Getting Things Done
But the point of what Republicans are getting to has more to do about the ability to the ability to size up a situation, set objectives and priorities, work around obstacles and get things done.
John McCain in his first command experience towards the end of his 22-year military career headed the Navy's largest air squadron in Jacksonville, FL. About a third of the fighter jets were out of commission which resident officers regarded as a de facto operational constraint. John decided he wanted all the jets operational; he promoted people from within whom could commit to the goal, got permission to pirate parts from other aircraft and rode the maintenance supervisors, eventually meeting his goal, setting a new safety record, and winning the squadron's first award.
Sarah Palin observed some ethical lapses while serving on the Alaskan Oil and Gas Conservation Commission but found her approaches stonewalled by the Republican Party state chairman and the Republican Attorney General. She resigned and exposed the corruption. She then decided to take on the incumbent Republican governor and former US Senator and defeated him and then went on to beat the Democratic former governor, whom outspent her in a Democratic sweep year of 2006. Then as governor, Sarah Palin pushed through ethics reform. In addition, Sarah pushed the major energy corporations to finally start a long-discussed but deferred natural gas pipeline ultimately to the lower 48.
A Personal Example From Academia
I'll give an example from academia where, as a junior untenured professor, I faced the criterion "publish or perish". I had a brilliant faculty member on my dissertation committee from the widely respected Milt Jenkins' MIS program at Indiana University. He was swinging for the fences, trying to get published at some of the prestigious journals in the field, e.g., Management Science and Communications of the ACM, and to a lesser extent, MIS Quarterly. Unfortunately, publication takes more than quality research, and he eventually left UH, taking a leave of absence. I remember around that time I was making small talk with one of my faculty colleagues, and he casually mentioned that he had to write up an article that had already been accepted by MISQ. (The normal path is you do research, write up the results, submit the article to a journal and anxiously await peer review and the editor's decision. If you're rejected, depending on the nature of the outcome, you may revise research and/or the paper, or resubmit to a different journal.)
The typical strategy is to start off writing up results from your dissertation while you start up followup or new research studies. I had decided on an alternative approach to my mentor; I was willing to settle for respected journals and sought to multi-task, so while I was collecting data for one study, I was writing up the results for another or writing a conceptual article. I had no problem juggling among 5 or 6 projects. The end result was a steady flow of articles and book chapters, and as I interviewed for new positions, no one questioned my ability to publish.
Paying a Price For Sticking to Principle, For Challenging the Status Quo
John McCain paid a price for dissenting from President Bush on the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts, troop footprint in Iraq and the status of former Defense Department Secretary Rumsfeld (since 2003), the Medicare drug prescription bill, the 2005 Energy Bill, Katrina, and prisoner interrogation techniques, which offended many Bush loyalists in the GOP. The media conservatives opposed those grounds but also considered him a traitor for his bipartisan measures on campaign reform, climate change, and immigration reform plus his participation in the Gang of 14, which defused a Senate rules crisis over judicial nominations. McCain saw a number of his GOP Senate colleagues endorse other candidates because of bitterness over his criticism of their earmarks. In 2007, as the only active national legislator supporting the initially unpopular surge, McCain saw his frontrunner status collapse, but stood on principle, saying he would rather lose the long-awaited Republican nomination than see America lost a war.
Sarah Palin, as discussed above, with lesser resources, took on an incumbent mayor, the Republican Attorney General for conflicts of interest, the state Republican Party chairman, the incumbent Republican governor and former US Senator, and finally a former Democratic governor, each step of the way risking her political future.
Examples From My Academic Career
In a previous post, I gave examples of differences I had with the senior MIS faculty at UWM. The senior faculty in the UWM Business School largely determined the distribution of raises, and I got a below-average raise for the coming year, despite having 3 journal articles (more than my senior colleagues). I found myself personally attacked by faculty and the business school for "sabotaging the foreign student recruitment program" by catching and pursuing an Asian foreign student whom had serially plagiarized under a minimum of 3 professors, including myself. [I had a new colleague whom came to me with one of his student's papers, saying he thought it sounds "too professional"; I instantly recognized the classic group DSS paper by Gerry DeSanctis, and a second professor recognized his name and still had a copy of a paper which the student hadn't bothered to pick up.]
