Governor Christine Gregoire and the Atheist Display

As a Roman Catholic, I have often been exasperated with prominent lay Catholic politicians whom take stands inconsistent with fundamental Church teachings. For example, Democrats Speaker Pelosi, Vice President-elect Joe Biden, Senator Ted Kennedy, and Kansas Governor Kathleen Sebelius and Republican former NYC Mayor Rudy Giuliani oppose restrictions on elective abortions. Republican California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has been a high-profile opponent of reinstating the traditional definition of marriage as between a man and a woman, adopted by the majority of California voters several years earlier, arbitrarily overruled by a 1-vote majority in the California Supreme Court, even though the state for years has had a functionally equivalent domestic partnership law on the books. 

Usually these politicians have sham excuses explaining why they let political or cultural values trump Catholic teachings in support of traditional Judaic-Christian values. They often recite the politically expedient rationale of not wanting to impose their "religious beliefs" on other Americans, although they are less concerned about imposing Judaic-Christian prohibitions regarding murder, lying, adultery, and theft. They also argue that one must look at the "big picture",  even if they concede the abortion issue, arguing, for example, Democratic programs are more consistent with Catholic teachings on social justice. That's an argument I won't concede; it seems one may argue that Christian politicians could argue a type of  "tough love", whereby we don't encourage an undue dependence of an individual on the state and hence impede his actualization as a person; that individuals should have an opportunity to maximize their own income in order to extend the reach of their own philanthropic efforts, without government inefficiencies and overhead with ineffective social programs; that given a surplus of unemployed low-skill workers, a hike in the minimum wage may actually result in a counterproductive contraction rather than an expansion of relevant work opportunities, etc. But the bottom line is, as I've explained in an earlier post on Senator Biden's pro-choice views, why would a Christian sell his or her soul for political treasure?

Washington's Democratic Governor Christine Gregoire, also a Catholic, has sanctioned yet another front in the culture wars, using a preposterous rationale based on the First Amendment to justify including the display of a provocative atheist rant near traditional Nativity scene and a holiday tree in the state Capitol. (There is also a menorah.)

The poster reads:

At this season of the Winter Solstice may reason prevail. There are no gods, no devils, no angels, no heaven or hell. There is only our natural world. Religion is but myth and superstition that hardens hearts and enslaves minds.

Governor Gregoire's response to public outcry over the poster?

The U.S. Supreme Court has been consistent and clear that, under the Constitution's First Amendment, once government admits one religious display or viewpoint onto public property, it may not discriminate against the content of other displays, including the viewpoints of non-believers.

The highly rated cable  O'Reilly Factor featured the outrageous exhibit, which apparently was stolen shortly thereafter (oh, cry me a river!)

Let me make my position clear.

First, Christmas (and the Christian faith) has been an integral part of American culture since before the American Revolution. It has been a federal holiday for generations. The Nativity scene is symbolic of the traditional meaning of Chrismas. Americans have freedom of or from religion by the First Amendment, the same one which guarantees freedom of speech. However, just because the majority of Americans are fellow Christians does not mean that Christian rights to expression should be suppressed for fear of intimidating non-Christians. Exercising one's right to free expression implies tolerance of the same from others. I do not expect non-Christians to accept the belief system underlying the Nativity scene; what I do expect is certain minimal civility and respectfulness in the Constitution-required tolerance of Christian beliefs and symbols. I have no problem with atheists, agnostics or other non-Christians expressing their beliefs or skepticism and critical analyses of Christianity in various media . I don't have an objection to a natural setting or a representation of the winter solstice in the state Capitol; in fact, some holiday traditions borrowed from Roman pagan winter festivals. But putting a display that unilaterally ridicules, in explicit language, people of faith near a Nativity scene? Do Governor Gregoire and Attorney General McKenna honestly think that the state of Washington can't demand civility and apply professional or editorial standards on a consistent basis across exhibits?

Second, where do we draw the line? Do we need to permit, say, anti-Semitic passages from Hitler's Mein Kampf  to be posted near the display of the menorah? And exactly what standards do we apply, given potentially hundreds of religious groups, each demanding equal representation in the state Capitol?

To a certain degree, I hate drawing more attention to this situation, because I know the atheists were using this situation as a publicity stunt and probably knew that by being provocative, they would be yanking O'Reilly's chain and getting more mileage than their intellectually-impoverished, mediocre, unoriginal thinking could yield on its own merits. Personally, I don't think that people come to a state Capitol just to see a Nativity scene; any Christian can buy all sorts of Nativity-inspired items from hundreds of vendors. For years the state Capitol did without a Nativity scene without adversely affecting Christian worship in Washington.

However, one feels compelled to speak out when pedestrian politicians like Gregoire and McKenna demonstrate moral cowardice and attempt to hide behind the First Amendment to rationalize permitting anti-religious propaganda to be prominently posted in the state Capitol.

WalMart: How About Some Corporate Responsibility?

WalMart had relied for a long time on it high-volume, low-everyday-price strategy to attract shoppers to its stores, rather than expensive advertising and manipulative sales gimmicks. Gimmicks like offering a limited number of expensive electronics items at below-cost prices to get the customers into the stores. The advertised items, of course, exist but are snapped up almost immediately. The business, of course, doesn't exist for the purpose of losing money; it hopes to make up what it loses on sales volume to disappointed customers already in the store, pointing to alternative profitably-priced merchandise. Bait-and-switch.

Shame on WalMart; it should have known better. I realize it's a challenging retail environment, but WalMart's management showed poor judgment in trying to beat the early Black Friday competition. In fact, it was conceptually close to the First Amendment exception to free speech of shouting "Fire!" in a crowded theater. WalMart is one of the few retailers showing sales strength, with many other stores and chains experience single- or double-digit percentage declines in year-over-year sales. Why did the retail giant feel it had to resort to marketing gimmicks to build up traffic? And even if it was going to resort to gimmicks, it doesn't take a lot of creativity to implement  things in a way that defuses a crowd determined to beat each other on their way, say, to the electronics department. For example, it distributes raffle tickets for the limited-quantity items during the first 3 hours of the store opening and randomly draws tickets (winners need not be present). Or they could install multiple turntiles at the entrance, provide a special entrance and location for electronics sales, implement a "click-and-brick" promotion via walmart.com for specified store sites, etc.

