So It Goes

Michael Jackson: Why Should We Care?

ONE THING I'VE LEARNED from my many years of pitching story ideas to journalists (which is a big part of what I do professionally) is that I have to answer the question that every reporter, editor or producer has to answer on behalf of his or her audiences: why should we care? What is it about this story that will enlighten or enrich at least a segment of the readers, listeners or viewers? Why should anyone beyond a small circle of interested parties care about this story, and, if it's a specific anecdote, what lessons does it offer that are important to the broader public interest?

It's a fair question, and I'm proud to say I've pitched lots stories that I felt met and exceeded the why-should-we-care threshold. Too many nevertheless went nowhere. (If I had a dime for every time that happened....)

Like the time more than 20 years ago when I pitched all of the news outlets in Chicago on some pretty compelling and important (at least to me) public policy issue (shame on me: I don't even remember what it was). No one bit. They were too busy with more important news, they said.

That night, each of late newscasts on the three or four local TV stations devoted a good three to five minutes (a lot) on a story about the world's largest lobster that someone caught off the coast of Australia, or some such place. It was good video, I suppose. More importantly, they didn't have to send out crews and on-air reporters. They just picked it off the satellite. How stupid was I? How did I ever think my story could compete with the world's largest lobster?

While our media have only gotten worse since then, highlighting the sensational or the silly over the serious, I've tried to get a grip on my annoyance to this now-permanent feature of America's frequently shameful and shallow media landscape (with all due respect to the few truly serious, accomplished journalists who remain part of it and wonder how things have come to this state). It's like cursing the rain.

Here we are now with a story that even I acknowledge is bigger than the world's largest lobster: the death of Michael Jackson. But, even as I sneak a peek at some of the volumes of archival footage of his life or catch snippets about the medical investigation into his death or about the fate of his children, I still ask myself: why should I care?

For the record, I admit that when the Jackson 5 stormed the music scene, I was swept away, too. I idolized Michael. Like so many kids of the day, I wanted to be him -- or at least the sixth, off-the-bench alternate Jackson. Why not? He was about my age, and I could carry a tune, so if he could do it, why couldn't I, right? (I was also sure at the time that I would someday play in the NBA.) The first 45 record I ever bought was "I'll Be There," and both that and "Mama's Pearl" (which I think was the flip side; anyone remember?) remain my two favorite J5 tunes. But as he and his music evolved, they and my taste went opposite directions. And then he became too -- how to say? -- idiosyncratic to take seriously. To me, following his story was like empty calories. Not worth the bite.

Of course we're interested in this story. To some extent we follow the news about Michael Jackson's death because we have a natural need to find out how a story ends. That's why I'm always pleased to hear about old friends I haven't kept up with and even about public figures who've been out of the limelight for a time. And the Michael Jackson story was way too eventful for anyone just to put down before finishing it, even for those like me who found it too bizarre and too sad to watch in recent years. Also, gawking at the misfortunes and grotesqueness (is that a word?) of others is human instinct, which is why it's an industry all to itself.

But as I sat in a coffee shop this morning, far enough away from the TV screen playing CNN Headline News to make it smugly seem I didn't care but close enough to see what it was playing, it was clear that the network couldn't let the broadcast go too long without returning to the news about Michael Jackson -- what's the family saying or not saying? what's the news from the medical examiner? what about the children? remembrances from the people who supposedly new him well; in-depth analysis (as if this is a pivotal moment in history, like the overthrow of the U.S. government; or, a new outbreak of the Black Plague, or, even bigger, the Super Bowl!) from all manner of Michael "experts"; clips of him performing through his very long (even for a 50 year old) career.

Scarcely any new news, especially when they're cycling these pieces almost every five minutes, but we wouldn't want the people to be without something about Michael. You get the feeling that, if they could, they would get rid of all the other stories about, oh, health care reform negotiations, more bombings in Iraq, the sputtering U.S. economy, even the sacrosanct weather and sports, for Michael's -- I mean God's -- sake! They speed through those minor stories almost breathlessly lest even one viewer miss the latest or, even worse, flip the channel to any of the other networks whose news hole is just as lopsided with Michael news. Even my beloved (and relatively more selective) NPR sees fit to insert a news item about Michael into most of its top-of-the-hour readings of news headlines, as far as I can tell. It's everywhere in the print media, too.

The managers of these news outlets will surely argue that they're just giving the people what they want. The people really care about this one.

I suppose that's the case. But, really, do we care so much about this story that we can't go a few minutes without another clip of the many lives (once-lovable/later inscrutable/still later troubled) of Michael Jackson? Even the biggest fans? Or does the blanket coverage force us to think we really care that much? Chicken and egg?

Jeff

Settlements: Only a Side Show

THERE'S A LOT OF CHATTER RIGHT NOW ABOUT A COLLISION between President Barack Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu about their disparate views on settlements of Israelis in the West Bank.

True, they disagree (at least according to their public statements), and true, that has put some pressure on Netanyahu. Israeli politics make it difficult for him to freeze expansion of settlements, let alone cut back on existing ones -- even if the Prime Minister does, in his heart, agree with Obama's position; and those same domestic pressures insist that every Israeli leader keep the American President on his side.

Obama is caught between two pressure points, too. Even before his speech in Cairo last week, addressed to the Muslim world, the President surely knew he needed to show the Palestinians and their supporters throughout the world that he would do more than talk about peace and reconciliation. He knew he had to put some visible pressure on Israel so as not to seem like anything less than a fair broker in the peace process.

On the other side, though, President Obama cannot beat up on Israel too much. That's because, first of all, he would upset an important constituency in his own party and in the U.S. And I don't mean only the Jewish community, but, I believe, most Americans who have consistently shown support for Israel (see, for example, this study by the Pew Research Center showing that Americans are more than four to one more likely to sympathize with Israel than with the Palestinians in their longstanding conflict: ) And, second of all, while I don't know Obama personally, he has given every indication that he, too, cares about the security of the State of Israel.

Indeed, I think Obama believes -- as I do -- that, as much as it may signal a rift between the U.S. and Israel, his posture on the settlements will help Israel. So, too, his insistence on a two-state solution, which, by the way, was George W. Bush's position, so I don't see what the conflict is there.

Some American Jews freak out, to put it nicely, whenever there is any daylight between the positions of the American and Israeli leaders. Many have continued to harbor suspicions they so irrationally held last year about Obama that he will endanger Israel. The fact is they probably represent a minority of American Jewish opinion on the settlements; I'm saying this without empirical evidence, but I think it's the case that most American Jews (myself included) have never understood how Israel could say it is ready for a peaceful reconciliation with Palestinians as it allowed an expansion of the settlements and created, as Ariel Sharon once referred to them, "facts on the ground."

But here's where I agree with some in the Jewish community who worry about the fixation on the settlements issue. Even as I think Israel needs to do something about pulling back (and that's a very vague term, I realize) on the settlements in the West Bank, it is a necessary, but not sufficient ingredient to progress. I don't think we should boil the entire Israeli-Palestinian conflict down to settlements, as some critics and even friends of Israel often do.

If the settlements issue goes away next week -- that is, no expansion activity, or even, more extensively but untenably, Jews leave the West Bank altogether (along the lines of the so-named 2002 "Saudi Plan," or Arab Peace Initiative, which also call for the division of Jerusalem and the right of return of Palestinians to pre-1948 homes in Israel proper) -- can anyone out there say that the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians would cease?

Does anyone truly believe that Israel's fiercest enemies, some of whom live in Gaza and the West Bank and have hurled virulent invective, missiles and other deadly attacks upon Israelis would say, "Okay, then, Israel has a right to exist. We will live side by side in peace with our good friends the Israelis?" Need I recite the vile and rejectionist language -- let alone violent actions -- from groups like Hamas and, just outside Israel, Hezbollah? Everything they say and do suggests they will see it not as an end to the conflict but as a new, opportune moment to continue the fight. I hope I'm wrong about that, but, c'mon, does anyone honestly disagree with that assessment? I believe there are many among the Palestinians and in the Arab and Muslim worlds who are ready reconcile under the right conditions. But these more extreme forces still have the upper hand. 

So, yes, Obama needs to place proper pressure on Israel to show the Arab world he means business, but he must not forget to do the same with the Palestinians. The American Jewish right is properly reminding him of this, but must also have the patience to let him do what he needs to do.The American Jewish left must resist the temptation to make the conflict all about the settlements and what Israel alone must do to contribute to the progress toward peace.

Obama has shown a willingness to press the Palestinian side, and, everything he has said and done suggests he will. (The rifts within the Palestinian community make it hard for them to deliver, unfortunately.) But, for some reason, what gets the ink and the air time is his supposedly tough talk with Netanyahu around the settlements issue, which is, to my mind, only a side show.

Jeff

The image above of President Barack Obama, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, center, and White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel in the Oval Office on, May 18, 2009, is an Official White House Photo taken by Pete Souza.

A Question About Guantanamo

CAN SOMEONE EXPLAIN TO ME why Guantanamo, the place, had to be abandoned in order for the United States to regain its moral standing as a humane place?

Again, the place, not the practices that took place there, which I found grossly unacceptable: the "enhanced interrogation techniques," the absence of any sort of due process that enlightened people are supposed to follow. (How could we allow people to sit there, for long stretches in solitary confinement, without even being read charges or having access to an outside counsel?) I also detested the previous administration's tortured (sorry for the pun) legal rationalizations for these practices as much as I did their arrogant certainty that they were right and everyone else who disagreed was an unpatriotic wimp.

But it seemed to be accepted wisdom that we had to flee the place, the prison at Guantanamo Bay. Indeed, President Obama made it one of his very first orders of business after taking over the Oval Office.

Why? Of all the talk on this subject -- and I think there's been plenty, maybe too much -- I never heard a sufficient argument for leaving the facility at Guantanamo. The only thing I can figure is that people regard it as they would a house down the block where a murder once took place, or a street corner where a pedestrian was once hit by a car. The very vision of it brings up bad thoughts and memories.

But that's not a good reason to leave a place that, as far as I understand (and there's a lot here that I probably don't understand) did what it was supposed to: provided a secure facility to lock up bad people. What went on there is another story, isn't it?

But because of this decision to leave the place, we now have new problems because of it: no one abroad wants to take the prisoners, and few, if any, communities domestically want them (which I don't understand either; there are many dangerous people in our prisons around the country. How would these prisoners endanger our communities even more?). I think Obama has handled this delicate issue about as well as he could, but I don't understand this part of it.

What am I missing here?

Jeff

Jargon: Enemy of Good Communication

A WRITING TEACHER I HAD IN COLLEGE once told our class that if readers don't understand what we write, chances are it's our fault, not our readers'. It's our job, he said, to be understandable more than it is the readers' job to understand.

