Skill and luck

Obama surely has some astonishing political skills. But he is also one lucky mother.

He loses the primary against Bobby Rush. If he had won, he probably would have gotten lost in the House of Reps. A Senate run in '04 would seem a little impatient and overly ambitious.

Carol Mosely Braun chooses not to run for Senate. That would have nixed his chances, and he wouldn't have even run. He wins the primary.

His Republican opponent, Jack Ryan implodes with divorce revelations. He is replaced by perennial court jester, Alan Keyes. He trounces him.

He is chosen to give the keynote at the 2004 convention. He would not have risen to prominence without that opportunity.

He has a tight race with Hillary Clinton. This allows him to grow his organization, to become better as a candidate, and to receive lots of free media time. All the unpleasant vetting happens in the spring instead of the fall. In retrospect, that tight race was the best thing that could have happened to him. And it could have gone the other way if he had just scored a couple of extra points in New Hampshire.

And now, in the general he faces someone who's age puts in relief his youthfulness and 'change' message. Moreover, he faces the most desultory Republican campaign in memory.

Obama isn't just good. He's also lucky. It's like a Michael Jordan when he's getting the rolls.

Exclusive Interview With George Will

This Week, August 3, 2008:

GEORGE WILL: Beyond that, an awful lot of the ‘other’ he represents is the windsurfer, it’s John Kerry. The crowning, crashing irony of this year is that the first African-American Presidential candidate nominated by either party has the disadvantage of being too upper crust. That is, he’s Columbia University, he’s Harvard Law School, he’s too–

GEORGE STEPHANOPOLOUS: Arugula!

I was curious about this viewpoint, so I called Mr. Will up. He kindly agreed to a brief interview.

ME: Thanks for talking to me, Mr. Will! Big fan.

WILL: I like to dip my toe in the hoi polloi occasionally.

ME: You said on This Week that Barack Obama was too upper crust. I was wondering how that could be ‘cause I hear his Mom had to rely on food stamps at times.

WILL: Yes. Yours is a common misperception. Dear boy, being upper crust has nothing to do with your origins. And it definitely doesn’t have to do with money. You can come from generations of oil wealth and still be the salt of the earth!

ME: So John McCain could have seven homes and be worth $100 million and still be…

WILL: A man of the people, right. And an American hero too. No, being upper crust is about something else.

ME: Arugula?

WILL: Yes. Not just Arugula, but Arugula. In part.

ME: What else? I mean, other than Arugula?

WILL: Mesclun, Mache, Boston, Bibb, and of course, frisee. All of these are varieties of lettuce consumed by the upper crust.

ME: It seems like it would be hard to get your greens without being upper crust.

WILL: Not at all. Iceberg lettuce is permitted. So is romaine, as long as it is in a Caesar Salad.

ME: Huh. Is it just greens?

WILL: Of course not! Do you think I would be superficial enough to judge a man by the kind of leaf he eats?

ME: Well… I don’t know.

WILL: He also drinks a hard-to-get brand of beverage called Black Forest Berry Honest Tea.

ME: It’s hard to get unsweetened tea.

(Mr. Will frowns. I know it’s a telephone interview, but he frowns right through the phone line.)

WILL: Try Snapple diet.

ME: Artificially sweetened.

(He frowns harder.)

ME: You also mentioned something about windsurfing...

WILL: Right.

ME: But he doesn’t windsurf. He plays basketball. Pretty good at it too! Did you see him sink that 3-pointer on the first try, boy, that was -

WILL: You do know that John McCain had his arms broken in the Hanoi Hilton? He’d be sinking 3-pointers too if he didn’t love his country so much.

ME: Really? He’s 71 years old.

WILL: Let’s get on with it. Any more questions?

ME: Oh, sorry. Where was I? Windsurfing.

WILL: So upper crust.

ME: Why? It looks cool to me.

WILL: Do you think most people in this wonderful country of ours could afford to windsurf?

ME: Most people can’t afford Pappy Bush’s speedboats, but I never heard the media go on about how it was an upper crust pastime.

WILL: Pork rinds.

ME: Sorry?

WILL: Bush Sr. eats pork rinds. Big man-of-the-people food. It inoculates you against almost any kind of upper crust accusation. Heck, you could probably sprinkle some over your arugula salad and nobody would say a damn word.

ME: And uh… Harvard?

WILL: Surely I don’t have to explain to you why Harvard is upper crust?