The death by asphyxiation of a 6'5" temporary worker (Jdimytai Damour), trampled over by a frenzied crowd at the WalMart in Green Acres Mall (Long Island, New York) on the recent Black Friday, reflects badly on both WalMart and its customers. At last word, the police were still trying to pull together a list of suspects from witnesses of the trampling stampede. There is simply no excuse for anyone whom knowingly stepped over and around a fallen man in the middle of a crowd and did nothing to help his or her fellow citizen; this was someone's son, maybe a father, brother or husband. What would we have felt or said if it was our own loved one on the ground? Wouldn't we have wished for someone or anyone to have taken the initiative and shouted out, "STOP! There's a man on the ground! Let him up!"? How ironic and tragic, at the start of the season that celebrates the birth of the Christ child, that we see shoppers motivated more by greed than by the principles and teachings of Jesus Christ!

I'm sure that WalMart will defend itself, saying that it didn't anticipate this crowd reaction based on past sales, that it shouldn't be held responsible for the unlawful behavior of rogue patrons beyond its control, etc. No doubt it is breathing some relief because technically it was not the employer of the contractor. 

Many people do not understand the second-class status one has as a subcontractor. In one recent case involving an internal project for a global consulting firm, I found myself walked off after I complained about a physical threat from an overstressed contractor (different company) whom had been sent home a couple of weeks earlier; my client manager didn't want to have to deal with corporate HR. In another, more trivial example, I had replaced the corporate database administrator, whom had given notice, for a chip-testing equipment distributor in Silicon Valley. My boss, who was hinting that he wanted to hire me perm, had just returned from an internal company meeting/luncheon and invited me to go down to the cafeteria and help myself to some leftover pizza. At first I resisted, pointing out I wasn't an employee, but eventually I went downstairs. A general accounting manager spotted me approaching the open pizza boxes; she quickly closed them and took them with her, indignantly pointing out that the pizza was for employees only.

However, WalMart will not be able to maintain its business partnerships, e.g., with temp agencies, if it fails to provide the same safe working environment extended to perm employees. It also could have just as easily have been a customer whom got knocked over during the stampede as well.

I'm sure that WalMart did not knowingly plan the public relations disaster it now has, and it's impossible to plan for every contingency.  But I think WalMart needs to reassess its marketing and store security policies, standards, and personnel, and it should be more proactive than reactive in planning special events. One security person facing dozens (if not hundreds) of anxious customers, some waiting for some time to enter the store is an accident waiting to happen. And regardless of the legal issues over Mr. Damour being a contractor vs. employee, WalMart has a moral obligation to do right by his surviving family.

Congress During the Summer Smells, But It's Not the Tourists

Senate Majority Leader Democrat Harry Reid had the tact to make the following observation recently:

My staff tells me not to say this, but I'm going to say it anyway. In the summer because of the heat and high humidity, you could literally smell the tourists coming into the Capitol. It may be descriptive but it's true.

Senator Reid, I'm a Texan by birth. A key part of training to be a Texas Democrat is learning how to toss a cow pie as far as one can, and he or she earns extra credit if a Republican is smeared in the process.  A Texas voter learns early in life to watch where one steps when there is a Democratic rally in process.

You are correct that "something is rotten in the District of Columbia" during the summer (and the autumn and the winter and the spring). It's particularly thick around the Capitol  and the Government Printing Office. I suspect, but have yet to confirm, that the air quality in DC remarkably improves when Speaker Pelosi and Majority Leader Reid gavel their Congressional sessions to a close for recess.

Senator Reid, you need more than air conditioning to clear the air in Washington. You also need to filter out the empty promises and doublespeak, the government waste, the self-righteous rhetoric, the ad hominem attacks, indulgent political posturing, character attacks on respected jurists, time-wasting resolutions and hearings on topics like designer steroids (while putting off action on real problems like catastrophic health care expenses, Medicare and social security reform), and the hype of government-inspired "solutions".

More on the Palin Post-Election "Smears"

Neoconservative The Weekly Standard editor and New York Times columnist Bill Kristol, in the first post-election Fox News Sunday, said his sources told him (on the famous question items involving NAFTA and Africa being a country vs. continent) that she made slips of the tongue during a rapid-response series of  questions after a hard day of interview/debate preparation, i.e., confusing NAFTA with CAFTA and responding "Africa is a country which..."

This appears to be a more plausible explanation and context than Sarah Palin's own comments on the leaks or the pro-Palin apologists whom have been in a state of denial.  Indeed, any serious study of the human performance literature reveals that even experts will make mistakes (but at a lower, constant rate): authors may misspell words, comedians can blow punchlines, etc. You need to look more at the nature and context of the mistake. For example, novices tend to focus on surface-level phenomena whereas experts read for meaning and will automatically adjust for noise like misspellings. That's why authors will often have other people proof-read their manuscripts.

I'll give an example from experience. In the early 1980's, one of my professors, Maryam Alavi, had a prototyping manuscript accepted by the prestigous Communications of the ACM. She asked me and a colleague to check the galley proofs. One of the more critical errors I came across was a sequencing issue with her footnotes; she had used Likert scale items in her study questionnaire and intended to cite the standard Likert source, but the target source was listed under a different, unrelated footnote number. [Unfortunately, Dr. Alavi did not wait for my edits, and my corrections were not caught by the other person, so the sequencing issue is in print.] Obviously Dr. Alavi knew what Likert scaling was. She probably made some manuscript changes to accommodate reviewer comments, and the footnotes were not resequenced properly. This was not a more conceptual error, e.g., confusing the types or proper utilization and interpretation of scaling techniques.