That advice has stuck with me since, and it applies not only with writing but with every form of communication.

That's why one of my pet peeves is jargon. Jargon is the enemy of good communication. It immediately throws up a wall between the communicator and his audience, one that the communicator can quite easily eliminate.

Jargon is inside code language, used by people who wrongly assume that everybody knows the secret handshake, and if they don't, well, then they don't really matter anyway.  That or they mistakenly feel that they will sound smarter and more informed by throwing out a bunch of obscure acronyms and references that only they a small group of people on the inside understand. But instead of sounding smart, they are, at best, confusing to most audiences and, at worst, incomprehensible. It's kind of annoying, when you think about it.

Jargon lurks in pretty much every subculture we can imagine, whether it's a particular industry, avocation or other field of endeavor. It exists for a good and healthy reason: to save some time, to provide a shorthand among those who know a lot about a particular issue or field. In fact, I have no problem with people wielding jargon among their peers; they don't need to spell out everything to people who will understand what they're saying. It's like French people speaking French to other French people. Of course.

It's just when they start throwing around arcane terminology and, worst of all, acronyms that only the insiders would know. You hear this sort of talk a lot among government and military people (though they're not alone), but I hear it in business all the time. We've all got an acronym for everything. And unless you stop the jargonist and ask him to define his terms (something that most of us find intimidating to do because we think we sound stupid to ask), you are bound to miss something. Again, whose fault is that?

I would appreciate it if more of us thought a bit before we talk. Instead of tossing out an acronym -- at least on the first reference -- consider saying the entire term from which the acronym comes. It really doesn't take that much more time. Or instead of showing off by referring to the technical name of a rare disease, just tell us what the symptoms are first. Or instead of using fancypants business terms that everyone seems to be using -- like "double bottom line" or "Six Sigma" -- try explaining what those things are first.

After all, it is your responsibility as communicator to make the communication work. 

Jeff

P.S. I'd love to hear your examples of amusing jargon and jargon stories. Send 'em in. And I'll highlight some good ones from time to time, if I can.

Customer Service -- What a Concept!

MARC GUNTHER, one of the leading observers these days of corporate social responsibility, talks in a recent blog post about companies' "ethic of service—to their employees, their customers and their shareholders" and how that translates into loyalty from those same critical groups of stakeholders.

"I’m willing to bet that Southwest [Airlines] customers are less grumpy about flight delays than those on United or Delta because they have a sense that the company wants to treat them right," writes Gunther, who profiled Southwest's "ethic of service" in his 2004 book, Faith and Fortune: How Compassionate Capitalism is Transforming American Business.

Funny he should mention that, because just a week ago I was impressed yet again by how much better Southwest is at accommodating me, the customer, so much more than many of companies (not just airlines) I interact with as a consumer of their goods or services.

This time I was calling to rebook a flight because of some changes in my own schedule. That's something we have been conditioned by the other airlines to avoid like the plague, what with their pricey change fees and processes that are about as clear and simple as the federal tax code.

Not only does Southwest allow you to make changes easily and without penalty, get this: when I called Southwest to make the change (unfortunately, their Web site didn't allow me to do it by myself online, but I'd rather talk to a real person anyway), a recorded voice told me that, because their people were busy with other customers, there would be a delay of five to eight minutes. Nothing unusual about that; this is par for the course in customer service land these days.

But then the voice said they could call me back when my turn came up. I would not lose my place in the queue. So long as I punched in my number and stuck by that phone, I could hang up and go about my life until they were ready for me.

I tried it, and it worked! True to their promise, a real person called me back in about five or six minutes. The first thing I told her was how grateful I was for this feature and how much I love Southwest for treating me like a human being. She sounded almost startled by how effusively I praised her company. So not only was my transaction with her good for me, she wasn't dealing with a crabby, cursing customer, which must be a drag for anyone on her end of the line.

Gunther's right that even when Southwest has done some things that I normally find annoying (and for all the many times I've been on Southwest, I can only remember two), I'm much more forgiving than I am with other airlines and other companies I patronize from time to time -- phone companies, retailers, computer companies, cable TV providers, etc. From their impenetrable customer service systems on the phone or online to their tendency to bounce you from one customer service representative to the other (none of whom admit to being responsible for addressing your problem) to their inability to live up to their promise (as Southwest did) to show up at your house or deliver what you want within the timeframe they set for themselves, these companies have worn most of us consumers down.

We have come to expect lousy customer service and, with pounding hearts and clenched teeth, look forward to settling a disputed invoice, changing a ticket, getting the insurance company to pay for a claim or receiving technical assistance for rebooting our cable boxes about as much as we would getting into a car accident. We feel out of control, enraged, ripped off and let down.

I'm obviously not the only one to notice how relatively pleasant it is to deal with Southwest -- what with their no-nonsense approach to price and booking, their ingenious and fair way of boarding passengers at the gate to their good prices, all of which gives one the impression that the really do have the customer in mind and are not forcing the customer conform with inscrutable and inconvenient rules. As Scott McCartney reported recently in the Wall Street Journal, an independent customer satisfaction survey "covering the first quarter of this year, puts Southwest Airlines as the highest scoring passenger carrier. Southwest’s score rose 3% from the same period last year to 81 out of 100—a record for the airline industry. Southwest has continued to offer value and reliability, and has pushed its product into new areas across the country. Maybe that accounts for the gains – or perhaps Southwest’s decision to not charge customers for checking baggage."

(The good news for everyone, customers and airlines alike, is that, as McCartney adds, "customer satisfaction with airlines increased for the first time since 2003, according to the latest University of Michigan American Customer Satisfaction Index." But, "despite the gain, airlines remain one of the lowest scoring industries measured by the ACSI.")

As Gunther says, by treating its customers well, companies win the most valued prize: loyalty. Look at me; I carry a Southwest credit card, which gets me points for free flights on the airline, and I will go out of my way to book myself on Southwest, whether it's for personal or business travel. That's not often a hardship, as their fares are typically lower than others. I've found myself doing the same with other businesses that establish a more customer-friendly relationship with me, the customer -- for example, shoe stores, with real, old-fashioned shoe salesmen, who really know how to fit my fit into the right shoe, as opposed to the people at the discount stores whose only job is to point me to piles of boxes and ring up my sale.

Let's hope features like the call-back systems that I encountered recently with Southwest catches on and becomes the industry norm. And let's hope others, seeing how doing well by their customers, follow suit overall as well. At the moment, though, I feel the customer-service landscape is a scary place for most customers to tread. You've gotta wonder what the marketing geniuses are thinking and how they got us all into this state of affairs.

Jeff

Well-Meaning Homeowner Surrenders to Convenience, Vanity; Fate of World Hangs in the Balance

ON SUNDAY, MAY 10, 2009, Jeff Weintraub of Silver Spring, Md., finished cutting his grass with a gasoline-powered lawn mower after he lost faith in his non-motorized push mower's ability to do the job.

Nearly two years ago, the starting cord on the power mower broke, and, rather than replace it, Weintraub decided to buy a manual rotary mower. "With such a small patch of grass to cut," he thought at the time, "there's no reason to continue to pollute the air, deplete the ozone layer and pierce the calm of my pastoral neighborhood with a roaring power mower."

Along the way, however, Weintraub began to notice that the manual mower didn't cut the grass evenly and, even worse, it would not cut spindly weeds that cropped up across his sprawling yard. He rationalized this by dismissing the whole enterprise of having and maintaining a perfect lawn as "a bourgeois, unnecessary anachronism."

Lawns, he smugly pointed out, are a throwback to a time when Americans yearned to turn their humble patches of land into something approximating a tradition of English nobility, who planted grass to show that they didn't need to use their land to make a living. Besides, he told neighbors who saw him pushing the non-motorized mower, "It doesn't have to be perfect. I'm not running a golf course here."

But those spindly weeds finally got to him on Sunday, so he fixed the pull cord and went over the yard again with the power mower. And the lawn, helped by abundant spring rains this year, looks pretty good.

This turn of events left Weintraub feeling torn and guilty. He believes in the power of small acts to make a big difference in repairing the world. So if he didn't have the willpower to face a crappy-looking lawn every day or the fortitude and inclination to transform it into a no-maintenance rock garden, how, he asked himself, would he ever make all the other adjustments in life to stave off ecological disaster? What would it take for him to choose contributing to the greater good over expedience?

He considered those rather grandiose and slightly self-indulgent questions, especially when all that's at stake are a few ounces of consumed gasoline every few weeks. And he has even promised himself to use the power mower maybe once every three or four mowings. But what if everybody brushed off such dilemmas? Well, in fact, most people probably do, though perhaps less so than before.

As Weintraub pointed out in a blog post last year, "We Americans have grown so accustomed to many of the conveniences that we enjoy -- conveniences that others around the world seem to do well without." Like carefully coiffed lawns. Or roomy, powerful cars. "While environmental sustainability is something that many more of us are conscious of and acting upon, weaning us off of our conveniences will take some game-changing event -- like, God forbid, a cataclysm, or, better yet, a new technology -- like, hard as this is to conceive, a true non-carbon producing alternative to the internal combustion engine." Or a non-motorized lawn mower that cuts the grass well. 

But, Weintraub reasons today, "'being accustomed to a certain standard of living is not the biggest crime in the world, is it? It's a weakness, one that will be difficult to break. And even if we as a species all decide to ride our bikes to work every day, change to low-energy light bulbs, build smaller, more energy-efficient houses, and, yes, use a power mower, there will always be a cost to human activity and development -- something we humans are prone to."

Weintraub shakes his head as he caresses the velvety turf of his back yard. "We can and we should dial back what we think we need to live a comfortable life," he said. "As long as it's free of those spindly weeds."

Jeff

Manny's Folly: Do We Really Care?

ANDY BOROWITZ has a funny piece today under the headline, "Angry Cleveland Indians Fans Demand Team Take Steroids."

"The national pastime suffered another black eye last night," Borowitz 'reports' in a spoof article, "when a mob of irate Cleveland Indians fans poured onto the diamond at Progressive Field to demand that their team take steroids.

"Displeasure with the championship-starved squad reached a boiling point with the news that slugger Manny Ramirez took performance-enhancing drugs -- but only after leaving the Indians."

Of course, Borowitz is playing off of the news that Ramirez, the L.A. Dodgers star outfielder, got hit with a 50-game suspension for testing positive for steroids. It's pretty big news given that Manny (or should I say Mr. Ramirez?) is a force on the field and, to put it euphemistically, an "iconoclast" off the field (go to this interesting profile of him in the New Yorker from a couple of years ago to see what I mean). But I don't feel the sort of breathless, end-of-the-world commentary about this scandal that I think characterized much of the public chatter when some other top baseball stars have been nailed with juicing themselves over the past few years.

