The Emancipation Inauguration

Do you remember the 2002 Academy Award Ceremony?  It marked the first time an African-American had won the Best Performance by a Female Actor in a Leading Role (formerly “Best Actress”).  And though Sidney Poitier had previously won Best Performance by a Male Actor in a Leading Role (a.k.a, “Best Actor”), the Academy had gone 38 years without awarding one to a black man.  Denzel Washington had won a Best-supporting Actor award for his stunning performance in Glory, but never a Best Actor.  I never saw Monster’s Ball, the movie for which Halle Berry won her Oscar in 2002, but I’ll always remember how she received tearfully the honor on behalf of “all women of color.”   I’m still a little bitter that D.W. didn’t win for his role as Coach Herman Boone in Remember the Titans, but I digress.

The buzz leading up to the 2002 Oscars was all about whether we would at long last exorcise the demon of Hollywood racism by awarding Berry and, in a lesser way Washington, with Best Actress / Actor Oscars.  As it turned out, they both won, and Berry’s acceptance reflections captured the weight of the moment.  

But I can’t shake the pre-award buzz, and I wonder still to this day whether the outcome was in part predicated on an external criterion: a broad yearning for racial emancipation.  It's a noble yearning that has found fulfillment in many segments of our culture.  Hank Aaron, Martin Luther King, Jr., Colin Powell, Oprah Winfrey, Tiger Woods, Barack Obama – a wholly insufficient list of truly inspiring stories of African Americans who broke through previously impenetrable racial barriers.  You’d have to have a heart of stone to not be inspired by what they accomplished.

Sort of.

What I mean—and yes, I’m aware that I’d better explain myself quickly—is that some of the people mentioned above accomplished much as they broke through their respective barriers.  Oprah Winfrey didn’t become a billionaire by chance: she built an enduring brand over decades, shrewdly parleying hard-earned capital from that brand in to multiple successful business investments, the current OWN travails notwithstanding.  Hank Aaron really did hit 755 home runs, and he did it despite threats on his life and without chemical aid.  MLK’s accomplishments would only be tarnished by my brief comments, so I’ll just leave that one alone.

President Obama has been, quite frankly, a totally different story.  January 20, 2009 was historic, to be sure, and it drew more attendees than any prior inauguration in history.  Many viewed it as a type of national political emancipation.  It was also a global phenomenon: Liberia, Sierra Leone, St. Vincent & the Grenadines, to name a few, even issued postage stamps commemorating his ascendancy.  But it unquestionably also marked the first time the U.S. had chosen a president with so little leadership skill and experience.

Do you remember all the arguments in 2000 that George W. Bush’s eight years as governor of Texas proved nothing, because it was a relatively weak office?  How about President Clinton's comment on Sen. Obama's rise:  "This whole thing is the biggest fairy tale I've ever seen." 

President Obama's Nobel Peace Prize was similarly historic: had any previous prizes been awarded with such a heavy reliance on a recipient's hoped for diplomatic success? Agree or disagree with the nominating committee’s choices, they nearly always choose people who’ve accomplished much, whose prior labors—often times completed years before—have advanced the cause of peace demonstrably.     

So, here's the burning question, one I'd like to repress but can't: was the object of our hope actually what Barack Obama represented to us, and not his preparation for the job or his capability to execute it?

It’s hardly a secret that I don't favor the president’s job performance and political philosophy.  But—and I want to make this point crystal clear—I’m also very disciplined to not condemn him as a person.  I refer to him as President Obama, not Barry, nor by including his middle name, nor even casually as "Obama."  I yearn for his removal from office, but I teach my kids to respect him and I don't share my disapproval of his job performance with them.  He’s my president, too, and I thank God to live in a country where we get to choose our leaders.