There is good reason to question, as Bill Kristol does, adverse human performance under degraded conditions, e.g., a surgeon or pilot operating without enough sleep, etc. However, the nature of the error determines its significance. For instance, if she grouped the US with Central American countries and called the relevant trade agreement "NAFTA", that's the equivalent of an innocuous typo. If she's mixing-and-matching the parties to NAFTA and CAFTA, this suggests a more serious problem of internalizing the concepts of NAFTA and CAFTA, and hence her knowledge is more rote memorization. I'm less concerned with whether Palin could list all the nations in Central America than in the concepts underlying CAFTA, e.g., opening up Central America to more U.S. goods and services, that CAFTA was a followup extension under the Bush administration following the passage of NAFTA under the Clinton administration, and part of an ongoing series of trade initiatives in the Americas as we look to extend to South America (including the current Colombia trade pact under consideration).

Kristol's conclusion that the leaks were a cheap shot is clearly assuming Sarah Palin's mistakes are of the frequency and nature that anyone, even an expert, might make under those conditions and Sarah Palin is just being unfairly singled out, that the other 3 candidates probably have made their own  unreported embarrassing mistakes in debate preparation. Well, of course, we know about Obama's 57 US states, Hillary Clinton dodging sniper fire in Bosnia, and Biden's discussion of a Presidential television address in 1929. 

The problem I have with Kristol's assessment is that Palin's public responses have been too problematic for the allegations to be dismissed as a typical innocuous error. Her responses often come across as stream of consciousness; she'll often restate the question in a response without really answering a question on the conceptual level.

For example, Couric asked Palin a question designed to probe whether the bailout funding would crowd out funds available for tax reductions or relevant government programs: "Why isn't it better, Governor Palin, to spend $700 billion helping middle-class families who are struggling with health care, housing, gas and groceries; allow them to spend more and put more money into the economy instead of helping these big financial institutions that played a role in creating this mess?"  Palin's response included the following statement: "But ultimately, what the bailout does is help those who are concerned about the health care reform that is needed to help shore up our economy, helping the--it's got to be all about job creation, too, shoring up our economy and putting it back on the right track. So health care reform and reducing taxes and reining in spending has got to accompany tax reductions and tax relief for Americans." Ultimately the bailout is about health care reform? She's not talking about, say, bank lending freezes that might affect companies meeting payroll or consumers unable to buy because credit lending has been cut back. Couric was talking about families unable to find the discretionary money for health care insurance, doctor/hospital bills, etc., not even health care reform so much. So where did Palin get "health care reform" from? I don't recall a crisis involving widespread bankruptcies and failures of health insurance companies, hospitals, doctors, etc. How will health care reform shore up our economy? Did Lehman Brothers, AIG, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac fail because of speculation in health care real estate? The only explanation is that Palin made an inference of health care reform because Couric mentioned families needing to find money to pay their medical bills. This is not a simple slip of the tongue; it's a conceptual error. Palin seems to be trying to bridge from words cherrypicked from Couric's question to her own talking points, but she's doing so in an incoherent manner.

So my guess is that the NAFTA and Africa responses were more indicative of the stream of consciousness response described above and the leaks were campaign staffers also exasperated with her rogue and diva behavior which they considered uncharacteristic and unworthy of someone running for higher office. And I agree. The GOP will never again nominate Sarah Palin for national office. She's probably popular enough to get reelected in Alaska and maybe one day she may run for the Congress or U.S. Senate. There is no doubt she's very popular; Georgia US Senator Chambliss credits her for bringing out the crowds across the state just before his impressive victory in Tuesday's runoff and calls her a rock star. But I haven't seen a poll where she's put together bigger than, say, 30% in early straw poll, despite massive recent publicity, and largely unknown Bobby Jindal has already picked up 15%, with a well-rounded experience as a Congressman, administrator, and Louisiana Governor and (unlike Palin) very articulate. Right now it looks as the only purpose Palin would have in a 2012 primary campaign is to siphon off support for Huckabee if he chooses to make a second try.

Favorite Palin Jokes

My two favorite Palin jokes were both delivered by NBC late night show host Conan O'Brien:

"Alaska's largest newspaper has endorsed Barack Obama despite the fact that their governor is Sarah Palin. Luckily for Palin, it's one of the 500 newspapers she doesn't read."

"President-elect Barack Obama spent the day thanking the people who helped him win the election. Yeah, and actually, Obama's first phone call was to Sarah Palin. He sent her flowers."

Obama: Mixed Initial Review of the President-Elect

I see today that the National Bureau of Economic Recession has concluded that we entered a recession last December; a more generally known heuristic is two consecutive quarters of negative GDP growth, and the second quarter this year showed some GDP growth. However, given the rising unemployment, declining manufacturing, the raft of bankruptcies and near-bankruptcies (including Big Three Auto and Big Banks), and struggling retailers, with only well-established discounters like WalMart holding their own, the fourth quarter is a near certain lock to fulfill the heuristic. The average tenure of a recession has been 10 months; this one almost certainly will be longer.

There are two primary points I have to made regarding President-elect Obama. (Technically he's not the President-elect until the Electoral College meets and formally votes later this month.) 

First, I have concerns with the excessive uncertainty in the market (and certainly the Bush administration, including Treasury Secretary Paulson, has been responsible for much of this, in terms of selective bailouts and shifts from buying up bad mortgages to shoring up banks). I am very concerned that Obama may be looking to emulate the same failed approaches of Hoover and FDR in the aftermath to the 1929 market crash and the 1990's ineffectual responses of Japan to their own real estate bubble (including pushing interest rates to zero and massive infrastructure spending). The "carrot-and-sticks" approach Obama has described (rewarding employers with tax breaks for in-sourcing jobs or hiring new workers) is not promising. 

The seeming willingness to put off an explicit tax hike on higher-income taxpayers, quite often the job creators, is a good first step. But I would like to see a more pro-growth policy to coax money off the sidelines and into domestic equities. One good way is by Obama's adopting McCain's promise the cut the business upper-income bracket from 35% to 25%.  I would also like to see other pro-growth policies, e.g., offsetting the regulatory/ reporting requirements on small business, reducing the barrier of entry to capital investment (such as allowing a discounted capital gain tax rate for investments made during this recession), allowing more rapid depreciation rates on high tech and other equipment, etc.