Maybe there's a bit of steroid fatigue. Maybe we've just come to expect that everyone's doing it now and that, as the Borowitz spoof suggests, you'd be a chump not to.

Oh sure, there will still be those who will wax on about "the integrity of the game," the desecration of our one true civil religion, the psychological well-being of our children, and all that. I agree, and I, too, am disappointed. But some give our "national pastime" (well, some people's national pastime) a bit too much credit for saving and sustaining the soul of the American people.

It is just a game, after all, not an existential experience. (I pay $200 a seat plus another $500 for food and beer therefore I am.) Indeed, much as we will all hate having to wonder now whether the towering home run over the centerfield seats was real or "assisted," most of us still love the sight of it, don't we? Just as we love the acrobatic drive to the basket followed by the rim-rattling dunk; the violent, cruise-missile-like hit on the receiver down the middle of the field; and the bulging sprinter who shoots past the field toward the tape. We love being stunned by these feats even as we hate the bums for desecrating the sport.

Some of us love the punishing power and antics of professional "wrestling," even as we know it's all fake. Baseball and the other sports have not even approached the contrivance of the "smackdown" yet, and I still think most want to see a battle of the humanly possible.

But I have to believe that many of these naturally great athletes take then unnatural step of juicing their bodies not only because it gives them an edge (and shame on pro sports for not clamping down on this sooner, before it turned into an arms race, something that players felt they had to do to survive.) They do it, also, because they know it will please the crowd, which in turn will please the sponsors, which in turn will please the team ownership, which in turn will please the athlete and his agent at contract time.

I'm not saying that the guys who take the drugs and cork the bats are not responsible. They are. And, yes, there are plenty of majestic and exciting athletes who are clean (I think). But don't we secretly like what we see from the cheaters? Do we really care that they cheat?

Jeff

Three Things

OVER THE LAST COUPLE OF YEARS, I've entered a season of life that most of us encounter at roughly this time, I assume. I've gone to more funerals and memorial services than I ever had before, including for some for people close to me -- or, at the very least offered condolences of one form or another.

It's not a lot, and nor do I bring this up to be overly melancholy, morose or precious -- though I'm sure that's not what you're thinking right now. It just occurred to me recently that this tide has come in without my really noticing it until now. It's like that point in time when everyone around you is getting married or having babies.

This struck me yesterday, actually, when I came across a poem that framed this process of knowing and then losing someone. I think the poem succeeds because it placed me in this experience, explored it and then explained it to me. And because it made me go back and think about that experience again.

It's by Mary Oliver, and it's called "In Black Water Woods." I won't reproduce the whole poem here, but hope you'll click through the hyperlink above and read it all. Here's the conclusion, which is what won me over. I have to confess that reading it now, out of context, it has a bit of a Hallmark quality to it. But trust me with this one. Read the whole thing.

To live in this world

you must be able
to do three things:
to love what is mortal;
to hold it

against your bones knowing
your own life depends on it;
and, when the time comes to let it go,
to let it go.

Jeff

The Obama Doctrine: We Could Use a Little Love

"IT IS BETTER TO BE FEARED THAN LOVED, if you cannot be both." So said the 16th century political philosopher Niccolo Machiavelli (looking otherwise lovable at right), known for his full-throated support for the exercise of raw political power.

With the Obama Administration, we're seeing a test of whether Machiavelli was right. Obama has pretty noticeably departed from Machiavelli's doctrine -- and from his predecessor's -- with one all his own. In a few words, we might call it a doctrine of humility, introspection and self-effacement.

Indeed, when asked at a news conference in Trinidad and Tobago last month after the Western Hemisphere leadership summit to define "the Obama doctrine," the President said: "...If we are practicing [the values] that we preach, and if we occasionally confess to having strayed from our values and our ideals, that strengthens our hand; that allows us to speak with greater moral force and clarity around these issues."

And he endorsed the practice of listening to our global partners and adversaries: "...[T]he United States remains the most powerful, wealthiest nation on Earth, but we're only one nation, and... the problems that we confront, whether it's drug cartels, climate change, terrorism, you name it, can't be solved just by one country. And I think, if you start with that approach, then you are inclined to listen and not just talk." And "[A]s a consequence of listening, believing that there aren't junior partners and senior partners in the international stage, I don't think that we suddenly transform every foreign policy item that's on the agenda."

This has so far won Obama -- and, to some extent, our nation, too -- a lot of love from our erstwhile critics abroad, and, of course, it has generated a lot of (mostly silly and partisan, but some of it reasonable and thoughtful) flack from his domestic critics, to say the least, especially when:

• Last month, Obama and Hugo Chavez, the virulently anti-U.S. President of Venezuela, shared a friendly handshake for the cameras, a shot seen around the world.
• Obama issued warm pronouncements to Iran (such as the one marking a recent Muslim holiday) and shown willingness to open up dialogue with the terrorist-sponsoring and nuclear-ly ambitious Islamic Republic.
• Obama confessed to audiences in Europe -- where, he rightly pointed out, antipathy for America ascended over the last few years -- that the U.S., too, has not always been perfect and as collegial as it could be. As he said at his Strasbourg, France, town hall event last month, for example: "Now, there's plenty of blame to go around for [the economic crisis], and the United States certainly shares its -- shares blame for what has happened." and "Instead of celebrating your dynamic union and seeking to partner with you to meet common challenges, there have been times where America has shown arrogance and been dismissive, even derisive."
• His administration has talked about an easing our isolationist approach to Syria.

I'm not entirely convinced that this change of tone from our White House will work with our more intractable adversaries, such as Iran, and there are good reasons to use it carefully. As Michael Oren, a wise and typically centrist analyst of Middle East affairs (and reportedly under consideration to be the next Israeli Ambassador to Washington), co-wrote in a Wall Street Journal Op-Ed last fall, "Any American offer to dialogue with Iran is liable to be interpreted as a sign of American weakness, and not only in Tehran. Public opinion throughout the region will conclude that the United States has at last surrendered to the reality of Iranian rule. The damage to America's regional, if not global influence, could prove irreversible."

And just as Obama's rhetorical outreach to Iran brought a rhetorical snub from its leaders (though there are rumors that President Mahmoud Ahmanidejad wants to reestablish diplomatic relations with the U.S.), Obama's handshake with Chavez apparently didn't soften the Venezuelan leader's heart. Last week Chavez made it clear that, "If President Obama does not dismantle this savage blockade of the Cuban people, then it is all a lie, it will all be a great farce and the U.S. empire will be alive and well, threatening us." Battering the imperial menace is still, and will probably long be, a politically profitable strategy for guys like this.

That said, I think Obama's "I'd-rather-be-loved-than-feared" approach is worth a try. Indeed, it may be his only option given the public diplomacy mess he inherited. The George W. Bush Administration showed us the limitations of the Machiavellian approach, and it apparently followed the same philosophy that the elder President Bush (H.W.) took when he said in 1988 (according to Gideon Rachman of the Financial Times), “I will never apologize for the United States, ever. I don’t care what the facts are.”  We've seen how that the guns-blazing, we're-always-right, you're-either-with-us-or-against us policy got us: mostly revulsion and very little fear. It became politically dangerous for other countries' leaders even to cooperate with us. How did that strengthen the United States?

Also, the likes of Ahmadinejad and Chavez have for several years played off of the Bush Administration's harsh, isolationist approach. They've been able to rationalize their own dangerous rhetoric by playing the victim of a campaign to hurt them and their countries. Obama is to some extent taking that excuse out of their arsenal, though, so long as he does not bow entirely to their extreme agendas, they will always have something to complain about.

Gideon Rachman wrote the other day that he agrees with Obama's approach. "To his conservative critics, the signal [Obama] is sending is one of weakness," Rachman wrote. "But no fair reading of Mr Obama’s various comments suggest that he is ashamed of his country, or that he intends to sacrifice American interests. What he is doing is trying to improve some of the poisonous relationships that he inherited from President George W. Bush by acknowledging, usually in rather coded language, that the US, too, can make mistakes."

Talking nice and being self-effacing doesn't mean giving away the store. And it doesn't preclude talking tough from time to time when it's called for. It could go some way to getting others around the world to cooperate with us strategically, economically and many other ways.

Sorry, Mr. Machiavelli, but a little love right now might be just what we need.

Keep Calm and Carry On

THE BUZZ THESE DAYS is all about flu -- most importantly, how each of us avoids it. So it shouldn't have surprised any of us at my synagogue yesterday when it became the subject of our rabbi's d'var torah, or explication of the current Torah (bible) portion.

Coincidentally -- or, better put, conveniently, if your purpose is to address the current public health crisis -- yesterday's Torah portion (starting with Leviticus 16: 23).

The prescriptions were, at least in the context of religious ritual, meant to purify the souls of the priests, but one cannot escape the sense that it is meant also to cleanse them of any biologically contaminants before reconnecting with the general population. Not just spiritual hygiene but physical as well.

Of course, that's a thin reed upon which to base a discussion about the 2009 H1N1 flu that has been lurking lately, but it will do. And I learned (or relearned) a few interesting things in the discussion, not only from our pretty well-informed rabbi but also from the bumper crop of physicians and public health experts in our congregation:

• washing your hands with soap and water is the most effective way to "purify" yourself of any flu virus you may have touched;
• the now-ubiquitous alcohol-based hand sanitizer products don't kill all the germs, some of which thrive in the alcohol (even so, there were several bottles of it available at doorway to our usual after-service lunch);
• the fastest way to get virus is to touch your eyes -- even the nose and mouth are less vulnerable gateways;
• Jews in 14th century Europe were much less affected by the scourge of Black Plague or Black Death because they lived mostly separately from non-Jewish populations and practiced ritual hand washing; that, in turn, did not save them from virulent anti-Semitism, which presumed the Jews were the ones who introduced the Plague to the rest of the population;
• by virtue of the fact that the U.S. is so big and there are so many of us who travel abroad, we have become a "source country" of this flu, even though it originated and is most severe in Mexico;
• some Roman Catholic churches have suspended communion for fear of spreading disease through the drinking of the wine or other contact;
• rabbis in Israel, where the flu has been reported, have avoided calling it "swine flu," which must be some comfort for the pork producers at a time when they are truly under siege; but, by calling it "Mexico flu," the rabbis have drawn the ire of the Mexican government;
• some churches have suspended routine hugging and handshaking during a "peace be with you" segment of their services and encouraging welcoming smiles or even elbow bumps;
• if there is ever a time to panic, now is not the time.

That's my subject here, panic. It's hard not to feel a little nervous about the reports that this flu is spreading throughout the United States (or anywhere, for that matter), and even in our own community (one high school in my county was closed on Friday because of one case among one its students' families, and I've heard of another even in my own neighborhood).