Still, his first term has been an disaster by any measure.  Millions of Americans are out of work and he has the gall to say that his economic policies have worked.  He routinely sacrifices private sector success stories on the altar of statism (e.g., "you didn't build that").  He applies counter-cyclical stimulus to structural unemployment.  He understands the U.S. auto industry bailout to have been a success, but is unaware that the success is purely because creditors were stiffed.  He is oblivious to the awkward partnership between American defense spending and Western entitlement expansion.  He showed a moment of brilliance when he appointed Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson to find a bi-partisan solution to the federal deficit problem, but then threw them under the bus when they presented their very reasonable solution.  Out of pure ignorance (I'm choosing to believe it's ignorance), he’s distorted and responded incapably to the financial events of the last 4 years.   His NLRB is a pro-labor guerrilla organization.  He dogmatically clings to demonstrably anachronistic Keynesian multipliers when it's convenient, but now is, pardoxically, advocating higher taxes (JM Keynes is rolling over right now).  He holds little regard for religious liberty (August 1 HHS mandate).  His Justice Department is incompetent and out of control.   He hates and can't work the political machine that is Congress (endearing, actually, but also politically neutering).  His State Department hasn't endured any major failures, but only because Secretary Clinton runs that show practically independently.  He's getting no help from his Veep, who's being kept as far away from the microphones as possible--actually that one's pretty smart, considering.   

"Forward"?  Where, into Gehenna? 

But what about Osama Bin Laden?  Fair enough.  I seem to remember that the Navy SEALs played some  role in that job, too, but we can give the president that one. 

Even including OBL's capture, as president Mr. Obama is in over his head--way over his head. Should we really be surprised? The gentleman was a state legislator (a part-time job unless you're in CA, PA, NY, or MI), a community organizer, a part-time law-school lecturer, and he almost completed half a term as a U.S. Senator before beginning his run for president.  A very politically well-informed liberal friend of mine responded to the question,“Why would Barack Obama make a good leader?” by saying “Well, when he was managing editor of the Harvard Law Review, he brought two factions together.”

The Harvard Law Review.  Hmmm. 

I want to be crystal clear again: I don’t condemn him as a man.  He’s a valuable human, gifted and loved by God: in public speaking and perhaps in diplomacy, were that his primary occupation.  He'd probably be a very good ambassador.  I’m sure he’s a captivating law school intsructor.  I have no reason to think that he wasn’t well-suited to be a community organizer.  He's smart as anything.  He'll probably make a boatload on the public speaking circuit.  He's a terribly affable guy--who wouldn't want to share a beer with him in the rose garden?  I also admire him personally: he got himself through Columbia and Harvard Law School and gives every indication of being a good husband and father.  

This November, though, he's not asking you whether he's likable and is a good father, if he's a capable law school instructor, whether he'd excel as a diplomat, or to affirm his exceptional public speaking skill.  He's asking you for the opportunity to remain CEO of the executive branch of our federal government.  And there's the rub: he’s just not presidential material, a point he continues to demonstrate daily, 3 ½ years into his presidency.  He doesn’t lead, he accuses.  He doesn’t accept responsibility, he blames.  He doesn’t think through the implications of his economic policies, he weaves sound bites and builds straw men to defend the indefensible.  Frankly, I really doubt that he actually wants to be president.
 
Above all, I want to be clear about this point: Barack Obama has failed as president because of disposition, the contours of his giftedness, his misunderstanding of choice and markets, and his lack of experience—NOT because he is African-American.  Think of it this way, what If I were president?  I'd do a horrible job!  Would you fault me for not being gifted and sufficiently experienced to be president?  Should I fault you for the same deficiencies? 

In all of this, though, I don’t blame President Obama.  He may never have had anybody tell him (at least no one close to him) that he’s not a leader, that his experience is insufficient preparation for the task of governing.  He’s been worshipped as messiah and has responded with humble acceptance. I believe that he really does mean well.

Who do I blame?  I blame the American electorate.  We fell for the entirely vacuous “Hope and Change” motto--we don't want truth and substance, we want clever, we want smooth, we want someone who sounds like us, and we want to feel inspired.  We were war-weary and reacted, reaching for what we saw as the polar opposite of President Bush.  We love that the president talks about siding with the little guy.  And we yearn to show the world that racism in America is dying.  Boy, how we yearn for that one, and good for us for desiring that (again, all hats off to MLK).     

But here’s the thing: racism won’t die for political leaders until we can joke about our black president’s short-comings and gaffes like we can about our white presidents' quirks (here's an audio clip of John Lovitz and Dana Carvey chatting about this phenomenon).  It won't die until we can criticize job performance without the ensuing trigger-fingered hate speech allegations.  It won’t die in America until we hold minority political leaders to the same standards of excellence as whites.  It's been done in other fields: Gabby Douglas, Richard Parsons, and Thomas Sowell each have demonstrated that attainment of objective standards of excellence is possible in their respective fields—why not in politics, too?