Second, I have some concerns about Obama's appointments. Whereas the reappointment of Gates and a solid pick in James Jones as National Security Advisor signal some stabilityand continuity between administrations, and Obama in many respects seems to be making more pragmatic choices which is more consistent with his more centrist promises during the general campaign, one must be wondering (1) if Obama is simply attempting to coopt Senate Clinton, moderates, and independents through staff appointments, paying lip service to listening to alternative points of view while relying on his liberal inner muse for decisionmaking, and (2) the legitimacy of his ideal of change from the Bush-Clinton years, the "turning of the page",  given a heavy influx of Clinton administration and holdover of more recent experienced hands (e.g., Gates and New York Fed chief Geithner). Others defend Obama on this, arguing how else is he going to get experienced personnel.  I'm not arguing that point on its merits, but the key question is, why is experience more salient at lower levels of managment? You would think from his rhetoric that Obama would really think outside the box, his comfort zone, in making appointments, e.g., some names from academia or the business world.

This is not to say that I don't appreciate his explicitly stated motive to appoint people like Gates, Jones and/or Clinton, whom might challenge his way of thinking and guard against groupthink (although it would be a  more plausible point if lead Democrats like Obama, Biden, and Clinton had significantly different voting records). Even conservatives such as myself have criticized Bush for his isolation from Congress and his dependence on known and familiar faces (e.g., Cheney, Gonzales, and Miers).  Probably there's no clearer case of the "emperor wearing no clothes" than Bush's famous quote to Hurricane Katrinia FEMA head Michael Brown: "Brownie, you're doing a heck of a job!", after days of national TV coverage showing bodies floating in water, chaos on the streets and at shelters, etc.

Still, Obama is treading a fairly thin line. His liberal ideologue supporters are fuming that he's recycling "more of the same" old, more orthodox names; his more moderate, independent supporters are worried about a "bait-and-switch" from his uncharacteristic general campaign stands promoting middle-class tax cuts, gun rights, the traditional concept of marriage, etc. Obama cannot be all things to all people; he will at some point need to make decisions where rhetoric will not mollify the losing side. Obama, despite the advantages of a change election, a 2-1 money advantage down the stretch, and an economic tsunami (when economic downtimes generally favor the welfare net Democrats), did only modestly better than Bush did in 2004, and Bush's favorability ratings quickly fell with Katrina and Iraq.

Defense Policy

I'm encouraged by Obama's decision to hold over Defense Secretary Gates and to name former General James Jones as National Security Adviser. This seems to suggest he will work within the recently negotiated US-Iraq agreement, approved by the Iraqi parliament. Jones is known to be a hawk on the Taliban's resurgence in Afghanistan, which echoes Obama's position during the general election campaign. 

What I would like to see from Obama is a commitment to replenishing and upgrading military equipment and supplies, expanding our military (in particular, the Army and the Marine Corps.), and a disavowal from early campaign statements to obstruct or cut funds for future military weapon systems research and development. I'm particularly concerned about our satellite vulnerability and sophisticated cyber attacks, particularly on military operations and related systems. I would also like to see more emphasis on resurgent militaries in Russia, buoyed by natural resource trades, and China, with a growing monetary reserve .

Foreign Policy

Hillary Clinton's nomination as Secretary of State still puzzles me. That would make 3 former rivals for the nomination now prominently working for Obama (Commerce Secretary Richardson and Vice President Joe Biden), whom he previously condemned for not having made the right decision on authorizing the liberation of Iraq. There could be a number of factors at work: Obama could be coopting former rivals; Obama could also be intentionally including a diverse set of foreign policy views for the crucible of his policy decisionmaking; Obama could be signaling a shift in his foreign policy views.

What I would like to see is a realistic foreign policy which, for instance, doesn't assume that the Germans will send soldiers to Afghanistan simply because Bush is no longer President, that rogue nations will cease and desist destabilizing activities simply if the President would just meet with them, that relies more on regional security, and that avoids costly foreign entanglements like the Iraq occupation. At the same time, Obama needs to assert, not apologize for, America's values, power and influence and actively promote American goods and services.

Economic Team

Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, Council of Economic Advisors chair Christina Romer, National Economic Council Larry Summers, and OMB director Peter Orszag constitute a solid team of competent pragmatists whom seem to signal support for free trade, responsible tax policy, and fiscal responsibility. In addition, Obama seems to be indicating he will postpone any income tax hikes for upper-income taxpayers over the next two years, and he has backed off from his punitive, counterproductive threats of windfall profits taxes on domestic energy corporations.

Still, there are a variety of concerns I have. First, the Democrats are talking, on top of all the federal bailout already at work in terms of stabilizing banks, AIG, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, etc., a second stimulus package. Karl Rove, in a recent column, cited sources indicating less than 20% of Americans spent their first stimulus check. In this recessionary period, my gut feeling is that most Americans, fearing the recession may drag on or prices may deflate from here, may simply bank the check. If so, there will be little to spark the two-thirds of the economy based on consumer spending. It seems to me somewhat unconscionable to increase our national debt to push for a stimulus package which is largely pushing on a string: why are we asking our children and grandchildren to take on yet more borrowed money for a short-term spending boost? I oppose a new stimulus bill.

Second, there is some discussion of infrastructure spending, noting the multiplie effects of such spending. I like this alternative better than stimulus checks, which could be used for purchasing Chinese-made toys or other foreign consumer goods (e.g., clothing and electronics); we end up with tangible American-built assets in fixing deteriorating roads, bridges, levees, etc., which have tangible, durable payback. There are some issues, however. One of them is what projects get approved (these can be influenced by political factors such as party affiliation or seniority); second, there are potential supply/demand constraints, existing engineering firm backlog, manpower supply vs. demand (and associated training/skill requirements) and ability to take on additional projects. For many (if not most) projects, we are often talking about leadtimes before you actually can start work.

What I would like to see is an Obama reality check. We need an explicit recognition that the federal government cannot and should not bailout each and every industry (or politically favored industries, like the Big Three) and struggling states and local governments looking for a way out of making politically unpopular budget cuts. We need Obama to understand the federal government, with its current obligations, cannot take on some $800B of his new federal spending initiatives. Obama needs to enact, like JFK/LBJ, a pro-business growth agenda, recognizing, like McCain did during the election campaign, that we have among the highest business tax brackets among the developed nations and the fact those taxes are implicit costs of doing business and attracting job-creating investments to America. Favorable investment tax policy, e.g., by encouraging investment during the recession, would go a long way towards stimulating cash off the sideline and into the economy. I would also like to see government getting out of the way of business competition, e.g., allowing health insurers to market policies across states, and reassessing on a cost-benefit basis costly business reporting requirements and other mandates.

