Some Old Columns

THE SURREAL CANDIDACY OF HERMAN CAIN

I remember watching a playoff game between the Salt Lake City
Jazz and the Houston Rockets in which John Stockton hit a ridiculously long
three-point jumper at the buzzer to win. Asked about the shot after the game,
the great Charles Barkley remarked: “It was surreal. I don’t know what surreal
means, but it was surreal.”

Well, I do know what surreal means: “marked by the intense
irrational reality of a dream; unbelievable; fantastic.” And it describes
perfectly my response to the reactions I have witnessed to the allegations of
sexual harassment against Herman Cain.

My sense that I had arrived at an alternate reality began
with the topsy-turviness of conservative commentators. The same group that had rushed
to the defense of Paula Jones and had been willing to believe every sordid
detail of those who had accused Bill Clinton of sexual harassment had seemingly
simultaneously discovered skepticism and the virtue of innocent until proven
guilty.

The notion that in this new reality logic no longer applied
seemed confirmed with the absurd comparisons the same group was offering up between
Herman Cain and Clarence Thomas, the Supreme Court justice who was accused of
sexual harassment during his nomination hearing. Yes, they were both African-American
men. Yes, they had both been accused of sexual harassment. Oh, except that in
the case of Herman Cain
we were not talking about unproven allegations but about two
women who had actually received settlements from the organization Cain had
headed, the NRA (not that NRA).
But I guess whether something actually happened or was
merely alleged to have happened makes no difference in this new Alice-in-Wonderland
world.

But irrationality had reached a new level with Herman Cain
himself blaming “the democratic machine” for these allegations. Granted,
Democrats are not the brightest bulb in the political pack. There is a reason
for Will Rogers’ claim that he was not a member of any organized political
party. He was a Democrat. But even Democrats aren’t stupid enough to want to
undermine a Cain candidacy. Between his polarizing rhetoric, his
regressive/pizza price tax policy (9-9-9) and his almost Sarah Palin type
mastery of foreign affairs (What? China has nuclear weapons), Herman Cain is
the best if not the only hope for Democrats to hold onto the White House amidst
this troubled economy. To borrow a line from an old Monty Python skit, the
Democrats may be idiots, but they are not fools. The thought of any Democrat
with clout doing one thing to risk the already thin chances of Hermann Cain
atop the Republican ticket makes sense only if you suspend the laws of reason, self-interest,
and sanity.

And that is just, well, surreal.



Tea
Party R.I.P.
Kiss
Goodbye the One-Hit Wonder of Politics

I’m a big fan of the one-hit
wonder series on VH-1, where musicians that have eked out only a single best
-selling song in their careers are celebrated. One of my favorite tunes is the
Na Na song. Released in 1969 and officially known as “Na Na Hey Hey Kiss Him
Goodbye,” it is regularly played today at ballparks to send off a vanquished
opponent. It might be time to cue it up for that one-hit wonder of the
political world: the Tea Party.

Two recent events have signaled
the demise of the Tea Party. The first of these is the elevation of Mitt Romney
to the status of inevitable Republican nominee. It is hard to imagine a more
un-Tea Party like candidate than Romney. Where the raison d’etre of the Tea Party
is to reduce the size of government, Romney put his state’s government in
charge of health care. Where the Tea Party exhibited an unwillingness to reach
across the aisle that almost caused the U.S. to default on its debts, Romney
has declared a willingness to work with good Democrats. And where the
politicians who have aligned themselves with Tea Party have invariably been socially
conservative, Romney was governor of Massachuesetts for Pete’s sake.
Massachusetts!

A movement with power dictates a
party’s presidential choice, as the anti-Vietnam left did with the Democrats in
1972. A toothless movement finds itself making excuses for why the candidate
who least resembles their desired profile finds himself as the party’s anointed
one. Today’s Tea Party clearly finds itself in the latter position.

The second sign of the demise of the Tea Party occurred with
the one-month anniversary of Occupy Wall Street. With [tens of thousands of
people] protesting in 900 cities around the world this past weekend, Occupy
Wall Street reminded Americans of the true meaning of grass roots politics—and
not just because they were sleeping on the grass. Although the Tea Party passed
itself off as a people’s party, its corporate connections have been[ reported
on]. Indeed, how grassroots can something that started on CNBC and has its own
Congressional caucus be? Occupy Wall Street may not be well-defined, but no one
doubts its authenticity.

Say what you want about Americans: we know the real deal
when we see it. Sure, we might watch replacement football for a few games if
nothing else is on. But once the pros have taken the field, we have no patience
for pretend players. Just so, the pseudo-grass roots Tea Party will likewise
soon cease to interest us. Indeed it already has . The last CBS/NY Times poll showed the unfavorability
rating of Tea Party at a record high, with the Tea Party being viewed favorably
by only twenty percent of respondants.