Whether you agree or disagree with affirmative action policies for disadvantaged groups, can we not all agree that certain roles are so important that they must be earned and not bestowed? 

If you really yearn for the death of racism in America, you’ll fire Mr. Obama in November.  Deep breath: again, I'm not talking about firing him because he's African-American, and none of it's personal; he just failed.  And may I interject this: please, as a culture, let's quit imagining failure as a type of shame-filled Purgatory.  It merely means a lack of success and it's OK when someone fails at something.  Making President Obama out to be a success in contrast to his proven failure is, quite frankly, racist itself and complete fantasy.  President Bush—never known for his eloquence—referred to the “soft bigotry of low expectations.”  Truly, if you want to respect President Obama, you’ll treat him as you would any white guy who blew it.  

Unless of course if you truly can say in your mind as well as your heart that he's succeeded, then by all means vote for the man.

This next inauguration holds the promise of a type of emancipation. Are we really serious about eliminating soft bigotry as well as blatant racism?  Or does that challenge hit a little too close to home?

You Don't Want the Truth

I'm so naive.

In this, the Misinformation Age, I keep thinking that if only everyone would dig a little deeper, we could find some common ground.  Then we would spend less time throwing mud and more time discussing truth (or objective, verifiable reality, if your bad postmodern self doesn't like that other word).   

Then I heard this piece from NPR's Ari Shapiro.  It's 4:39 long, so feel free to indulge your curiosity. Warning: if this link doesn't work, you may need to search the Morning Edition page on July 25.

As it turns out, many of us don't give a rat's tuckus about the truth.  We're actually pretty content to be lied to.

I almost choked on my doughnut when I heard this section near the end:

SHAPIRO: This effort to dig down to the true meaning of a candidate's comments rests on a few assumptions. Most basically it assumes that truth matters. It assumes that people want to know what a candidate actually said and meant. It assumes that distortions are bad. In fact, behavioral psychologist Dan Ariely of Duke says those assumptions may be false. He's author of "The Honest Truth About Dishonesty: Why We Lie to Everybody, Especially Ourselves."

DAN ARIELY: And we recently did a study on this. We just asked a few hundred people online to what extent they think that their candidates could be dishonest if it promoted their political agenda.

SHAPIRO: He found that people were totally comfortable with politicians of their own party being dishonest to get elected.

ARIELY: And by the way, for Democrats, this was a slightly more endorsed position than for the Republicans. So the Democrats are more willing for their politicians to lie to a higher degree than the Republicans.

Does NPR know that they produced a piece with this information in it?

I couldn't help but think that elections have become lying contests.  Truth doesn't matter.  What really matters in an election is how smoothly the candidate lies.  Dogma rooted in deception.    

Pass the popcorn!

An Open Letter to Ben Bernanke

Here's a post we did for work recently.  It's an open letter to our one-man band Fed Chairman (bless his heart).

The NCAA’s Death Penalty

You have to respect what NCAA President Mark Emmert was trying to do Monday when he effectively kicked Penn State down to the Football Championship Series for the next five seasons.  It’s his job to enforce the rules and culture of college athletics, and the athletic leadership at PSU really screwed this one up.  Turning blind eyes toward Jerry Sandusky’s hideous sins cost several boys’ their innocence and mental health.

And PSU president Rodney Erickson’s call to pull JoePa’s statue from the stadium while leaving his name on the library was deft.

But did the NCAA over-play this one?  I don’t mean morally, I mean practically.

Let’s separate Sandusky from the question.  That dude should be forced to walk the plank into a tank of almost-starved, lightly-chummed Great Whites.  Or maybe buried up to his chin in the desert, drizzled with honey, and left alone for a pleasant evening under the stars.  Better yet, how about we appoint a two-person committee of Hannibal Lechter and Kevin Spacey’s character from Seven to develop a moral improvement curriculum for Mr. Sandusky?

(You probably can’t tell, but I’m having a difficult time seeing that God wants to redeem Sandusky with the same passion as he does yours truly.  I’ll work on that.)

Let’s also separate the pending criminal charges for the living guys who covered up the abuse reports.