But what I've heard, too, is that severity of the cases here appears for whatever reason to be much more mild than we've seen in Mexico, and, still, we're talking only about a small percentage of cases given the size of our population.

I'm not saying we should whistle past the graveyard. And, indeed, that's not what appears to be going on. It's impressive to see our public health leaders are watching this closely and issuing calm and concise instructions: mostly, wash your hands, stay home and consult a doctor if you think you have it and exercise proper hygiene (e.g. cover your coughs and sneezes, etc.).That's advice for even less threatening times, so maybe this is a good public health teachable moment.

This episode reminds me a bit of the the October 2002 Washington (or "Beltway") sniper scare, during which 11 people were killed and three seriously wounded by a pair of snipers who shot at random and almost invisibly at random victims. From the first day of the killings to the time the shooters were captured, the entire episode lasted for three weeks, a fact that still surprises me because it felt like months.

Sure, I was a bit worried myself. After all, a couple of the killings took place within about three miles of my house. For example, knowing that at least one of the victims was killed at a gas station while filling up, I remember wondering what I should do when I needed to stop to refuel. Should I "serpentine," as in that hilarious scene in "Catch-22" when the characters are trying to avoid being shot? Or would it matter anyway, if, as it appeared, we were dealing with a skilled shooter?

I decided that the odds of my being a victim were still overwhelmingly in my favor. Not that I should go out and do anything too stupid or vulnerable, but there was no reason to stop refueling my car. Life had to go on, and, when we looked at the threat, it should have.

That's not how a lot of people reacted to it. I remember some people who were deathly afraid, hysterical in some cases, and I remember thinking how counterproductive that was, even if I understood that it was hard for some people to calm down. And, while our schools took pretty extraordinary -- and necessary -- precautions, making the kids virtual prisoners of the school buildings during the day, I worried that this might make the kids even more panicked. The anxiety many were already getting from their parents was being compounded, I thought, by the schools. As far as I can tell anecdotally (local psychologists may see it differently), most of the kids came out of it with their psyches unscathed. I'm not so sure about many of the parents.

I'm not calling for Chuck Yeager-esque stoicism that is unattainable for most of us mortals, or for a casual disregard of a potential threat. But we needn't freak out. Even as that's the careful message most of our public health leaders are giving us -- with the exception of Vice President Joe Biden's comments about not getting on airplanes -- our media seem to be going out of their way to incite us to panic.

As usual, The Daily Show chronicled just how apocalyptic much U.S. media coverage has been in an amusing segment it called "Snoutbreak '09 - The Last 100 Days." "You're the only reason we are freaking out! We were fine," Jon Stewart yelled after a montage of TV news people saying "now, we don't want to freak anybody out..."

Maybe we should look to a sort of campy revival right now in the U.K. of a poster (shown above) that was commissioned by the British Government in 1939 as England lurched into war against Germany. We might snicker at this seemingly banal attempt to calm fears during what was arguably one of Britain's darkest and most frightening hours. But we could benefit from some of the cool and collected tone of the message today. 

Jeff

Poetry Belongs to God

RELIGION HAS ALWAYS BEEN – and still is – largely about giving human beings a way to understand those things that we cannot fully understand.

Certainly in ancient times, religion was a primary way to explain the inscrutable and often frightening acts of nature. Even now, religious thought still plays a role in helping us better comprehend what even modern scientific tools cannot yet fathom.

The Psalmist speaks in several places, perhaps most famously in Psalm 27, of “seeking God’s face.”  I would interpret that phrase not as pulling back a curtain and seeing the Wizard who has His hands on all the levers. To me “seeking God’s face” is the act of exploring the complexities of the world around and the mysteries within us. To me, this is the true religious journey and purpose of religion.

All this came to mind as I sat in Rosh Hashanah shacharit (morning) services a couple of years ago and became fixated on a few lines of text in the Reconstructionist machzor (High Holiday prayer book) that had never before caught my attention. The section, an introduction to the standing prayer, the amidah -- a central prayer in every Jewish worship service -- is known for its first line in Hebrew: "Ochilah La'el."

I yearn for God,
I seek God's face,
I ask of God the power of expression, that that
I might sing, amid my people, of God's power.
I express my joy in God's creative acts.
I know that thoughts are human, but that poetry belongs to God.
I ask of you, my sovereign, open my lips -- then shall I tell your glory!
May my words of prayer, and my heart's medication,
be seen favorably, Adonai, my rock, my champion.

"I know that thoughts are human but that poetry belongs to God." (In Hebrew: "L'adam ma'archay layv oo-mee adonai ma'anay lashohn.") That's the line that jumped out at me when I read this passage.

In and out of context, it tells us us that poetry – which, I’ll define more broadly to mean creative expression of all kinds – is a tool that only a divine being can truly wield. This selection also seems to be saying that mere mortals can only know God – or, again, understand the workings of the universe – through intellectual pursuits, book learning, calculation, problem solving, scientific method, logic and so on. 

The writer of these lines (which are rather poetic themselves), is beseeching God to grant the gift of singing – in order to be able to extol God’s virtues, of course. That’s because, according to this passage, again, “only poetry belongs to God.”

Jews may be the people of the book, stewards of a civilization built on rabbinic literature, on scholarship, on rational argument.Clearly, though, people – and not just Jews – have shown we can “seek God’s face” not only through the more analytical, rational left side of our brains but also through the more creative and even more ecstatic right side as well. Creativity is a way to understand the workings of the universe, the mysteries of nature and the great questions of our own existence. As the English playwright Christopher Fry once wrote. “Poetry is the language in which man explores his own amazement.” No wonder that so much of what we recite in religious liturgy is really poetry, trying to break our minds free of a mere mortal universe.

And if we want to surrender to the idea that “poetry belongs exclusively to God,” then I would suggest that the pursuit of poetry and other creative pursuits is next to godliness.

This might trouble those who say they’re not especially artistically inclined. But I would argue that one need not be a Beethoven, a Picasso, an Ellington or a Shakespeare to have gotten lost in a creative rush, to have taken a leap into a corridor of artistic surprise or to have experienced the euphoria of inspiration almost possessing your body – as one folk songwriter once put it (and I'm paraphrasing):  'Most songs you write and some songs come through you and you just write down.'

Creative pursuit exists in places might not think of as creative or Zen-like: gardening, cooking, jigsaw puzzling, gutter cleaning and even problem solving in our work. And with every creative solution is another opportunity to learn secrets of the universe and of our own personal capacities – to seek God’s face. 

This will sound surprising coming from someone who is, to say the very least, not naturally predisposed to locking arms and swaying in services, but in this context I can even understand the more ecstatic expressions of religion in the world, like the ritual of talking in tongues. Maybe there is something godly about losing our more rational tendencies from time to time and just letting our bodies go.

And who’s to say that Jackson Pollack, in those rare moments when hadn’t had too much to drink, was not seeking God’s face through his frenetic splashes on canvas, or likewise William Faulkner in his famously inspired run-on sentences, or of Miles Davis, who was constantly reinventing himself and his genre.

Artists like these were experienced a dimension of existence that arguably could only be seen through their art and could not be measured even by the most sophisticated scientific instruments.

There is, of course, a limit to what even we humans can know of the divine. After all, even at its most transcendental, poetry and other creative pursuits are human-made. But they can give us a glimpse of worlds that we can never otherwise see, let alone understand.

Jeff

Polish Rescuers of Jews and "The Habit of Breathing"

WHENEVER I HAVE READ ABOUT or been in the presence of non-Jewish rescuers of Jews from the Nazi extermination machine, I can't help but ask myself a question: what would I have done if I had been in their place?

And when we think through all the pressures that many of them faced in that circumstance -- not the ordinary, workaday stresses we prattle on about in our lives today -- we have to wonder if we would have been so courageous. It's not only the threat of torture and death that hung oppressively and in some cases for years over their heads, but also the possibility that what they were doing could endanger so many others in their families and immediate neighborhood, people who had not themselves signed up for such a dangerous mission.

What the rest of us lack and they apparently mustered was a recognition that the gain -- to save a life -- was worth the risk.

I had the opportunity a few nights ago to attend a small reception for five Polish rescuers of Jews during the Holocaust (accompanied by two of the Polish Jews they had rescued), also known as "Righteous Among the Nations," the official designation according to the Israeli Holocaust memorial and research center, Yad Vashem. Again, the question of what I would do in their place went through my mind. What was even more striking to me were the comments of one of the rescuers, who said he expected little attention during their week or so touring several U.S. cities. Instead he said, people were treating them like heroes.

For example, they attended a performance in New York of a new Broadway show, "Irena's Vow," the story of a Polish Catholic woman (played by Tovah Feldshuh) who risked her life to save 12 Jews in Poland during the war. After she took her curtain calls, Feldshuh introduced the five rescuers, who were met with a thunderous, prolonged standing ovation from the audience.

They also appeared in a photo on Page One of the Washington Post the day I saw them -- pretty high-profile media real estate for anyone. And then, on April 23, they sat in the U.S. Capitol Rotunda for the annual Days of Remembrance ceremony. There, President Obama recognized them personally in front of the large assembly of some of our nation's most prominent political, religious and human rights leaders. "We are awed by your acts of courage and conscience," the President said of the five. "And your presence today compels each of us to ask ourselves whether we would have done what you did. We can only hope that the answer is yes."

How could anyone with such a personal history expect to be treated as anything less than a hero, unless they saw what they did as not heroic at all but just something that we as human beings have no choice to do. Like breathing. As Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel wrote in his examination of the Prophets, "No one expects to receive a reward for the habit of breathing. Justice is as much a necessity as breathing is, and a constant occupation."

Their presence here in the U.S. also helps educate American Jews about the complexity of the relationship between Polish Jews and their non-Jewish fellow citizens throughout history. I say complexity because I think it's fair to say that most Jews here who have not closely examined the historical record about that relationship are prone to rather black-and-white impressions: that all Poles were (and remain) anti-Semites and that all of them were responsible for the extermination of what was, before the war, a population of more than three million Polish Jews.

As Michael Steinlauf, the author of one of the best studies of that complex relationship, "Bondage to the Dead," wrote: "In relation to the Jews, although Poles collectively were powerless to affect their fate as a whole, this was not the case on an individual level. Individual Poles could and did help save, or destroy, individual Jews. Although most Poles did neither, doing nothing was itself, for each individual, the product of choice."

Later in the book, Steinlauf expands: "On a popular level, the murder of the Jews evoked a range of responses, from compassion to the opinion that their fate was 'not our business,' to the judgment that the Germans had provided an unpleasant but necessary solution to an intractable problem. For most Poles, however, none of these feelings inspired any action. No different, in this respect, from other non-Jews under Nazi occupation, most Poles were passive witnesses to the fate of the Jews." That's what made those who acted with compassion all the more remarkable, heroic.

