Month: May 2011

Scott Walker again sets the tone for the GOP.

Annie Lowrey calls it "the budgetary equivalent of the appendix":

Before 1917, Congress needed to approve each and every debt issuance. But when World War I hit, the legislature decided to make the process easier, setting an overall debt limit and letting Treasury issue as many bonds as it needed to stay within it. A century ago, the ceiling made more sense. The government was smaller, with discretionary spending a bigger portion of the federal budget. Having the additional check helped to keep appropriations under control. But now, the debt ceiling does little to encourage smarter budgeting. Most of the country's debt stems from spiraling mandatory spending on programs like Medicaid, Medicare, and Social Security anyway.

Gallup analyzes the GOP field without Huckabee:

There is no clear front-runner in the race for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination. Palin, who has given no indication of whether she will run for the nomination, has very high name identification, is near the top of Republicans' nomination preferences, and has a higher Positive Intensity Score than any other well-known candidate. Palin thus must be considered one of the GOP leaders at this point. Romney and Gingrich are also well-known. Of the two, Romney is slightly better positioned at this point due to his higher ranking in Gallup's trial heats.

Have you noticed how Palin's name has been erased from almost all recent articles on the 2012 GOP race. Why? Even if she's unlikely to run, she should surely be mentioned as often as, say, Trump or Bachmann, let alone Santorum.

I buried the lede, didn't I? The money quote from Santorum:

"[John McCain] doesn’t understand how enhanced interrogation works."

And yet McCain was subjected to exactly the kind of stress positions authorized by Bush. How does anyone tell a torture survivor that he does not know what torture is? How on earth does a Catholic?

A reader quotes another:

Outside of the yuppie environs McArdle talks about, we live in a culture where academic acheivement is actually frowned on by peers. I went to a nice, suburban school in Nebraska and I was literally beaten up for getting a high score on a test, made fun of constantly for reading, ostracized both for being smart and for trying to do well in class.

I just came home from attending the graduation ceremony for one of my partner's nephews, who attended a large suburban public high school.  Two things struck me about the ceremony.  One was the relative paucity of young men recognized for academic achievement (somewhat less than a quarter of those recognized).  The other was that the handful of kids who had already signed on the dotted line with the Armed Forces got a long rousing standing ovation from the audience while those who were recognized for earning scholarships or obtaining high grades and test scores simply got a smattering of token applause.

I don't want to take anything at all away from the kids heading off to active duty.  I was a soldier myself.  But there is something seriously wrong with a society that rewards kids who choose a job that frankly just about anyone is capable of doing, while giving short shrift to bright, hardworking young people who excel at what, after all, students are supposed to be concentrating on.  It certainly wasn't the fault of the school, which did its best to give those students the recognition they deserved.  Rather, it's the parents, who simply don't seem to give a damn about intellectual achievement.

Gifted and Talented programs may very well seem like salvation to a lot of smart kids.  But it seems to me that the problem with these programs may be that they end up shoving them off into an academic ghetto, while the vast majority are allowed to inherit their parents' anti-intellectualism without serious challenge.

Another writes:

The simple truth is, there is no greater crime you can commit in American public schools than being too smart. These programs, when properly administered, provide not only a place for gifted kids to thrive, but for them to be safe. The reader who wrote about getting beat up for scoring too high on a test would have broken my heart, were it not for the fact that it is such an oft-told tale.

To bring this around to a national level, we see this played out in national politics on a regular basis. In presidential elections it is really hard for the smarter guy to win. (Think Bush v. Gore, or Bush v. Kerry.) Unless he can also play "one of the boys" – as per Clinton – or there is a total revulsion against what has gone on in the previous four years (as with W's second term) the score goes to the dumber candidate. It is hard to overestimate the strength of the anti-intellectual strand of American culture.

Another:

The commenters that don't see the necessity of G&T classes don't understand the importance of having peers. Years of boredom and social ostracism take their toll. Not until college I was able to surround myself with people as smart as I am, that I overcame the habit of doing less than I was capable of in order to fit in. Anyone who values the impact of bright young people on the world needs to understand that a gifted child, like any child who doesn't fit in, needs to be reassured that it's ok to be different – that it's ok to be smart.

DSK, that is. France cannot be surprised.

"Strauss-Kahn will be safe, but not alone. Even in protective custody, there is no solitude. There are cells on all sides of you, and the men inside them are restive. The place is always noisy, even after lights out, at 11 p.m. In fact, that is often the edgiest part of the day, with inmates shouting to each other, or singing, and sometimes screaming, well into the night," – Joe Halderman, former producer-writer for CBS News' 48 Hours who served time at Rikers for blackmail in the Letterman case.