Some Disappointing Appointments

Attorney General nominee Eric Holder is, in my judgment, too tied to certain unsavory aspects of the Clinton Presidency, including the unconscionable pardon of billionaire fugitive (and Democratic contributor) Marc Rich and the sentence commutation of certain violent Puerto Rican nationalists. Homeland Security Secretary nominee Arizona Governor Janet Napolitano is notoriously soft on border issues, sarcastically commenting that there are workarounds to any restrictions against illegal border entry, i.e., if you build a 50-foot wall, Latin Americans will counter with 51-foot ladders.

Pro-life blogger Jill Stanek, in a current post, identifies a number of troubling Obama appointments, including pro-abortion choice EMILY List's executive director Ellen Moran, Domestic Policy Council member Melody Barnes (former board member to Planned Parenthood and EMILY List), and the oxymoronic choice of Alta Charo as Obama's ethics adviser, whom opposes conscience exceptions (to human life-destructive policies) for health care professionals and favors human embryo experimentation.

Defending Sarah Palin

I've written a number of critical posts on Sarah Palin. Nevertheless, I was unprepared for the ferocity of one longtime foreign-born friend's terming Sarah Palin a "dunce" and, otherwise complimentary of McCain, questioning his judgment, diligence and motivation in selecting Sarah Palin, not believing that McCain and his staffers could possibly have failed to see the Sarah Palin of the Gibson and Couric interviews. He suggested that the selection of Sarah Palin was solely based on pandering to the social conservatives/evangelical Christians and John McCain had done this country a disservice by naming someone not well-versed on economic, foreign policy, or military matters, literally a heartbeat away from a 72-year-old President's office.

The Reason for the Selection of Palin

I believe, and still believe, that McCain saw in Palin a younger, female version of himself: someone willing to buck the party leadership (particularly in response to corruption), to provide bipartisan leadership and government reform, and to fuse conservative governing principles with a version of Teddy Roosevelt populism. 

I don't think it was a cynical attempt to exploit Hillary Clinton's voter base based solely on Sarah Palin's shared gender. Hillary Clinton's voting record is virtually identical with Obama's, and John McCain did not believe Clinton's supporters were primarily motivated by gender identity. I do think McCain noticed the way that Hillary Clinton connected with blue-collar voters and thought that Sarah Palin and her union-member husband, also a champion snowmachine driver, and their 5 kids, might connect with Reagan Democrats.

I think Sarah Palin's gender was a positive factor for McCain, but I think it was part and parcel of a bigger concept, reasserting McCain's legendary maverick reputation. McCain totally swerved the Obama campaign, which responded in an uncharacteristically inept and defensive manner.

Not a Dunce

Sarah Palin took on corruption in her home state, bucked her own party chairman and top GOP officials in her home state, including the Attorney General and the Governor, beat the incumbent governor and then defeated the former Democratic governor, despite her only statewide experience being an appointment to the state oil and gas commission and significantly outspent. She won an agreement with energy corporations doing business with the statement to agree to a long-sought natural gas pipeline without the state coffer giveaways of her predecessor, vetoed millions in project spending from the state legislature, got a large energy distribution to citizens, drastically cut back on the number of federal earmarks, had some reform measures enacted and established a bipartisan record as governor. I think McCain was more impressed with her record of performance and political "street smarts", not whether she graduated from an elitist university.

The Interviews

I think, unfortunately, Sarah Palin's own maverick behavior was her undoing. I don't think she liked being handled; she engaged in certain rogue behavior, e.g., the criticism of the campaign's withdrawal from Michigan and an unauthorized early attack on the Bill Ayers connection. I think she felt confident, as a former TV sports anchorwoman and as someone whom beat the odds in her 2006 gubernatorial campaign, that she was up for the Gibson and Couric interviews. 

I don't know if it was an attitude issue in terms of interview preparation, or incompetent preparation or both, but she has the bad habit of what Kathleen Parker calls "filibustering a question"--what I would refer to as repeating parts of the question and engaging in run-on convoluted political spin. The infamous question on the newspapers and magazines she reads in which she remarkably does little more than assure the interviewer that, indeed, Alaskans do read newspapers and magazines (but doesn't list a single concrete publication) was probably the single worst response I've ever heard by any politician on a gimme question. My friend, and probably millions of others, took her evasive response to mean that Sarah Palin doesn't read magazines or newspapers and is ill-informed on national issues.

She later told Fox News reporter Carl Cameron that she felt insulted by the question as implying Alaskans don't have access to the same type of reading materials as other people in the lower 48. But especially as someone who should understand the television medium, she should have been more sensitive about the fact few people would ever see any hidden agenda behind the question. Still, she could have said something like, "Well, of course in Alaska, we have access to the same newspapers and magazines other Americans do. Here are some of the ones I read as time permits: xxxx"

I personally find it enigmatic that Sarah Palin seemed unprepared to respond clearly and concisely to totally predictable questions on the financial bailout, the duties of the Vice President, etc. As a former journalist, she herself should have been able to anticipate many of the questions she received. Second, she desperately needs to edit herself: Be concise ("less is more"); be direct and specific; limit political spin; drop unprofessional gimmicks like winking. Third, she needed to establish her credibility as a potential Chief Executive. One thing is that she lost a lot of credibility by asserting her foreign policy credentials given the proximity of Russia and Canada to Alaska's borders and her military credentials because of an Alaskan Air Force base and being in charge of the Alaskan National Guard. Does she seriously believe those credentials to be comparable John McCain's 22 years in the military and 26 years in the Congress? By making nonsense rationalizations like that, she was undercutting McCain's experience argument.