What many of us in the Jewish community also misunderstand is the extent to which Poles were victims of the Nazis, too -- not categorically targeted for extermination but to become something of a class of slaves to the master Aryan Nazis. They were killed, starved and otherwise persecuted. Indeed, Polish Catholic clergy, political leaders, intellectuals and military officers were the first inhabitants of Auschwitz before it became the mechanized killing center and the largest burial ground of Jews.

That's why former Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir's pronouncement about 20 years ago that every Pole "sucked anti-Semitism with his mother's milk", so angered Poles and all those who saw the history as much more nuanced than that. And it's why Poles get so justifiably angry when newspapers, even supposedly respectable ones, still to this day use the phrase "Polish death camps" when referring to places like Auschwitz-Birkenau. In fact, these terrible places were the creation of the Nazis and located in Poland in large part because there were so many Jews there to be had and because Poland was a central point in Europe to gather them and kill them. Yes, there were some Poles who were complicit in the Nazi crimes, but, as Steinlauf says, most were "passive witnesses," either out of fear or indifference.

There are many in Poland who are committed to facing up to this reality, not least the Polish Government itself, which fairly emphatically and courageously did what it could after the fall of Communism to sort out the history and reconcile with it however possible. (Some issues, such as restitution of Jewish property in Poland, will long be unsettled because of their legal, political and psychological complexity.)

Others, like a group I've been supportive of, the Forum for Dialogue Among the Nations, actively engage Poles and Jews, young and old, to face up to the history, to understand it better than they do now and to move the two communities to deal as much with their future as they do the past.

It's a big, but important mission, and one that is full of the sort of inspiration that I experienced the other night with the five Polish rescuers.

Jeff

Immigration Reform: If Not Now, When?

I HAVE TO CONFESS that when The White House announced a few weeks ago that it intends to pursue a (long overdue) comprehensive reform of our nation’s immigration policy, I was a bit skeptical. Hadn’t we just gone through a bruising and ultimately counterproductive exercise to pass an immigration reform bill a couple of years ago? And aren’t there enough tough issues on the President’s agenda right, which will tap more than enough of his energy and political capital?

Don’t get me wrong, I hope President Obama succeeds, that we can fix what everyone, from one end of the political spectrum to the other, agrees is a broken national policy (even if they don’t all agree on the fix). And I hope it happens sooner than later. But, as we saw in 2007, this is, bar none, one of the most politically explosive issues in our domestic politics. And the President is working on reversing a major economic crisis and supposedly pushing through landmark health care legislation this year (which, much as I would like to see it happen, I will believe when I see). Will this year be any different?

Ezra Klein, who blogs for The American Prospect, has his doubts, thinks this is just The White House making it appear its moving ahead in order to appease the pro-immigration constituencies that voted for Obama. At least the President gets credit for trying, even if this is a lost cause. “The New York Times story that’s exciting folks,” writes Klein, “is based off an interview with Celia Munoz [The White House Director of Intergovernmental Affairs and one of the most gifted immigration policy analysts in the land] that sounds like the equivalent of ‘he’ll form a commission.’ She says that ‘over the summer [Obama] will convene working groups, including lawmakers from both parties and a range of immigration groups, to begin discussing possible legislation for as early as this fall.’ Elsewhere she says that he intends to ’start the debate’ this year. A betting man, I think, would not lay down $50 on Congress seriously considering immigration legislation this fall.”

Indeed, as that Times article reports, “Mr. Obama plans to speak publicly about the issue in May, administration officials said, and over the summer he will convene working groups, including lawmakers from both parties and a range of immigration groups, to begin discussing possible legislation for as early as this fall.”

In The Politico, a roundtable of experts has mixed opinions about whether the time is now. Martin Frost, for example, a former Democratic congressman, generally a cheerleader for immigration reform, makes it sound very dim: “No year is ever a good year to seek immigration reform. Immigration reform makes Social Security reform look like a walk in the park. The Obama administration should concentrate on health care and energy legislation this year and not waste capital on this most difficult of all subjects.”

In the same Politico forum, though, Cesar Conda, a Republican strategist, says, it depends: “President Obama can get something done on immigration reform by avoiding President Bush’s mistake of allowing the debate to focus on amnesty for the current undocumented population. Obama should instead focus on creating new legal avenues for foreign workers to enter the U.S… If President Obama chooses to focus on legal immigration reforms and not amnesty, I believe he could get Republican support and get something constructive done on immigration this year.”

Frank Sharry, Executive Director of the pro-immigration group America’s Voice and, along with Munoz, one of the other leading experts on the subject, argues that now is the time for immigration reform.  “We all know the public voted for change,” Sharry writes. ” Two-thirds of voters approve of the aggressive approach being taken by the Obama White House to the myriad of reform challenges facing the country.  In addition, the majority of Americans agree that earned citizenship, combined with smart policies that significantly reduce illegal immigration, is the American way to solve this complex challenge. They understand that our immigration system is broken, and overwhelmingly support practical efforts to fix it.”

Alex Aleinikoff, who is yet another of the great minds on immigration policy in the U.S. and the Dean of the Georgetown University Law Center, wrote in today’s Washington Post that there’s a “strong case for starting this conversation now” about passing a meaningful new reform package. He argues that the system we have today to deal with immigration policy management would not be able to handle the applications for legalizing undocumented immigrants, and we would need a lot of lead time to put other pieces in place. But that’s why, he says, we should start working out the legislation sooner rather than later. Knowing it will take a while to get it passed, we might be in a better position to handle the major change.

“The substantial lead time needed for creating a credible verification system and an effective legalization program provides another argument for beginning the conversation on comprehensive immigration legislation soon,” Aleinikoff writes. “And by the time these new programs would come into force, improvement in the economy would probably make legalization efforts less controversial.”

It also strikes me that Obama and The White House know that they have the political momentum now. Will it be enough to overcome the inevitable opposition? Let’s try it and see. I would like to test Sharry’s assertion that the nation voted for change and that incoherent, counterproductive immigration policy is one of the things they would like to see changed. Besides, The White House can’t know how much political capital it will have in the bank a year from now (when we are heading into a mid-term election, a time when Congress hides from ticklish issues), let alone two years from now.

I also have to believe that this White House will do a better job of selling the virtues of a comprehensive immigration reform than the last did. Make no mistake, George W. Bush supported the last bill; I give him credit for this much. But he and his team did a rather poor job of explaining why it was necessary. And, having burned through most of its clout with Congressional Republicans by then and with an historically low favorability rating, Bush’s White House had no way to keep allies from going AWOL on the issue when they began to feel under siege.

That’s why, assuming there are enough hours in the day for The White House to hammer out this difficult new reform alongside all its other priorities, I say, why not? Yes, there will be those from the right — led by the intellectually dishonest shouters like Limbaugh, Beck and Dobbs — who will start throwing knives, and they will, in turn, ignite once again a pretty fierce and motivated — but, I’m convinced, small — segment of our population to storm the barricades. But the conditions will never be perfect, and if ever there is a time to push this through, it makes sense to start sooner than later. If not now, when?

The Drama of Durban II

THERE WAS SOME EXTRAORDINARY and, for me, heartening drama today at the U.N. Durban Review Conference in Geneva, Switzerland, the follow-up to the 2001 World Conference Against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance.

That last confab, which took place in Durban, South Africa, was so shot through with anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism that the U.S. and Israeli delegations ceremoniously and under a barrage of intense criticism walked out. It was one of the very few actions by the George W. Bush Administration that I thoroughly applauded. But much of the attention that should have been directed at this surreal event in Durban was obscured when the attacks of September 11 occurred less than a week later. Except for many of the activist groups that focused their energies (for either good or bad) on Durban I, few others even knew it took place.

A number of countries -- including the U.S., Canada, Australia, Poland, Italy, and Israel -- are boycotting the Durban II conference, which began today, and, as you'll see below,  a number of other European countries walked out today when Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmedinejad took the conference dais to speak.

Yes, that's right, Ahmedinejad, who has called the Holocaust a lie and has spouted reams of anti-Jewish and anti-Zionist invective during his tenure over the last several years and whose government is hardly the model of human rights practices. He was the lead-off hitter at a conference against racism. And he was fresh off of a meeting last night with Swiss President Hans-Rudolf Merz, a gesture that prompted Israel to ask its Ambassador to Switzerland to go back to Israel for consultations (not a formal recall, but a rebuke nonetheless). Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak put it just right when he said today, "It's an upside-down world, when the president of Iran can be a guest of honor at an anti-racism conference."

Critics of the boycotting countries are pointing to the fact that all of the anti-Semitic and anti-Israel language in the conference's official pronouncements have been expunged. But, as National Security Council aide Samantha Power reportedly said in a conference call last week with Jewish leaders, Durban II is still on track to "reaffirm, in toto, Durban I," as if to say, everything we said then goes for us double now. "We want to show good faith to our allies and the people who are working hard to improve the text." Power said. "...But we are also not interested in being involved or associated with fool's errands."

In the words of one those who attended Durban I, "The World Conference against Racism triggered intimidation and harassment against Jews, just a few hours before the September 11 attacks on the United States. The brutality unleashed in Durban, the collective anger against Israel, the United States, and the West in general resonated as a warning of what was to come.... In Durban, the international NGO community was complicit in the attempt to criminalize the Jews. At a lightning pace, a minority of delegates managed to manipulate thousands of participants and impose their resentful ideology. In only a few days, a collective moral code was constructed. It called upon civil society to distinguish the 'good' from the 'evil.'"

What also scared and saddened me after Durban I were the number of human rights and anti-racism groups (including many prominent and otherwise respectable ones I've known and even worked with in the United States) that looked the other way on this. So invested were they in a conference that would shine a spotlight on certain kinds of human indignities that they were willing to throw the Jews and Israel over the side to get what they wanted. They pilloried Jewish community, Israel and the U.S. government as opponents to racial harmony and tolerance, even as pronouncements about "Israeli apartheid" and "Zionism = racism" and even worse stuff than that floated around them in Durban. It didn't matter that, on so many occasions and for decades, Jewish activists had been there with them to fight racism. When it came to bigotry against Jews and Israel, however, our friends did not reciprocate. (I'm pleased to see that at least one of the groups that took this stand in 2001 has urged the U.S. to address the problems at Durban II. I'm not mentioning any names, sorry.)

I was pissed and hurt by this. For a period of maybe 50 or 60 years since the Holocaust, the world was finally aware of the danger of anti-Semitism, and, at least in respectable company, it was viewed as radioactive. But, by Durban I (and, arguably well before) that taboo had worn off to the point that a U.N.-sponsored forum on racism became a legitimate platform for taking shots at the Jews and Israel. And, since 2001, that taboo seems to have all but disappeared in some geographies and communities. It is getting scary.