A reader writes:

You are indeed right regarding Cornel West. He is a an articulate, well-read, pseudo-intellectual who plays the part of the black Yoda well, but is ironically very provincial. His world is literally black and white which limits his analytic powers and makes him ineffective as a true intellectual and impotent as a true force for change. Contrast this with Barack Hussein Obama.

Obama, is what we call, a TCK—A Third Culture Kid. TCK’s grow up as the children of missionaries, or as military brats, or as the children of businessmen. It means that you grew up during your early developmental years in a culture outside of your parents’ home culture.

In our family we are quite familiar with this term since both my wife and I are second generation TCK’s and we are now raising one (Costa Rican/American born and raised in Europe and China). Between us we’ve been to 70 countries and lived on 4 continents.

TCK’s are usually unable to view the world in a simplistic dualistic way. On the contrary, they are usually over-achievers, get advanced degrees, and are infinitely curious about the world. They can accentuate different facets of their personality and experiences based on who they are talking to—and it’s not fake. This is the reason Obama really could connect and appreciate rural farmers in Illinois, fit in with the Harvard crowd, and work as an effective community organizer in Chicago’s South Side. Obama is the classic TCK. This is why he represents the new America so well—he is post-racial, globalized, and a great example of America’s own Third Cultural nature. It also helps to explain why he is so loathed by provincial Middle America.

Yet, you notice that Obama seems to deeply understand them better than they seem to understand themselves. He can be Kansan, Chicagoan, Bostonian, and fittingly really enjoys Hawaii. His key speeches including the Philadelphia race speech, his famous 2004 Democratic Convention speech, and his Cairo speech show that propensity to truly get all sides. This also helps to explain why he’s not a closet Muslim terrorist. He is the anti-thesis of Osama Bin Laden with his provincial, dualistic, desire to homogenize the world by creating a Muslim Caliphate. This is the exact opposite of who Obama is at his core. Osama looked for his father figure in the provincial world of 7th Century and 20th Century Arabia. Obama looked to go beyond his father’s provincial, naïve aspirations and became a little bit of everything.

The liberal label doesn’t fit Obama either. As you have pointed out, like Reagan or Thatcher, at his heart he is a pragmatist. Like a true TCK, he doesn’t romanticize any one culture or ideology. He understands that there is good or bad in everything. Yet another reason why he can also be called the anti-Bush who along with Cheney is trapped in a juvenile Manichaeism.

Look closely at Sarah Palin and George W. Bush. They are not just anti-intellectual but they are deeply provincial people that made sure not to expose themselves to much outside of their comfort zone. Sarah bounced from college to college unable to really fit in anywhere but Wasilla. Not even the Governor’s mansion felt like home to her so she left that too. Bush grew up in the upper crust East Coast and found his identity as a simple, “aw’ shucks” Texan who just knows what to do in his gut. He can be detached from the real world when necessary. TCK’s have no choice. They must engage the world.

This is one reason why I do not believe Sarah Palin will ever really run for President: She is deathly afraid of the world. She’s fine with fame and money (and pretending to be relevant assures the cash flow)—but she will always need to hide in the tundra from this complicated world. No surprise that on her recent trip to India, she mainly stayed in the hotel and the mall and got out of there as soon as possible.

I wish people would realize that we have a President that was born in the USA, raised in Asia and multi-cultural Hawaii, and who lived in Harlem, and went to uppity Harvard and then spent a lot of time in African-American ‘hoods. Oh, and he’s driven up and down the rural highways of Illinois hundreds of times. Furthermore, much of his life was spent in obscurity, so he had to live amongst us normal people paying back student loans. Even as a Senator he lived in a run-down apartment in D.C. This is why I never worried about Obama’s lack of experience. All he’s had is experience. Even Bill Clinton, who entered into the political upper-class networks by the time he was at Georgetown, looks provincial and cut-off from real America compared to this. Have we ever had a President who has lived in this many American worlds and cultures and succeeded in all of them? 

Cornel West and Sarah Palin have a lot in common. They speak the language of a time gone by and really get very little of what is going on.

Larison sees the limits of the comparison:

At this point in 2007, Romney was polling an average of 8%, and we know he didn’t prevail. Right now, Pawlenty is polling an average of 3.6% What leads anyone to believe that he is going to surge out of nowhere to become the nominee? He most likely will become a competitive candidate, but there is nothing here that suggests he is going to win.

Bernstein defends the parallel.