It wasn’t a tune I was particularly fond of, but the Tea Party
had its moment at number one on the charts, otherwise known as the 2010
congressional elections. But now, it seems, it is time to kiss it goodbye
BALANCED BUDGET
AMENDMENT: STUPID IS AS STUPID DOES

COMMENTARY In light of the recently concluded agreement over raising the debt ceiling, the drumbeat for a balanced budget amendment
to the U.S. Constitution has grown louder than ever before. Although proponents
of this strategy can be found across the political spectrum -- from the right
to the far right -- they invariably appeal to a similar line of reasoning to
support their cause: Just like a healthy household avoids going into debt, so
should a healthy country. And, since Congress is obviously not able to achieve
this goal voluntarily, they need to have a fiscal restraint imposed upon them.
The technical term for
this line of reasoning is an analogy, which the dictionary defines as "a similarity between like
features of two things, on which a comparison may be based." An analogy
may be many things: interesting, enlightening, amusing. But one thing it
definitely is not is argumentative. One cannot use an analogy to argue because
no matter how many similarities may exist between objects or ideas the
differences are invariably much greater.
Consider one of the most
well-loved movie analogies: Forrest
Gump's claim that "Life
is like a box of chocolates. You never know what you're gonna get."
It's an insightful
observation and accurate as far as it goes. But it is not the basis to draw any
logical conclusion. This is because life and packaged confectionaries have so
many differences as to make any comparison drawn for the sake of argument
irrelevant. For example, life is a grand mystery whose ultimate source can
never be ultimately determined while I am pretty certain that the pound of
mixed chews came from the See's store down the street.
With this in mind, let's
begin to list some of the problems with this comparison those on the right wish
to draw between the debt laden federal government they excoriate and the ideal
debt free household it should supposedly model itself after.
To begin, despite the
claim that freedom from debt is the state of the ideal household and one that
the government should imitate, most households in America are in debt. It's
called a mortgage, and the American dream would not be possible without it. In
addition, many of these same households will go into even more debt in order to
send their children to college. If the government is to follow the lead of the
prudent household, the lesson would seem to be to embrace, not avoid, debt.
Moreover, the same folks
who say that government needs to pass a balanced budget amendment to avoid debt
invariably go out of their way to praise small business as the engine of the
American economy. But these very same businesses inevitably required debt in
order to get off the ground and even more debt in order to expand and grow.
Again the lesson is: debt is good.
Of course, one does not
know how seriously to take the claim of those who want to pass a balanced
budget amendment since that very same amendment invariably includes exceptions
that allow the government to go into debt, for example, during wartime. But
exceptions don't validate strategies; they show them to be false. And if one
condition justifies overriding the imperative to avoid debt, it is more than
likely others do as well. So it is no coincidence that economists across the
political spectrum agree that given the danger of falling into another
recession the government now needs to stimulate the economy with either
spending or tax cuts-both of which will increase the debt.
No one is arguing that
the current fiscal situation is sustainable or denying that measures need to be
taken in order to curb our long term debt. But to completely eliminate debt as
from the economic toolbox of a country makes no more sense than eliminating it
as a possibility for a household or a business. And it calls to mind another of
Forrest Gump's more memorable lines: Stupid is as stupid does.
Close

THE REAL TRADEDY OF ANTHONY WEINER

COMMENTARY In the Greek tragedy Ajax, the
title character fails to be awarded the armor of the hero Achilles. Disgraced,
he goes mad and kills himself by literally falling on his own sword (hence the
phrase). I would like to suggest Anthony
Weiner pick up a copy of the play. Not that I want him to do anything
that drastic. I don't. But we would all benefit by his close reading of this
twenty-five hundred year old classic.
The play is an archetypal illustration of what is referred to as a "shame"
culture: a culture in which how we appear to others is a prime motivator
of our action. By contrast, we in the Christian West are said to live in a
'guilt' culture. In a guilt culture, it is how an individual appears to himself
that matters. A guilt culture only works, however, if the collective
unconscious or what Freud called the superego is built
up strong enough to serve as a check on our behavior. But since the superego is
a product of the culture itself, if the culture is not sending the correct
signals, our internal compass will be off.
Sadly, this is the situation we find ourselves. There seems no behavior that is
beyond the pale. Stars can beat their girlfriends (Bobby), shack up with
goddesses (Charile), steal (Lindsay), or threaten their exes (Mel), with the
end result invariably being a legal slap on the wrist (maybe) and then
increased popularity. In such a culture, to call on Anthony Weiner to resign
because he has done something wrong--deceived a spouse, lied to the media, or
sent inappropriate images to others--must inevitably fall on deaf ears. The
problem is that we as a society are no longer possessed of enough of a sense of
collective morality to make guilt a meaningful motivator.
The Greek play suggests another standard for action: how we appear in the eyes
of our peers. If the question of the moral wrong of what Weiner has done is
still up in the air (as is clear from the fact the people are debating it), his
status among his colleagues is clear. "Having the respect of your constituents
is fundamental for a member of Congress," Pennsylvania Rep. Allyson
Schwartz said in a statement in which she called on Weiner to resign. If this
were a shame culture, Weiner's disgrace in the eyes of his colleagues would by
itself be enough to have him at least metaphorically follow Ajax. This would
not only save us all a lot of grief (and exposure to even more revealing
photographs of the representative) but would begin the all-important process of
removing that image of grey shorts from our collective psyche.
Does anyone have his mailing address?