I was threatened by a group of 6 students whom demanded I back off the upcoming due date for a computing assignment "or else"; it turned out "or else" was to rotate a group member daily lodging a complaint with the Dean of Students office and flooding my contract renewal file with anonymous spurious complaints the day before the hearing (and then after the semester filing frivolous grade complaints where the investigating committee ignored written grade appeal policy requiring objective evidence, e.g., a mismarked test or assignment, and my own due process, and the administration reneged on its commitment to provide me a copy of the so-called evidence). In one case, it turned out to be such a witchhunt, the committee refused to make a decision based on the student's appeal and decided to ask for copies of materials not even mentioned by the student. Other faculty members got wind of what was going on and were concerned about a bad precedent being set ; they approached me and told me to push back on the request; I had nothing to hide and was concerned about setting a red flag, but I agreed. The committee subsequently backed off, claiming "due diligence" in their and the student's blatant abuse of the grievance process.
At UTEP, I found myself smeared by the Dean of Students office: I was falsely accused of threatening to blacklist a student with employers. What turned out to be the real story is this student had listed me as a reference without my knowledge or consent some time before I busted her for violating my published academic honesty policy on an assignment. She was now in a state of panic. (I ended up getting a subsequent query from an employer, and I responded, refusing to comment.) Background: I had led off a class by simply noted that a couple of (unnamed) students had violated the honesty policy in the syllabus. The young woman immediately asked, in front of the class, "Is it me?" (the natural response of any innocent person). I was stunned she would out herself in front of the whole class but refused to discuss the identity of the students. She then went into a temper tantrum, literally screaming she was not a cheater, she was an A student, and the powers that be wouldn't let me do anything to her, etc. I really had never seen this kind of behavior in any class I had ever attended. She followed me into my office after class and slammed the door behind her. I had a policy against being alone an office with a female student with the door closed and asked her to open the door; she refused. She then commenced shrieking at me, and I had colleagues opening their doors trying to figure out what was going on. At that point, I was concerned about a spurious allegation of a sexual nature. She refused to leave, so I did. My understanding is that she subsequently went to my department chairman's office and was referred to the Dean of Students.
Does Obama Really Stand for Change--or the Status Quo (More of the Same)?
Obama is from the rough-and-tumble world of Chicago politics. What do I expect from a true transformative candidate? Well, someone who is unwilling to accept business as usual and who, when provided with the opportunity, works to improve the situation, not exploit it.
The Republicans have had their issues, in Alaska, Illinois (the George Ryan scandal), and nationally. We saw Republicans, before they took power in the 1994 national election, talking about the corrupting influence of the long-standing Democratic incumbency. But we began to see some of the corrupting influence, e.g., Abramoff, Duke Cunningham, etc., affecting the GOP's loss in 2006, just as Rostenkowski's scandal ended the long Democratic streak in the House. John McCain's long-standing reformist stands on campaign financing, lobbyist reform, and earmarks
Did Obama battle against the Chicago political machine--or go with the flow? I think the answer is clear. As I've mentioned in past posts, Obama decided to enter a safe Democratic state senate seat when the incumbent decided to challenge for Rep. Rush's Congressional seat. (Obama a few years later also failed to oust Rep. Rush.) The incumbent changed her mind, but Obama refused to stand aside. In fact, when she refiled for her own seat, Obama's lawyers successfully cleared the race of any other competitor. This may have been legal, but not one in the spirit of democracy and fairness. I also noted how in the 2004 Democratic Senate primary, a late-breaking story on alleged domestic violence involving frontrunner Blair Hull's ex-wife mysteriously surfaced, clearing the way for Barack's victory. Then, facing Jack Ryan, a telegenic investment banker turned inner-city school teacher, Obama's campaign prompted the local media to get Ryan's divorce papers unsealed, without the consent or Jack or his ex-wife. A racy tabloid item resulted in Ryan's resignation from the race, and the desperate Illinois GOP Party went to a carpetbagger, Alan Keyes, whom never stood a shot against Obama.