ME: Well, no. I get it. But Dubya is supposedly a man of the people and he went to Harvard… right?

WILL: Harvard Business School. Every Fortune 500 CEO I know just refers to it as 'Budweiser U.' The Law School, on the other hand....

ME: You know… thinking about it. It seems like only Democrats are upper crust.

WILL: Really? I’d never noticed. Huh! Come to think, there really aren’t any Republicans who are upper crust, are there?

ME: No, I suppose not. (Pause.) Mr. Will, I’m curious. Would you be a man of the people, or are you upper crust?

WILL: I’m a man of the people, of course.

ME: But… you wear a bowtie!

WILL: I’m hanging up now.

Renaissance Man

Andrew Sullivan links to this compilation of Steadicam shots.

Yes, the Steadicam's invention in 1976 revolutionized cinema forever. But there is a little-known fact about Garrett Brown, the genius inventor of the Steadicam... and no, it's not that he also invented the Skycam, an aerial camera rig that produces swooping shots, mainly for sports events.

Garrett Brown is also a remarkable voice talent. With his wife, Anne Winn, he has recorded some very funny radio commercials, nearly always in the genre of romantic comedy. Take a listen at their site. Start with the Amex or the Molson commercials.

Assuming What's False

It has been said that Barack Obama is shifting positions on Iraq in order to move to the middle.

There's two things wrong with this statement. Obama hasn't been shifting his position on Iraq, but also... he's already right smack in the middle of American public opinion.

Here's some recent polling:

CNN
"If you had to choose, would you rather see the next president keep the same number of troops in Iraq that are currently stationed there, or would you rather see the next president remove most U.S. troops in Iraq within a few months of taking office?"
Keep Same Number: 33%
Remove Most: 64%

Time
"Do you believe that the United States should bring most of the troops home from Iraq in the next year or two, or should the U.S. wait until Iraq is relatively stable, even if it takes four years or more?"
In the next year or two: 56%
Wait Until Stable: 39%

LA Times/Bloomberg
"In your opinion, should the United States withdraw troops from Iraq right away, or should the U.S. begin bringing troops home within the next year, or should troops stay in Iraq for as long as it takes to win the war?"
Withdraw Right Away: 25%
Withdraw Within a Year: 43%
Stay as Long as it Takes: 26%

The conservatives critics of Obama who label him a political opportunist for allegedly changing his position have got it wrong; if he were to do so, he would either be an electoral dunce or a paragon of political courage.

The Issue No One Is Talking About

If John McCain is elected he will be the oldest U.S President to begin his first term. At 72 years of age, he will be 3 years older than Ronald Reagan was in January 1981.

While this fact is often joked about, the media has not made a systematic exploration of what this means. This paper puts the incidence of Alzheimer's in someone as old as John McCain would be by the end of his first term at around 3.3%. Another study shows that about 22% of people over 71 suffer from cognitive impairment without dementia. Add these numbers together, and statistically there is a better than one if four chance that John McCain will suffer some sort of significant mental decay over the next four years. There is already plenty of anecdotal evidence that McCain's powers might already be diminishing:



Of course, there are other problems associated with advancing age: stamina diminishes and susceptibility to disease and injury increases. While McCain is a very peppy septuagenerian, he has suffered from melanoma, a form of skin cancer, and he has a variety of injuries from his Vietnamese captivity that could become chronic pain problems.

The Presidency is a tough job for even a young, healthy person. Famously, we have seen how the office ages its occupants. Can John McCain afford to hit the fast forward button? Or is it ageist to even ask?

I would argue that senior citizens should be offered the opportunity to do the same jobs younger Americans do. The Presidency, however, is a different matter because it is a job of unique and paramount importance, and because it entails a 4-year term. Many Fortune 500 companies force their CEOs to retire at 65, and I suppose they have good business reasons to, but if a CEO's intellectual powers are lost the board could fire him. We'd likely be stuck with a diminished leader. Under Amendment 25, power can be transferred to the Vice President only with the express consent of the President, or if the President is "unable to discharge" his duties, then with a majority vote from the cabinet. It seems quite plausible that a spirited man like McCain might hold on to office, despite the decay of his powers, and it seems implausible that a cabinet of the President's most ardent loyalists would take this power away from him.

So why won't the media discuss this legitimate issue? They don't think it's polite.