But back to what happened in Geneva today. As Zvika Krieger, a correspondent for The New Republic recounts in a live, play-by-play blogging account, President Ahmedinejad was the first of several heads of state to open the conference with short introductory speeches:

"Ahmedinejad just walked in.

"There seems to be some confusion. He is walking to the seat of the Iranian delegation, not the stage. The chair of the conference seems confused. Ok, now he is finally being escorted to the podium. He begins speaking, thanking Allah.

"Some activists are interrupting his speech. They are wearing clown wigs and red noses, and yelling 'Racist! Racist.' There seem to be three of them, in different parts of the hall. They've been escorted out by security guards. There is a loud applause, though it is unclear whether they are clapping for the activists or the guards.

"He continues speaking through the whole fiasco. He is taking a lot of time to thank Allah and his prophets.

"Now we're getting a lecture on the history of war, ending with WWII. He transitions into an indictment of the Security Council, questioning the motives of superpowers giving themselves veto powers. Enough of the subtlety -- he condemns their role in the creation of the state of Israel, and starts ripping into Zionism.

"The EU is walking out! The entire France, Bulgarian, and Hungarian delegation just walked out. I think others walked out too -- can't see their placards. The press box is going crazy. The entire hall has erupted in applause -- some applauding the delegate who walked out, some applauding Ahemdinejad for continuing his anti-Israel tirade.

"Ahmediniejad continues, condemning 'the most racist regime,' a litany of generic Israel canards. A group of Israeli students start yelling 'Racist! Racist!' from the viewing gallery. No one seems to be stopping them. Two Iranian women in hijabs start waving their fists at them. After a few minutes, security finally arrives and escorts out one of the Israel students. Now another one has started yelling 'Facist! Facist!'

"Ahmediniejad is now ripping into America for invading Iraq. The usual stuff about arrogance and racism.

"Now he's blaming the global economic crisis on the US. He's condeming US's selfishness and lack of transparency. He's even condemning the bank bailout plan!

"Now he's veered into banal pronouncements about ignorance and history and racism and the creation of the universe and worshipping god.

"Oops, he's back to Israel! 'A kind of racism that has tarnished the image of humanity ... The word Zionism personifies racism that falsely resorts to religion and abuses religious sentiments to hide their hatred and ugly faces." And Jews control the media! And the major world powers! "Cultural endeavors are not enough. Efforts must be made to put an end to efforts made by Zionists and their supporters. ... Governments must be encouraged in their efforts and their fights to eradicate this barbaric racism.'

"Another protestor starts shouting from the plenary floor. He is quickly apprehended and silenced.

"Now A-jad is talking about a changing of the global order, and the upending of traditional power structures. "Western liberalism and capitalism, like communism, has reached to its end since it has failed to perceive the truth of the world and humanity as it is.

"Another protestor starts yelling 'Racist!' and is quickly escorted out. Two hijab-clad women start waving and blowing kisses to A-jad.

"Now he is back to the Security Council, calling for the elimination of the 'discriminatory veto right.' Some generic language about love and happiness and cooperation and overhauling the global monetary system. And finally, 'Let us all join hands in amity ... in fulfillment of a decent new world.' Amen.

"UPDATE: The foreign minister of Norway is up next, and he is calling out A-jad, whose speech he says 'threatens the very focus of the conference.' The declaration of this conference included 'the need to protect against incitement to hatred. I heard the messages inside the president's speech. I heard incitement and hatred. This is not a finger-pointing exercise. The president has made Iran the odd man out, and Norway will not accept the odd man out hijacking the efforts of the many. ... We cannot surrender the floor of the United Nations to extremism.' Huge applause erupts in the hall."

I'm not always a fan of street theater, but it seems to fit in this circumstance given the absurdity of the scene. And let's hope it raises some real awareness about the toxicity of racism and bigotry, in this case against the Jews.

Jeff

Becoming Americans

EVERY AMERICAN -- native born or naturalized -- should have the experience of watching a naturalization ceremony, as my family and I did yesterday.

This one, held on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, was a little bit more majestic than most. And it came following a 70-anniversary commemoration of the famous concert singer Marian Anderson gave on the same spot after she was denied a chance to sing at the Daughters of the American Revolution building because she was black. The event featured outstanding performances from Sweet Honey in the Rock, The President's Own U.S. Marine Band, the Chicago Children's Choir and opera star Denyce Graves, who sang some of the same pieces Andersen sang in 1939. Colin Powell was also there to recite excerpts from Lincoln's Second Inaugural Address and to welcome the new Americans with a poignant reminder of their rights and responsibilities as citizens and a story about his own parents' journey to the United States from their native Jamaica.

But, even if it had been stripped of such stellar atmospherics, the act of becoming a U.S. citizen is still as inspiring as it comes. You can sing "The Star-Spangled Banner" at the top of your voice, release a flock of bald eagles and wrap yourself in the American flag, but that still won't match the patriotic spirit of a naturalization ceremony.

That's because you can't help but be impressed with people who have taken an affirmative step to embrace America as their own. They're not taking it for granted, as too many of us native-born Americans do (not everyone of us, thank goodness). Many of them quite likely given up a lot to come to this country, and worked pretty hard to earn the right to raise their hands and take the Oath of Allegiance for Naturalized Citizens.

More than 200 new Americans representing 56 different nations of origin did just that at the Lincoln Memorial yesterday. That's in addition to a record number who naturalized in 2008 -- more than a million -- up from 660,000 in 2007 and just more than 700,000 in 2006, according to the Department of Homeland Security. If ever we need an affirmation that America has something powerful to offer -- that much of the rest of the world still has strong confidence in this nation's future, even if we might not at times -- this is it.

This was not the first naturalization ceremony I've seen. I've been to two or three others, one of which, I'm proud to say, I organized in a Senate Office Building. Senator Ted Kennedy spoke wistfully and movingly about his immigrant forebears at the event, almost as if no one had ever heard of his family before. And many native-born Americans watching on wept with pride for the hundreds who took the oath that day and for their country's good sense to embrace them as one of us.

That's what's so inspiring -- so truly patriotic -- about these affairs. You're watching America being remade and refreshed, as it has been over and over again since its beginning. It's cliche to say it, but that's what America is built on: its ability to take in people from all over the world and reinvent them as they reinvent America.

That fundamental truism of American life is somehow lost on the anti-immigrant pinheads who preach, as Rush Limbaugh put it recently, that immigrants will "destroy the U.S. culture." No, Rush, it's just the opposite, and those like you, who try to stand in the way of that process are not the patriots you presume to be. Apparently, they couldn't stop almost 2.5 million from becoming Americans over the last couple of years alone.

If you've never been to a naturalization ceremony, or you can't get enough of them, seek one out. Bring your kids, your students, your church, your Cub Scouts or Brownies. Offer to host an event in your area (the other ceremony I went to took place at halftime of an NBA game). Rarely will you feel so proud to be an American.

Jeff

Woulda, Coulda, Shoulda

ABOUT A YEAR AND A HALF AGO, I was listening to a podcast of "The Writer's Alamanac," a five-minute radio literary salon hosted by Garrison Keillor. At the end of each of these daily dispatches, Keillor finishes with a poem, and this day he read "The God Who Loves You" by Carl Dennis.  

The poem struck me so profoundly that I had to go back and read it for myself and listen to it several times again to make sure I was not merely swept away by Keillor's sonorous recitation. (His voice could probably make a bad poem sing.) When I did, the poem still hit home, even harder. It begins with these three thematic lines:

It must be troubling for the god who loves you
To ponder how much happier you’d be today
Had you been able to glimpse your many futures.

And it goes on to detail the many points in its central character's life when a different decision than the one he made would have propelled him on a completely different -- and presumably better -- personal and professional trajectory.

It must be painful for him to watch you on Friday evenings
Driving home from the office, content with your week—
Three fine houses sold to deserving families—
Knowing as he does exactly what would have happened
Had you gone to your second choice for college,
Knowing the roommate you’d have been allotted
Whose ardent opinions on painting and music
Would have kindled in you a lifelong passion.
A life thirty points above the life you’re living
On any scale of satisfaction. And every point
A thorn in the side of the god who loves you.

The poem's narrator is the voice inside of this character's ("you") head, a voice familiar to nearly all of us who have looked back on our own pivotal forks in the road and ruminated what would have been if I had only.... It's our own voice, of course, but a seemingly disembodied one, addressing us in the second person, as if from some other being, passing harsh judgment and turning episodes over and over and over. We do this to ourselves.

We will remember agonizing over some of those personal crossroads when we approached them, and for years we will often second-guess ourselves for whatever we decided for years later. Other turning points just flashed by the window without our notice at the time, though they strike us as so much larger and consequential in hindsight. This is the cycle of woulda, coulda, shoulda.

There's a tension in the poem between the free will we have to make life choices -- either mistaken or golden -- and a force beyond us, a god who loves us, that is somehow steering us toward the right path.

As Dennis writes it, this divine force has a plan for us, but even then, he seems to be saying, we can either accept or reject that plan (assuming we can discern what it is in the first place). And, when we turn against the plan, we make ourselves believe that we are disappointing the divine force. "Can you sleep at night believing a god like that/ Is pacing his cloudy bedroom, harassed by alternatives/ You’re spared by ignorance?" Dennis writes, adding that "you" make yourself believe that he really cares, watches every detail of your life and stews whenever you stray from what he had in mind for you:

The difference between what is
And what could have been will remain alive for him
Even after you cease existing, after you catch a chill
Running out in the snow for the morning paper,
Losing eleven years that the god who loves you
Will feel compelled to imagine scene by scene

But, according to the poem, we are really on our own. The choices we make are ours (not even our parents', our college placement adisors', our financial planners', our employers', our mechanics' and so on). We can and must lay claim to them. There's little embarrassment in that; indeed, we should be proud of what we have accomplished, however we accomplished it, and we should move ahead even when we have not succeed. What else can we do?  I say this realizing that many who face tragedy try to reason that is "God's plan". I respect that. Who am I to tell them otherwise if it works for them, helps them cope, explains the inexplicable?

Dennis concludes that you (we) can imagine him, this god,

No wiser than you are, no god at all, only a friend
No closer than the actual friend you made at college,
The one you haven’t written in months. Sit down tonight
And write him about the life you can talk about
With a claim to authority, the life you’ve witnessed,
Which for all you know is the life you’ve chosen.

That's a good, and reassuring, lesson.