What I’m wondering is whether the NCAA itself is in trouble with this call. 

The fact of the matter is that even though the “WE ARE” nation is trying their best to put on happy faces right now, their football program is at the very least in a deep, deep hole.  And they may never get out of it.

PSU football was Paterno.  Bill O’Brien is probably a great guy but athletes went to PSU because Paterno won a lot of games, went to bowls, and sent kids to the NFL.  O’Brien is still untested as a college football head coach, and he just lost 20 scholarships and any hope for post-season play for 4 years.  Heck, he didn’t even recruit the stars they have now.  Why should kids like Silas Redd stay put when they’re getting calls from dozens of coaches to jump ship?  This could kill Penn State football. 

You might say, “Ho, hum.  We can all do with a little less college football.  So what?”

My question is: Who, exactly, can do with a little less college football?

The physics & chemistry majors whose brand new mass spectrometer arrived courtesy of the 19 year old kid that just caught a fingertip pass at the back of the end zone, making 100,000 otherwise docile men scream like preteen girls?
 
How about the Poly Sci prof who gets to teach a single section of 14^th Century Papal Policy, while “struggling” to crank out a single article every other year?  He might want to thank the 70 year old dude 8 blocks away that just peeled himself out of his $80 seat to buy two $60 hoodies for the grandkids.

Maybe the Title IX recipients could do with a little less college football.  I’m sure the women’s golf team is self-sustaining.  What’s that?  It’s nowhere near self-sustaining?  Hmm.  How about field hockey?  Tennis?  Swimming?

Perhaps university presidents, whose schools are somewhat more likely to receive state tax-payer funding if they have successful football programs?  No, I’m not making that up.  Read about it here, if you want (warning: this one involves math).

Indianapolis Star sportswriter Bob Kravitz recently described this issue—dealing too sternly with the big business of college football—as letting the genie out of the bottle.  I think grabbing a tiger by the tail is a slightly better metaphor, but either works.

Here’s the zinger: membership in the NCAA is voluntary.  It’s been a successful near-monopoly, but all it takes is a few large teams to feel like they’ve had enough.  Penn State starts talking to Southern Cal, who checks in with Ohio State, who then passes the message on to Florida, and so on.

As much as I respect what Emmert wanted to do with this one, part of me wonders whether the NCAA just instituted its own death penalty.  Heck, if the NCAA goes, maybe student athletes would finally start to be fairly compensated for their generous contributions to their university slop troughs.

What do you think?

The Economic Impact of the Affordable Care Act

There are all sorts of reasons why you might want to force someone to buy health insurance.  You might see it as a way of providing for the health care needs of poor people.  You might think that the “free rider” problem is a beast needing to be slain.  You might just enjoy making other people do things—you’re just sort of an authoritarian at heart.  

You could also believe, as President Obama does, that the individual mandate aspect of the Affordable Care Act will be a clear economic positive.

Well.

If that’s your conviction, I want to offer a few challenges:

1.     If the “larger pool” succeeds in driving average costs down, it can do so, actuarially, only by shifting costs from those who need health care services to those who don’t.  In essence the individual mandate converts the health insurance industry into a type of pay as you go system, like Social Security.  But even that benefit is only temporary: we have no reason to assume that Americans will on average now desire to live shorter lives, eat healthier foods, exercise more, adopt truly preventative behaviors, experience catastrophic accidents less frequently, sue their doctors less frivolously / be awarded less silly punitive damages, etc.  

2.     The negative impact on the medical device industry can’t be overlooked—how does the excise tax affect capital formation and innovation in what has been one of our areas of comparative advantage?
 

3.      I’m also not clear on the impact on small and mid-sized businesses: maybe they join pools and their premiums decline, or maybe they look at their average total cost per employee (e.g., the employer component of plan premiums) rising and decide to pay the $2k / head fee and drop the plan altogether.  In that case, can we be sure that state Medicaid pools can handle the increased enrollment?  

4.      Finally, hospital stocks were up after the Supreme Court’s decision because they have greater assurance that the ACA solves their bad debts problem.  But pharma was down (increased use of drugs still facing patent expirations + restrictive FDA = zero incremental enthusiasm), as were the insurers (these guys went for the grand bargain ostensibly because they would add a boatload of new low risk customers), and likewise the device manufacturers. 