How would I respond to these types of challenges to my credentials? First, I would point out that a number of governors who became President (FDR, Reagan, Carter, and Clinton) have had limited federal policy experience in the same areas. Second, I would point out that as a governor I have a number of Cabinet officers reporting to me and make a number of decisions about budget priorities and the like. Similarly, I will have experts at the Defense Department and State Department providing input to my policy decisions. Third, I'm a quick study, and I'm being mentored by none other than John McCain himself; here are some of our key objectives for the military and international relations over the next four years:....  The overriding concept is to point out that she is not simply relying to her own gut feeling in making decisions, but to reassure she's going to include the opinions of people with more specialized expertise. And she needed to give reassurance to voters about her prowess as a decisionmaker; for example, she won concessions from the state's energy partners by opening a bidding process.

In short, she needed to establish gravitas as a Veep; the Gibson and Couric interviews did not show her using those interviews to vindicate McCain's selection of a 2-year governor as a prospective President if McCain was to die in office. Social and media conservatives may argue that the interviews were edited "out of context". But the fact is, any credible Veep candidate should be able to compare and contrast the McCain campaign vs. the incumbent administration and vs. the competition. She was clearly not cognizant about the "Bush doctrine", for instance, and despite heroic attempts by other conservatives to find a face-saving explanation, such as the fact Bush has had multiple doctrines during his Presidency, she didn't know which one Charlie Gibson was referring to. The real target of Gibson's question was whether the new administration would handle things like Bush did leading to the liberation of Iraq, or are there lessons learned, e.g., gain more of a commitment from our allies, think twice over nation-building commitments, give the UN inspectors more time, etc.

Perhaps the McCain staffers didn't prepare Sarah Palin properly, but I think the ultimate responsibility was Sarah Palin's. Her responses were often incoherent and devoid of substantive content. She seemed irritated at some of the questions being asked. She didn't seem to know when to stop talking. 

When I was a professor, I sometimes heard the same question being repeated 2 or 3 times during a lecture. I remember in this one case I was reviewing an undergraduate student group giving a presentation whether they had considered a particular option; the response was something to the effect, "Yeah, we thought about that, but considered it to be a stupid idea." I didn't ridicule students in front of their peers. Basically, I realized that if I responded, most students would empathize with the student being attacked. It was also a question of prudence: if answering the same question took less than 10 seconds, why would I want to spend 10 minutes of lecture time reading the student in question the riot act? 

Reportedly, Sarah Palin fumed over the media analyses of her ABC- and CBS-TV interviews. I honestly believe that Sarah Palin was much better informed than the interviews would have led one to believe. But her responses didn't establish her gravitas; she needed to portray a sense of mastery of the basic issues in a confident tone. She needed to go with the flow. She once famously pinched herself and said that that wasn't just baby fat but there was some thick skin there. There were justifiable reasons for Sarah Palin to object to her treatment on the Internet, for example, the speculation about her pregnant daughter Bristol and whether Bristol was, in fact, her youngest sibling Trig's mother. 

But there were times, e.g., the post-election leaks suggesting Sarah Palin didn't know some basic facts, when she blasted the anonymous staffers. A lot of people might applaud her standing up for herself, but ironically she was confirming the speculation of ongoing differences during the campaign between McCain and Palin staffers. Sarah Palin preferred Fox News as a media source with talk show hosts Hannity and Greta Van Susteren totally in the tank for her. For example, Greta Van Susteren, a former practicing attorney, did a post-election interview with Palin in Alaska and started off an interview implying she had talked with Carl Cameron's source for the leak, whom she said admitted under her questioning that the notorious question items were contrived.  I believe that Van Susteren was referring to a conversation to McCain campaign manager Rick Davis, whom admitted that he was not a participant to Sarah Palin's interview or debate preparations but asserted Palin's competence and didn't believe in the rumors. Bill O'Reilly was steamed that Fox News reported the leaks in the first place, insisting that Fox News should have gotten multiple confirmations of the leaks. [Not knowing the context, there are a variety of ways these items could have fleshed out. For instance, on a question regarding NAFTA, she could have limited discussion to bilateral trade between the US and Canada or referenced trade with other countries not party to NAFTA.]

The point is, if Sarah Palin had presented a more substantive image than a series of one-liners and political rhetoric and not flubbed innocuous interview questions (or admit, in the VP candidate debate, that she wasn't going to address the question the moderator Gwin Ifill asked her), these kinds of things wouldn't have an issue. People are fallible and often misspeak.

I personally believe that Sarah Palin is not the "dunce" as my friend, a political independent whom admires Romney and Obama, makes her out to be. This is a woman whom took on corruption head-on and left shattered political careers in her wake, whom won the 2006 gubernatorial primary and general elections as the underdog with limited financial backing. But I think she made a strategic mistake, probably miscalculating that moderates and independents would respond to her style and message which captivated the social conservative base. She needed to show she had a command of economical and foreign policy issues and speak of them with the same confidence she had in discussing domestic energy exploration. Everyone knows that the Alaskan economy is highly dependent on its energy resources; the fact that the Alaskan governor is promoting domestic energy exploration is a given. She needed to talk about things like the twin budget deficits, healthcare, and repairing our international relationships in the aftermath of the Iraq occupation. In terms of being part of a maverick administration, she needed to point out, in concrete terms, how things would be different than under the unpopular incumbent. What kind of reform? Political? Government operations?

Why the Sarah Palin Candidacy Didn't Work

I have written a long post on why McCain lost; a lot of it dealt with a lot of factors beyond his control, principally the economic tsunami and the unprecedentedly low approval ratings of the GOP incumbent. His wounds were in part self-inflicted, e.g.,  his self-admission that he needed to know more about economics;  his use of class warfare rhetoric leading up to his vote against the 2001 tax bill; his agreement to accept federal financing, knowing that Obama had abandoned his pledge to do the same and ability to raise multiple times that and use the surplus to buy market share in battleground and other states; and  his decision to suspend his campaign during the period leading to the financial bailout legislation. He failed to capitalize off public discontent with the federal bailout and with the previous year's immigration reform moves. He also backed off any discussion regarding the disconnect between Obama's inclusive political philosophy with his 20-year connection with an Afrocentric church, with a pastor engaging in racially-divisive rhetoric and controversial guest speakers and Obama's pandering to the center during the general election campaign in contrast to his voting record. In order to distinguish himself from Bush, he needed to do more than do some window-dressing and repackaging of Bush's partially-privitized social security and general tax-advantaged basis for health care insurance, including taxpayers not enrolled in an employer plan.