They need to be prodded. Once the issue is in the ether, the media will have an excuse to be impolite, which they love to do because it is provocative and good for ratings. Medical experts will be called on to testify on every cable news show, the newsmagazines will pen long thumbsuckers, and people will think about their own experiences with people over 70 and make up their own minds. The Obama campaign would have to be crazy not to bring this up, and I think they will. The trick is to inject the question into the national debate without alienating older voters. I would suggest that Howard Dean would be the perfect surrogate, both because of his medical background and because he's not running for anything. Obama can then issue a soft denial like "this is an issue that voters have to decide upon, not me, but John McCain certainly seems like an energetic guy."

Why My Neighborhood Is the Coolest

According to the U.S. Census, Queens is probably the most diverse county in the U.S. With nearly half of its population born overseas, it comes a close second to Miami-Dade in the percentage of foreign-born residents, but Miami-Dade is predominantly Latin and Cuban whilst the population in Queens comes from more than 100 nations. Some populations concentrate in certain neighborhoods: Flushing, for instance, is predominantly Asian. Other neighborhoods like Astoria, where I live, and Jackson Heights not far away, have residents from many countries and would probably have a good claim to be the most diverse neighborhoods in the world.

Today I went to my greengrocer. The produce is about half as cheap as the Korean convenience store just a couple of blocks away, and about a third as cheap as Manhattan. The place is owned by a Greek. Central Americans work the produce, and pretty young girls from many different nationalities work at the cashier. The Brazilian girl who flirts with every male between the ages of 12 and 80 wasn't there today, so I got in another line. Pretty soon I was at the head, and there was an elderly man next to me in traditional Arab garb. "Did you get this from inside or outside?" asked the girl at the cashier. He couldn't understand what she was asking. The Greek girl next to her intervened; they tried with sign language to explain what they were asking, but it wasn't getting through. "I do not understand," he said. Finally, they just laughed and charged him the lower price.

Then, the first girl asked: "are you Muslim?" The old man understood this. He answered that he was. This very European-looking girl placed a hand over her heart and said "I am Muslim."

The Arab man smiled. "Yarhamkom allah" he said. "Yarhamkom allah" she replied. For my benefit, he turned and managed to communicate that this was how a muslim greeted a muslim. It meant 'God Bless You'. "That is all the Arabic she knows" laughed the Greek girl. "I know, I know" said the other girl, as if knowing only this much Arabic were a grave personal shortcoming. The Arab man asked where she was from; it turns out that she was from Kosovo. And that is where I left them. I walked away with the makings for an excellent salad and a smile on my face.

We all get along in Astoria. We're all after the same very American goal: to make a little bit better lives for ourselves and our kin. We're new to America, but we are the soul of America. We are the future of America. I will never understand the people that are frightened by otherness. I find it exhilarating.

McCain: No Holiday From Pandering

John McCain's proposal for a gasoline tax holiday is getting some harsh reviews, including from some conservative economists.

McCain has admitted to a lack expertise about economic matters, but this proposal betrays something different: either a cynical contempt for the electorate, or an abject economic illiteracy.

It comes down to the basic laws of supply and demand. If the tax from gasoline is removed for three months, the price will go down. Yippee! But as any student of Economics 101 will know, demand will spike in response. And what happens when supply is fixed, as gasoline in the summer is, both because of flat crude oil production and limited refinery capacity? The price goes back up until supply and demand are in balance again.

But suppliers will ramp up production to make up for it, right? No. A temporary tax cut, announced with a few weeks of anticipation, is not going to get new refineries online for the summer.

When Obama says the tax cut will on average only save consumers $30 over three months, he's actually being too generous. The best guess is that it will be less than that, if anything at all. And this comes at the cost of our crumbling highway infrastructure, since that is where the revenue from the gas tax is dedicated.

McCain's tax cut will go straight into the pockets of the oil companies, not into the wallets of our strapped consumers.

Is Hillary Clinton's plan to fund the tax cut with a windfall profits tax on oil companies preferable? Let me hand it over to Leonard Burman, director of the Tax Policy Center:

Burman called this "utterly incoherent," saying that a windfall-profits tax would over the long term only exacerbate the supply problems caused by lifting the gas tax, because it would discourage the exploration for and development of new sources of petroleum. "So a policy intended to lower prices, but which won't do that, will be offset with a policy that's likely to raise prices over the long term," he said.

In his campaign we keep on going back to character issues. Rather than fixate on trivia, we should look at what the candidate's policy proposals tell us about them... both as leaders and as people.