Meanwhile in the state of Illinois, we see an increasingly unpopular Democratic governor, Rod Blagojevich, often at odds with a Democratic legislature. Higher taxes and spending, an underfunded pension system, turf battles, a governor whom refuses to move his family into the Springfield mansion but sticks Illinois with costly commute. Should Obama be linked with, accept responsibility for the dysfunctional Illinois legislature where he served for 8 years, only 3 years ago? Should he accept responsibility for associating with a convicted felon in a sweetheart deal involving his recent house purchase? While he pays lip service to fighting foreign terrorists, why did he knowingly associate with an unrepentant former domestic terrorist? Barack Obama talks about a post-racial America--while attending a church for 20 years with a black minister whom preached crackpot government conspiracy theories against blacks and blamed America for the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
But what do we see from Obama? Overexaggerated claims of his involvement on legislation. Obama talks post-partisan, but he had an opportunity to join with the Gang of 14 to defuse a Senate crisis over judges; he refused and promised to filibuster qualified judges to the Supreme Court. He dropped out of John McCain's bipartisan group on Senate ethics to line up behind a partisan Democratic bill. He worked into a bipartisan immigration a condition which GOP senators reluctantly accepted and then votes for 5 compromise-killing amendments to the same bill. Obama talks about reform, but when McCain talks about the corrupting effects of earmarks and refuses to participate, Obama takes earmarks, e.g., for the hospital system where his wife works (and just coincidentally his wife's salary went from the 120K's to over 300K), and General Dynamics received some contracts and has on its board someone whom has been involved with Obama fundraising. And, then, of course, Obama backtracked from his commitment to take equal public financing when he realized that he could attract more campaign cash than McCain; of course, he considers his money more equal than the money of his opponents, which he defines as "special interests".
Sensitivity to Criticism?
Someone whom is a true agent of change knows that he or she has to have a thick skin. McCain during this campaign (starting from the primaries) has found himself viciously attacked from both the left and the right, including his pick of Palin (whom they implied hadn't been fully vetted and reflected on his judgment), and it just seems to roll off his back. Sarah Palin over the past week has experienced horrendous personal attacks with some people even questioning her fitness as a mother. In contrast, Barack Obama seems to be obsessed about all sorts of imagined slights from the McCain campaign--they are challenging his patriotism, they are going to play the race card (i.e., "he doesn't like like those men on the dollar bills"), they are implying he doesn't put America first, that they are trash-talking his experience as a community organizer, etc.
This thin-skinned, defensive nature of Obama especially comes through in this recent widely reported exchange with CNN host Anderson Cooper:
Transcript Anderson Cooper 360 Degrees, 9/01/08, CNN.comAre we really comparing a campaign with running a municipality, where you're dealing with basic services like roads, snow removal, sewers, schools, and public safety? Property taxes, factory closings, city pension funds, union contracts and personnel decisions? Unemployment problems, revenue shortfalls, where do you cut the budgets, and how do you set your priorities? Sarah saw wasteful spending and had to unseat an incumbent mayor, easier said than done... But a candidate is actually going to equate his campaign budget with operating a municipality? There's no doubt that a candidate can make a number of important decisions in the operations of his or her campaign, but whereas a candidate may attend fundraisers and the like, the day-to-day operations of a campaign are really handled by the campus staff--which, by Barack's inference, would be more qualified than their own candidate to run the government. But, even worse, Barack fails to mention her time on the City Council and the Oil and Gas Conservation Committee--plus getting elected governor of Alaska, supplier of 20% of the US' own energy production, (as discussed above) over a $10B budget, and some 25,000 employees, someone whom has cut property taxes and spending, returned a energy rebate, pushed through ethics reform and got movement on a long-deferred natural gas pipeline project.
COOPER: And, Senator Obama, my final question--your -- some of your Republican critics have said you don't havethe experience to handle a situation like this. They in fact have said that Governor Palin has more executive experience, as mayor of a small town and as governor of a big state of Alaska.
What's your response?
OBAMA: Well, you know, my understanding is, is that Governor Palin's town of Wasilla has, I think, 50 employees. Wehave got 2,500 in this campaign. I think their budget is maybe $12 million a year. You know, we have a budget of about
three times that just for the month.
So, I think that our ability to manage large systems and to execute, I think, has been made clear over the last couple of years. And, certainly, in terms of the legislation that I passed just dealing with this issue post-Katrina of how we handle
emergency management, the fact that many of my recommendations were adopted and are being put in place as we speak, I think, indicates the degree to which we can provide the kinds of support and good service that the American people expect.
But what's fascinating with Obama's response is that he seems to be forgetting he's running against John McCain, not Sarah Palin. And then there's this weird attempt to argue his distinctive unspecified "suggestions" to a federal emergency bill (what in his experience qualifies himself as an emergency policy expert, I'm not sure), but you can put anything you want in a bill: it's the executive whom needs to carry out policy. Legislative experience doesn't make for executive experience.