However, the Palin selection itself merits closer attention. First, although issues like political corruption and bipartisanship are important, it's not clear what a maverick team would do; it needs to work through the GOP leadership in the House and Senate, not against them. What McCain needed to reaffirm was his market-based approach to the economy and the willingness to be flexible, with all options on the table, with the opposition. Second, the elephant in the room is entitlement spending, not earmarks.

One of the things McCain really needed to grasp was the concept of change. Bush was the first MBA President, a highly popular Texas governor with a bipartisan record there. He basically promised a government of competence, inclusion, and fiscal responsibility.  Instead, he expanded Medicare prescription benefits without proper funding, nominated Texas cronies to positions beyond the level of their competence, sparingly used the veto in controlling, even under a GOP-led Congress, record operational deficits, botched the federal government's handling of the Hurricane Katrina, and found himself getting bogged down in Iraq sectarian violence after the liberation of Iraq with blunders like disassembling the Iraqi army and staffing the military occupation below a stabilizing footprint.

In addition, we witnessed a housing bubble in large part funded by cheap money from the Fed Reserve; the President and Congress only paid passing lip service as home prices escalated beyond the prospective incomes for many homebuyers and lenders invented risky vehicles like option ARM's to get less financially secure buyers into the market, forcing home prices higher. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac continued their increasing dominance of the US home mortgage market (and increasing vulnerability of the US government because of those GSE activities). More troubling, we found the market for poorly-understood and unregulated derivatives and swaps explode to hundreds of trillions of dollars, which was a nightmare waiting to happen.

Romney would have been the best of the name candidates in the sense he understands the capital markets, he was able to reorganize the Salt Lake City Winter Olympics games, he knows the lessons learned from Massachusetts health care initiative, and he's had to work with a Democratic legislature. He was well-vetted; he had no federal experience, but no one ever had any issues with his gravitas. Romney was very popular with the media conservatives. He had some principal weaknesses: his negative campaigning against Huckabee and McCain had alienated a number of Republicans; moderates and independence saw some position changes (abortion and immigration) as politically expedient; and his Mormon religion caused issues with certain Christian evangelicals.

This seems like Monday morning quarterbacking because when McCain made his selection, he didn't realize an economic tsunami was about to hit. But whereas reform was a significant issue in the 2006 campaign, Obama was running a campaign based on class warfare,  jobs, and similar economic issues. Sarah Palin had a very limited appeal in that regard; she had some exposure to domestic oil and gas exploration and production, but two years as the governor of a small (population-wise) state with an economy largely based on energy production, fisheries, etc., had limited appeal.

The Future of Governor Palin

I think Sarah Palin has turned in a credible record as an Alaska governor; I expect the global recession, which has triggered a step decrease in energy prices since July,  may affect her 80% approval rating as state revenues decline and she faces unpopular decisions. 

However, I do not think she will be a viable candidate on the national front. Some polls, including Rasmussen, seem to be encouraging, but for example, an October 24 Newsweek poll showed her unfavorable rating exceeding her favorable, even though her likeability exceeded 70%. Her unfavorability rating exceeded any VP candidate (including Quayle) over the past 50 years. The poll asked Republicans/leaning if McCain was not elected, who they would be likely to support among listed candidates: Romney 35, Huckabee 26, Palin 20.

It's difficult to know how things will be in 2012. A lot depends on whether Democrats overplay their hand controlling both the legislative and executive branches of government, not to mention the ongoing economic crisis. Recessions typically don't last that long, although the Japanese never did bounce back from their own real estate bubble crash. Will the Democrats try to pass a wishlist of spending initiatives? What about overdue fixes for chronic Medicare and social security funding issues? What steps, if any, will the Democrats take to make progress on the twin deficits? What will Obama do to encourage investment in America to create jobs, not in the public sector, but in the private sector?

My guess (hope) is that that the Republicans in 2012 will be focusing on its roots of fiscal conservativism, a pro-growth economic strategy, and smarter government problem resolution perhaps inspired by creative state-based innovative solutions. I also see the need for projecting a more positive campaign focused more on conservative ideals than on political bickering and personal attacks. My guess is that we will probably see Mitt Romney and Bobby Jindal and perhaps some surprises along the way, e.g., if Gen. Petraeus decided to retire and run for office.

How does Sarah Palin fit in the scenario? It's difficult to say. I do not think the Gibson and Couric interviews were a fair reflection of Sarah Palin's knowledge and executive competence. But she has to accept responsibility for the performance she gave; it wasn't gotcha questioning or editing. She is not a novice politician; she knew the risks of coming to an interview unprepared, she knew she might be asked questions she did not like, and as a former television sports anchor, she understood the need to be brief and to get her points across effectively to her target audience. For example, if she felt insulted by the question about how she keeps up with current events, she was hurting no one but herself and the McCain campaign with a passive-aggressive response. For many or most people, like my foreign-born friend, Sarah Palin will not get a second chance to make a good impression. And I suspect many or most voters won't be keeping up with what Sarah Palin is doing in Alaska, although there are rumors of a multi-million dollar book contract and reports that media outlets (including the Oprah show) are lining up for her to make appearances. And there's no doubt she could still pick up some political IOU's from, for example, Georgia US Senator Chambliss facing an upcoming runoff.

Don't Be Fooled by Cooling Energy Prices

Remember the heady days of September when the chant at Sarah Palin rallies was "Drill, baby, drill"? Even Obama seemed to be wavering from his "car tuneup" energy policy as he viewed strong public support for offshore oil drilling. Then there was a so-called bipartisan initiative where they might allow, upon state approval, at least 100 miles offshore, certain limited drilling. In an era where drilling is going on off Cuba's shores, this was patently insufficient. But ever since gasoline prices have been retreating from over $4/gallon to around $1.77/gallon (yesterday near my Safeway store). 

