands (not that Tea Partiers are all just a bunch of angry people with time on their hands [but not entirely unlike that either]).  If we are on the upswing, people won’t want to mess with that.

2) Obama’s polls don’t reflect his electability.  I would say that there are a good 20% of Democrats, probably more like 30%, that are disgusted with Obama.  They might “disapprove” in polls, but when it comes around time to vote they sure aren’t going to vote for anyone further right.  The truth is that Obama remains a centrist in many ways, and continues to have broad appeal.

Also, keep an eye on Texas this election cycle.  It has always been solidly red, but it’s getting less.  If a Democrat can win Texas while hanging onto California, the two electoral juggernauts, there’s no way they lose.  Why am I talking about this?  Texas picked up 4 electoral votes in the last census, and 89% of the population increase was minority growth, mostly in the hispanic community, which voted 63 to 35 for Obama in 2008.  Now, Mccain won the state by 11 percentage points in 2008, so there is still a long way to go.  Also, there is the question of getting them out to vote.  However, if it becomes competitive, if a Republican presidential nominee has to spend time campaigning there, that will be interesting.  More interesting: if Republicans nominate a northern, business-savy, slick-haired Mormon, or someone else equally un-Texan, we could have a Democratic realignment.

BTW, I’m giving up on Ayn Rand having become thoroughly disenchanted after about 7 hours of listening to her life and ideas.  More to come on that later.

BTW, I got a temp job at Habitat for Humanity until the end of June.  Woohoo!   But that might mean less blogging.

3 Comments   |  tags: , , , , , , , , , , | posted in Politics