Societal preferences aside, all of this sums to a murky economic impact at best, in my view. 

Push back--how do you see the economics of it? 

Is Materialism Dying?

No, probably not.  But here are two perspectives (neither of which is particularly new) as to why a purely physical cosmology is worth questioning deeply.

Ethical Motivation: where does our sense of right and wrong come from?  How does a purely materialist view of human origins account for self-transcendence?  Why, for instance, do we tear-up at stories of a young Marine jumping on a grenade to save the lives of his buddies at the cost of his own?  Why is greed bad but charity laudable?  Why do we value courage over cowardice, particularly in circumstances when retreat offers a much surer path to survival and therefore, the ability to pass on our DNA?

Here’s a short video of Leah Lobresco—a 2011 Yale grad and erstwhile atheist blogger—describing how she came to faith through an awareness of her innate ethical yearnings.  For those of you who were “razed” Catholic, this might just rekindle some hope.

Quantum Mechanics:  I read The Hidden Face of God by Gerald Schroeder last winter.  It’s mind blowing stuff, really—made me wish I’d never given up on science in school.  Schroder puts the sub-atomic world in a helpful scale to begin mulling the question of matter: if we were able to expand the nucleus of an atom to a sphere 4 inches in diameter, the electrons would be orbiting (at ~ ¼ the speed of light) about 4 miles out.  That means that something like 99.999% of the physical universe isn’t actually matter, but the space between matter (or energy).  You can’t jam your finger through a bunch of iron atoms in their solid state, but it’s not because there's this dense material preventing you from doing so.  It’s because of that odd little, but really strong force "tethering" the nucleus to the electrons.  

Moreover, what can we say about the strong and weak nuclear forces,electro-magnetic force, and the force of gravity; these 4 rules, these inviolable principles of nature, which never stop working?  At a minimum, I think we can say they, not the apparent material around us, form the basis of physical reality.

Keith Ward, whom I had the pleasure of hearing speak at General Theological Seminary during the spring of ’94, takes this sub-atomic discussion further.  You can view it here.  It’s pretty long, but well worth it.  

Here are the haunting questions from Ward’s lecture: what if all that sub-atomic junk (e.g., protons, neutrons, electrons) wasn’t actually matter itself?  What if the whole of our experience is the perception of inviolable rules—of wisdom, as Schroeder puts it—in action?  What does that mean for consciousness?

Neither of these are proofs for God’s existence, mind you—I gave up on that quest years ago.  They do suggest that what we commonly perceive to be the bedrock of reality may not actually be that.  

I’d also love to see somebody tackle the link between the fundamental laws of physics and consciousness / innate, selfless ethical yearnings, if that’s possible.

In the end, I suppose what I feel most from these two trains of thought is a new appreciation for God’s immanence. And that’s pretty cool, in a contemplative sort of way.      

What if Wisconsin Wasn’t About the Money?

Citizens United is to lefty political types what my son is to his three sisters: the ultimate target for blame-shifting.

Michael McConnell offers another explanation, which you can read here.

Now, I’m not saying that money doesn’t affect political races.  After all, why else would rational politicos spend so much on smear ads?  But, if you believe the CNN exit poll which showed that 86% of Wisconsin re-call voters had made up their minds before May 1 (i.e., before the major ad spending ramped up), it’s probably fairly safe to say that there is at least a point of diminishing marginal returns to money’s influence.

Maybe Wisconsinites deserve more credit than the left or right is giving them.

Maybe the high ROI from political ads just wasn’t there.

Maybe the recall was just a dumb idea, based on hyper-inflated fears and widely promulgated but utterly ridiculous notions of justice.

Maybe getting a 100% match on your pension contribution and paying 1/8 of your health insurance premium cost aren't such bad deals after all (maybe it was really a matter of "Who Moved my Cheese?").

Maybe curtailing the ability of government to secure its existence and perpetuate its growth through self-funding mechanisms is in the best interest of Wisconsin’s residents.

Maybe, just maybe, democracy was working in the land of cheddar: not because it's an inherent good, but as a reasonably fair and thoroughly practical solution to bad governance.  

Or maybe it’ll always be my son’s fault, despite any evidence to the contrary.