You need no further proof of upcoming Obama administrative incompetence than the leaked plan to quickly repeal Bush's recent executive order opening up offshore areas to oil exploration. Now the Obama folks will want to tell you that with Obama's $150B investment in alternate energy, we are going to be off dependence on Middle East oil (note that's only a fraction of our oil imports, which of course they don't say). And when we're facing $200/barrel oil, are we going to hear the same liberal/Obama song and dance about a 10-year lead time on getting domestic oil to market? Are you kidding me?

The burden of proof is for Obama and his cronies to explain exactly how government intervention with respect to alternative energy is necessary given the natural market incentive of high prices for fossil fuels. Time-to-market doesn't just apply to offshore oil production; we also need to consider legacy infrastructure (e.g., a quarter billion personally-owned vehicles, most of which are gasoline-fueled, fuel outlets, etc.) and certain inherent restrictions (e.g., solar and wind power generation are constrained by weather conditions and we don't have scalable, inexpensive battery storage to store it). Nevertheless, I believe that Obama is underestimating time-to-market of certain creative destruction technologies (e.g., very large scale battery storage capacity for weather-dependent energy production) and market-distorting effects of government intervention in the energy markets and picking winners and losers in the marketplace.

Some Steps Towards a Coherent Energy Policy

--Use Government Purchasing Power to Promote Energy Independence

For example, offer multi-year contracts to supply solar panels for government buildings and public housing. Require flex-fuel and hybrid/electric and/or compressed natural gas technology in government-owned passenger vehicles. Require government vehicle refueling at stations providing E85, compressed natural gas, or other fuel alternatives.

--Displace Use of Foreign Fossil Fuels with Domestic Fossil Fuels

We are increasingly importing most of our oil, while existing domestic fields continue to mature and dwindle. Our economic dependence on foreign oil is a national security issue. Whereas we need to engage in better conservation and develop fossil fuel independence, in the short term, we have an enormous infrastructure of vehicles and home heating dependent on fossil fuels. We need to aggressively explore and develop new fossil fuel sources and set aside various regulatory and/or legal hoops (e.g., environmental impact studies), including offshore, oil shale, etc. Despite the current respite from this past summer's peak prices, a global recovery is just a matter of time. We cannot delay investment until after we're back to $150/barrel.

The US government should seed the building of a couple of coal-to-liquid refineries (convenient to our abundant mining sources), welcoming industry investments, just as Sasol (South Africa) has agreed to help construct in China. Pickens has already outlined a conceptually similar approach where he talks about substituting wind or solar power to natural gas electricity generation and using compressed natural gas for vehicles.

--Aggressive Buildout of Nuclear Power Plants

--Subsidize (Means-Tested) Loans for Lower-Income Households

Provide means-based vouchers/discounts for replacing or converting primary household vehicles with alternative source, older energy-inefficient appliances, solar paneling or other energy-saving technologies

--Provide a Floor Price for Oil

Some economists have suggested establishing a floor price for oil (e.g., $100/barrel) to allow for substitute energy alternatives to emerge as a viable business.  For instance, if the market price of oil was $67, the government would essentially charge a surcharge tax of about $33/barrel. 

--Capacity First, Regulation/Control Second

Richard Nolan in the MIS literature promoted an S-shaped curve in terms of describing a stage hypothesis for managing the computer resource. The basic idea is to first establish the effective deployment of computer technology, minimizing the management footprint or rules and regulations which would get in the way of resource utilization. Once you reach a critical mass adoption, you start imposing various controls to encourage efficiencies.

I worked for a market research firm specializing in statistical modeling of customer data. They discovered that they could get a payback from converting their mainframe applications to Sun Microsystems boxes within 6 months. Prior DBA's and developers had been given full privileges to do whatever it took to get the applications migrated. The company discovered that the technical staff was devouring hundreds of gigabytes of storage, contracted data loads were not scheduled as required, and they were running into disk procurement and cost issues; I was tasked with management and control of the key production databases. 

In a similar manner, I would argue that the key issue is energy independence. Now green power advocates also discuss energy independence, but after 40 years, we are seeing single-digit percentage production of current energy consumption. I'm not underestimating the potential impact of flex-fuel/hybrid/electric cars, new nuclear power plant impact, etc., but, for example there are vehicle production constraints and a huge number of legacy cars to turnover. We cannot grow enough corn to put all vehicles on E85, and the energy yield on corn-based ethanol is low. The point is, current domestic oil production is on the decline, and we need new oil finds and production, if for no other reason than to defer the need for even higher foreign oil imports. The Democrats and their environmentalist allies have created barriers to finding additional domestic supplies--barriers we don't see for China, Brazil and other large oil consumers.

Conclusion

Obama's campaign responses to energy resource shortfalls--e.g., keep your car tires inflated and your car tuned up; lower the thermostat and wear sweaters--are short-term tactics, not long-term strategy. It's time for the Democrats to come up with realistic market-based solutions, not snake-oil hype of alternative energy/fuels. It is simply not viable to say "stop the use of fossil fuels". I understand the motivation and the goal; I'm not arguing that we can maintain an indefinite dependence on a resource for which we have no hope of ever being self-sufficient under current utilization patterns. For years, the American automakers have been in a state of denial, dragging their feet on Corporate Average Fuel Economy standards, while focusing on production of heavier, fuel-thirsty models like SUV's and trucks. They skipped a first-generation hybrid competitive response to the Prius, GM gambling on the Volt. 

Obviously conservation is important: bikeriding short distances, park and ride, public transit, carpooling, telecommuting, etc. Fuel extenders (e.g., ethanol), multi-fuel capability, synthetic or alternative fuels using more abundant domestic fossil fuels (e.g., coal-to-liquid, compressed natural gas). We need to find more scalable, more energy-yielding approaches to biofuels (e.g., bypassing starch-to-sugar conversion). We need to adopt carbon-filtering technologies for coal power plants, but provide a more market-based, flexible, realistic approach.

Draconian changes in energy utilization are not feasible. In the meanwhile, we cannot basically shoot ourselves in the foot by refusing to further develop domestic supplies and the relevant jobs those would bring to our economy and increasing our dependence on foreign energy suppliers. More importantly, we cannot allow falling oil and energy prices, an artifact of a global recession, reignite public demand in  fuel-inefficient vehicles and lapses in hard-achieved gains in energy conservation.