Jeff

"Michelle Obama Fashion Watch"

THE WORLD IS IN TURMOIL. Leaders from some of the biggest economies on the planet met in London to hammer out some new global financial remedies, and still others, members of the largest military coalition in the world, convened in Strasbourg, France, to ponder how they will maintain peace and security. Our President, Barack Obama, is engaging in a critical effort to win the hearts of Europeans and, in Turkey, the Muslim world. And what's on the front page of the today's New York Times? Three side-by-side photos of Michelle Obama with a headline/caption: "First Lady, Two Countries, Three Outfits". In the New York Times' online edition, there is an eight-part series of photos under the header: "Michelle Obama Fashion Watch" -- a chronicle of what the First Lady wore on her European journey.

Okay, to be fair, there's been plenty of coverage -- much of it above the fold on Page One -- about the substance of the President's dealings with his counterparts at meetings in Europe, and it's not fair to be picking only on the New York Times: nearly every news organization in the U.S. and Europe seems to be prattling on about Michele Obama's clothes or about her supposedly uncouth greeting of Queen Elizabeth (the First Lady hugged the Queen instead of curtsying!).

Now, I realize that man (and woman) cannot live on bread alone, that we need a little color to offset  otherwise prosaic events (though, for the geeks like me, there was quite a bit of drama and intrigue in the official talks).

But this sort of coverage reminds me a bit more of what we'd get if "Entertainment Tonight" were running all of Western journalism. And it's turning Mrs. Obama, a highly educated, professionally accomplished woman, into a mascot, or an air-head cheerleader, whose only job is to steal some attention away from Carla Bruni-Sarkozy. (Good luck with that.)

If you think I'm overdoing it, take note of the article the British newspaper the Guardian, which fancies itself (and is) a serious newspaper, ran under this headline and subhed: "Michelle Obama's fashion face-off with Carla Bruni-Sarkozy: It was the moment the fashion world was waiting for: stylish Michelle Obama and chic Carla Bruni-Sarkozy came face-to-face in Strasbourg. Who came out on top?" Online the article is accompanied by video of the two First Ladies, a Talmudic analysis of the designers they're wearing and scrutiny of their handbags. The article finished by asking, "Who do you think has pulled ahead in the First Lady fashion race? Let us know in the comments section below. Or if you're looking for more 'weighty' coverage of the Nato summit, try our Nato page."

I'm not saying we shouldn't have some fun and some diversions from the dim realities of our times. Even during the Great Depression, Americans' yearning surged for escapist fantasies and stories of the rich and glamorous in movie theaters and on the radio. But this sort of silliness is not only insulting to Michelle Obama and to sensibilities of women (as if I should know). It's seems more like a slap in the face to the people who have just lost their jobs or are threatened by global terrorism and who want to see their leaders do everything possible to address some of the most serious challenges in generations.

Jeff

"Financial Crisis for Dummies"

IF, LIKE ME, you don't have a Ph.D. in economics or finance, or experience working in a bank or as a Wall Street trader, you're probably just barely keeping up (at best) with what this whole global financial crisis is about. And, if, like me, you'd like to have a better grasp of the problem so you can evaluate the proposed solutions from our political leadership, look no further than a piece that aired this past week on the radio program, "This American Life."

In it, correspondents Adam Davidson and Alex Blumberg describe in the clearest and simplest terms the heart of the crisis. It's not exactly "Financial Crisis for Dummies," but it strips away nearly all the jargon we hear from the experts and defines what little jargon we need to know to follow the story. The piece is a work of masterful narrative, the kind that I wish we would hear more often from media and political leadership. It's even, believe it or not, rather playful along the way -- though, as I followed them from one point to the next, I got more and more depressed. That's because the problem is breathtakingly bad.

The "This American Life" piece makes a number of important points, including:

• "The taxpayer will pay one way or another" -- either through a direct rescue (the purchase of a vast sea of woefully depressed assets that will kill and our banking system if the banks can’t get rid of them), or, if the government fails to intervene, through a total collapse of the U.S. banking and economic system – which will cost us in masses of lost jobs and businesses.
• Nationalization of banks is almost inevitable. Simon Johnson, former chief economist of the International Monetary Fund, says on the program that if the IMF were called in to help the U.S., it would recommend just what it has with many other troubled countries around the world: “[T]ake over the banking system. Clean it up, re-privatize it as soon as you can.” It sounds scary, almost un-American, and there are some problems with it. But, as the radio show argues, it may be the best course, and the sooner the better. As Johnson adds. “Just do it. The longer you wait, the more you prevaricate, the more it’s going to cost you.” 
• Right now, our government hasn’t committed to buying up all the toxic assets or taking over the banks. In fact, the government has "gone out of its way to give banks money without taking control." It’s a sort of halfway fix at a time when even bolder action is necessary.
• All people (including me) frustrated that the banks that got the TARP money last fall are not loaning it out misunderstand something critical. Blumberg: Lending might be a reasonable expectation for healthy banks, but for insolvent banks it can be a disaster.... When a bank is insolvent, it doesn't have enough capital to cover its losses. In that situation, banks would actually be doing the RIGHT thing by keeping the bailout money that we're giving them…. If they loaned the money away, they'd be returning to the situation we're trying to rescue them from.”  
• The source of the problem is not so much greedy bankers and Wall Street wizards, though they should have been more careful. It is all of us. As Columbia University Business School professor David Beim says on the show, “What the banks have done is already lend too much. The name of this problem is too much debt. We have over-borrowed, and we have done that over many, many decades. And now it’s reached just an unbearable peak where people on average cannot repay the debts they’ve got. In the face of that, it is no solution to try to lend more.”

All this sounds rather scary and dire, a sentiment that President Obama’s opponents have accused him of exacerbating. If anything, I think Obama has walked a responsible and careful line between facing up to the full brunt of the problem and not causing a panic. But, as the politicians would say, “make no mistake,” the problem is staggeringly bad, and the sooner we all acknowledge that the sooner, perhaps, our political and business leaders will feel free to do the right thing.

That day can’t come soon enough. What I kept thinking as I listened to this radio piece was how so much of what passes for serious discourse about the economic calamity misses the real and most urgent issues.

Take for example, our good buddy Senator John McCain. Picking up where he so ineptly left off during his Presidential campaign, he is using up valuable time in the U.S. Senate -- let alone in many media that have covered his hijinks closely -- to rail about earmarks in the Fiscal Year 2009 appropriations bill (that's the current federal government operating budget, which should have been passed six months ago and must pass by this week).

Yes, there is a legitimate argument to make about whether or not earmarks -- appropriations directed to a specific project by a member of Congress -- are good or bad (my lay opinion: some are good, some are bad). During his campaign, earmark reform was his answer to the growing storm of financial crisis, even though they represent only about one or two percent of the federal budget. They are a sideshow to the truly disastrous financial crisis.

To hear it from others -- mostly Republicans -- the problem today is all about the soaring federal deficit, insufficient tax breaks, the evils of "big government" and the need for bipartisanship. Karl Rove squeezed nearly all these themes yesterday into the confines of a 850-word Wall Street Journal Op-Ed, in which he wrote: "Mr. Obama didn't run promising larger deficits -- but now is offering record-setting ones.... Nor did Mr. Obama run promising more earmarks.... Now he wants to wave through a $410 billion omnibus spending bill with about 8,500 earmarks. Mr. Obama devoted four times as much space in his campaign stump speech to cutting taxes as he did to talking about raising taxes on the wealthy.... Yet higher taxes are what every American is going to get.... Mr. Obama's plan will lead us to the extreme of government-run health care."

Apparently, Rove didn't have enough space to ruminate about bipartisanship, but that's okay: plenty of his colleagues have been pounding on that one in Op-Eds and on the cable talk shows like it’s life and death. Nor, in this case, did he join in that ever-so-helpful, raging debate about whether Rush Limbaugh is God or just thinks he is.

What's so maddening about all this – and why you should listen to the "This American Life" piece -- is that many (but not all) of our leaders are spending so much precious time, breath and energy on the wrong issues. It's sort of like your house is engulfed in flames, and the police are keeping the fire department from putting it out as they argue about whether the fire truck's license plate is expired.

It makes you want to bang your head against the wall.

Jeff

Gambling on the Stimulus Package

AT A TIME LIKE THIS, when the fate of millions depend upon efforts to face down the current economic crisis, I find it a bit awkward to focus on the political fortunes of a mere few elected officials and their parties. Still, it’s hard to ignore the major political implications of the February 13 votes in the U.S. House of Representatives and Senate for the $787 billion American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 -- aka The Stimulus Package.

The votes split almost entirely along partisan lines.  All but seven House Democrats and no Republicans voted for the bill in the House, and only three Republicans joined all 60 Democrats and Independents who managed to pass the bill in the Senate.  President Obama is scheduled to sign it into law tomorrow.

That means that Democrats own this massive shot in the arm and that Republicans can’t take the credit — or blame – for its outcome. For both parties, the legislation is a gamble, but, to my mind, the Republicans have placed the politically riskier bet.

The gamble for Democrats is that if the economy improves – that is, if enough people feel their economic prospects are looking better – the stimulus will appear to be a big reason, and the Democrats and Obama will be heroes. If the economy worsens — not out of the question considering reports of spiraling job losses and fears of impending deflation – we will hear the sharpening of knives in the precincts of those who wish to capitalize on the President’s and the Democrats’ “big mistake”.

But will the public blame and punish the bill’s proponents, even if the economy does not improve in, say, the next nine to 12 months (I can’t imagine the stimulus have any measurable impact before then, even though many will be expecting results much sooner)? My guess: no.

Take, for example, public opinion research fielded only about a week ago from the Pew Research Center. According to that survey, 51 percent of all Americans who had heard about the stimulus plan thought it was “a good idea”, in contrast with 34 percent who said it was “a bad idea” (the balance said “didn’t know”). (A Gallup Poll at roughly the same time came up with a split of 58 percent in favor to 33 percent against the plan.)

That’s not a spectacular majority in favor, and, to be sure, the stimulus package lost support since Pew last checked only a few weeks earlier; at that time, 57 percent viewed the stimulus plan positively and fewer (22 percent) opposed it.

Still, my hunch is that Obama and the Democrats will get credit for trying to do something, anything – even if it’s not clear which parts of the package will truly work. And much of the plan’s spending will leave behind tangible new stuff – such as roads, bridges, health IT systems, expanded broadband infrastructure, refurbished schools and the like. People will see the results. In contrast, the Republicans’ opposition to the bill seemed to be advocating the same ideological approach that I thought voters repudiated last November: don’t just do something, sit there. I don’t see how that helps the GOP’s image.

Only time will tell if my hunch on this is right, but consider this factoid from the Gallup Poll I cite above, when passage of a stimulus of some significant size seemed imminent. Sixty-seven percent of Americans said they approved of the way President Obama had been handling the government’s efforts to pass an economic stimulus bill (and 25 percent disapproved). Fifty-eight percent disapproved of Congressional Republicans’ handling of the bill (31 percent approved). As for Congressional Democrats, they were not viewed as favorably as Obama was (48 percent favored and 42 disapproved), but they fared much better than the Republicans.

Other than saying that the stimulus bill will create an untenable federal budget deficit (a fair concern, but these are extraordinary times), the chief Republican criticism is that the Dems kept them out of the decision-making loop as the bill was crafted. Even if that is the case, I can’t believe most Americans really care at this time of national emergency. Besides, according to the Pew survey I cited above, 61 percent of those Americans who suspected old fashioned partisan fighting around the bill blame Republicans for creating that conflict; only 16 percent blame Obama, and 10 percent blame Congressional Democrats.

So I think the odds that Republicans will walk away from this battle appearing stronger politically are not good, and I’m puzzled that they apparently think otherwise. I have to believe that even those Republicans who opposed the stimulus bill hope it will work, for the good of the nation. But if they’re concerned about the GOP’s political future, they’ve placed themselves in the position of rooting for the economy to get worse. How’s that good for the Republican Party, let alone the country?

Jeff

Clearing the Air About The L-Word

THERE WAS WIDESPREAD, albeit mostly anonymous and cloaked, applause across Washington, D.C., the other day when Washington Post editorial writer Ruth Marcus published her column "The Scarlet Lobbyist".

That's because Marcus did what few people -- particularly in the media -- have dared to do in recent years. She defended the honor of lobbyists.

Her piece came on the heels of news that former Senator Tom Daschle had withdrawn his nomination for Health and Human Services Secretary not only for failing to pay more than $100,000 in taxes but also because he had worked at a bid law firm as a "policy advisor" to clients. Though he technically did not engage in any work that would require him to file legally as a lobbyist, most interpret that he used his considerable experience and access to Capitol Hill to engage in something approximating lobbying.

In his quest for change, that is something that Barack Obama pledged he would not countenance among among any of the people working in his administration. So Daschle stepped aside, as he should have, and President Obama apologized publicly for the lapse in principles. As The New York Times reported in a Page One article  -- "Daschle Ends Bid for Post; Obama Concedes Mistake" -- Obama told NBC News,"I've got to own up to my mistake, which is that ultimately it's important for this administration to send a message that there aren't two sets of rules." (America is so starved for a President who admits his mistakes that it's headline news when it happens.)

Obama's rule against allowing lobbyists sounds good in principle. But, as so many have found, it's more difficult in practice. It is hard to find anyone who knows anything about the arcane nuances of policy, and we need people with experience to run the ship of state, don't we? As Marcus wrote, "Lost in the popular vision of martini-swilling lobbyists is the reality that, in a government grown so sprawling, lobbyists perform an indispensable mediating function, simultaneously translating the legitimate needs of the clients they represent to policymakers and vice versa."

Over the years, I have often heard people point out with scorn those who occupy important government jobs and used to advocate for one or another industry or policy cause. My response has tended to be, "So what?" Not to say that someone who has been paid to take one point of view for many years isn't capable of skewing his policymaking in favor of that view, but why are such people guilty before proven innocent? Again, Marcus:

Certainly, some would-be lobbyists see a government job as a ticket-punching stop on the way to riches on K Street; some current lobbyists see a stint in government as a way to enhance their billables on the other side of the revolving door. But Washington right now is full of people with seven-figure salaries elbowing to get administration jobs that pay a fraction of that. Most, I'd guess, aren't scheming to get rich later but are yearning to be inside the room, not lingering outside.

Hence, my misgivings about Obama's lobbying rules. The rules treat all lobbyists as equally reprehensible; they make no distinctions based on the nature of the lobbying client. Obama's rule-writers considered separating "good" lobbyists from "bad," but concluded that was an impossible task.

Let me be clear: there are some pretty sleazy people who engage in lobbying and who have corrupted themselves, our civic life and the reputation of all others who advocate for a cause or a client before a public body.There should a special place in Hell for all of those people. Also, the campaign finance system, which requires politicians to raise gobs of money (including Obama, who raised three quarters of a billion dollars in his Presidential race) has the potential to skew our politcs and distracts lawmakers too often from focusing on the important work.

But I happen to know and have long worked with a lot of lobbyists, all of whom want to play by the rules of the game, who believe in good government and who have a passion for the policy making process that makes them valuable to those whose business or interest is affected by it. Maybe there are a few too many lobbyists around, but that doesn't make theirs an illegitimate pursuit.

Also, I sometimes think a few too many of the problems of our politics are blamed on lobbyists, or "special interests". Yes, they can gum up real progress sometimes, but they're not so powerful as to be able to affect everything. Sometimes political outcomes are due to politicians' unwillingness to face difficult issues that will cause them heartburn on Election Day. Sometimes our laws trigger unforeseen or unintended consequences.

Ban all lobbying tomorrow, and I seriously doubt we will see dramatic progress. Indeed, I think many members of Congress and state legislators will be gasping for breath. Without the information they get from lobbyists -- on all sides of a given issue -- they will be buried under the burden of trying to get smart about everything they vote on.

None of what I've just said is very popular to say out loud, especially from someone who works in the public affairs field (I don't lobby technically, but I provide communications services to those trying to raise their voices in policy debates). That's why it was so refreshing to hear one respected expert, Ruth Marcus, clear the air.

Jeff

In Its Last Throes: So Long to the Republican Playbook

THE BUSH-CHENEY ADMINISTRATION is finally – to borrow a Cheneyism – in its last throes. And so, I hope, is its way of governing. 

That way hewed closely to a well-established Republican playbook, which used taxes, the size and supposed intrusiveness of government, toughness against our international adversaries and a host of so-called “values” issues to frame our political discourse.

I’d like to believe that the solid rejection Republicans took at the polls last November 4 had a lot to do with a wariness and weariness the country is finally feeling about this playbook. I’d like to believe, too, that a preponderance of Americans have come to realize that the playbook led us off a cliff and often distracted us from grappling with the more important issues.

Take taxes and the size of government. Before September 11, 2001, the centerpiece of Bush’s policy was cutting taxes and the size and reach of government (a.k.a. “starving the beast”). Even though the President and his supporters could show no real widespread economic benefit of the cuts, they kept pushing them. As economist Paul Krugman wrote in his New York Times column in 2005, “…the starve-the-beast theory – like missile defense – has been tested under the most favorable possible circumstances, and failed. So there is no longer any coherent justification for further tax cuts. Yet the cuts go on.… Republicans have turned into tax-cut zombies. They can't remember why they originally wanted to cut taxes, they can't explain how they plan to make up for the lost revenue, and they don't care. Instead, they just keep shambling forward, always hungry for more."

The only possible benefit Bush and the Republicans could have expected from pushing tax cuts was a partisan one, though I think there are some who earnestly believe the tax-cut strategy is good for the entire nation, in spite of any solid evidence. Through a push-pull dynamic – where Republican leaders tried to convince the Americans that all of us, rich and poor, would, as a whole, benefit from tax cuts through a magical “trickle-down” process and, at same time, gave a tax-loathing public the red meat it craved – they figured they would maintain their dominance at the polls. Indeed, that’s pretty much what happened for the better part of several decades.

In their seminal 1991 book, "Chain Reaction: The Impact of Race, Rights and Taxes on American Politics," Thomas and Mary Edsall described how the Republican Party had -- beginning with Barry Goldwater's run for President in 1964 and cresting with Ronald Reagan's election in 1980 -- succeeded in using taxes – along with racial issues and efforts to strengthen the personal rights of many disparate communities – as wedge issues to take support away from Democrats.

"Race and taxes, on their own, have changed the votes of millions of once-Democratic men and women," the Edsalls wrote. "But it was the collision of race and taxes with two additional forces over the past twenty-five years, that created a chain reaction, a reaction forcing a realignment of the presidential electorate. These two additional forces were, first, the rights revolution, a revolution demanding statutory and constitutional protections for [many discrete groups in society]...; and, second, the rights-related reform movement focusing on the right to guaranteed political representation that took root within the Democratic party in the last 1960s and throughout the 1970s."

The frame then was this: Democrats were taking money and (via, for example, affirmative action policies) certain status  from white majorities and transferring that money and status to African Americans, Latinos, immigrants, gays and many other discrete “interest groups”.

(You might say, wait, didn’t the country twice elect a Democrat to go to the White House in the 1990s. That’s true, but Bill Clinton, while far from being a Republican, understood this dynamic and tried not to get tagged as a typical Democrat. Remember the Sister Soulja episode, his declaration that “the era of big government is over” and his dramatic reform of federal welfare programs?)

Bush, followed the same tried-and-true playbook when he campaigned in 2000, arguing about taxes and Social Security that “It’s not the government’s money, it’s your money.” Campaigning against Bush, Al Gore properly retorted: ''The other side has placed its top priority on taking virtually all of this projected surplus and giving it all in the form of a giant tax cut, mainly to the wealthy,'' Mr. Gore said. ''And their theory is that's going to be good for the country, and they say it's your money. Well, it is your money. But it's your Medicare, it's your Social Security, it's your environment, it's your school system, it's your country.''  When Bush took the Oval Office the following January, he felt he was vindicated and pushed through the tax cuts.

The same goes with Bush and Cheney’s approach to national security and foreign policy. I don’t disagree that they had a good reason  – and a political mandate – to step up our homeland defenses and military activity abroad in response to the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Indeed, I think they had an obligation to do it to a certain extent; anything else would have been negligent.

But, as their Republican predecessors had during the Cold War, Bush and Cheney struck a badder-than-thou posture that painted any Democratic naysayers to their military policies as pussies, who were unpatriotic and dangerous to the nation. Isn’t that pretty much what the 2004 election was all about and why John Kerry, who dared to suggest we find ways to back out of Iraq and whom Republicans mocked because he spoke French (the French being the ultimate pussies, the mythology held) lost?

And then there are the so-called “values” issues, which, during the Bush Administration, mostly focused on the rights of gays and lesbians, but also to some extent on abortion and funding for religious institutions. On the first issue, which was often debated around efforts to establish legal same-sex marriage, it’s hard to imagine why the Administration chose to fan those flames, other than to drive another wedge that would rally more votes come election time.

Not that I doubt that there are many Americans who still feel strongly that homosexuality and same-sex marriage are abominations, but survey research shows that they represent minority. But there’s little case to be made that it deserved the attention the Republican Administration and Congress heaped on it. As an August 2008 national survey of voters by the Pew Research Center showed, the issue of “gay marriage” was dead last on the list of issues that respondents described as “important to my vote”. Only 28 percent said it was important, down from 32 percent in August 2004, and most of those who listed it as important described themselves as opposed to gay marriage.

More anecdotally, Congressman Barney Frank, wondered aloud in a July 2008 Air America radio interview why, among all the challenges the country is facing, this one would get so much attention and generate so much heat. “In Massachusetts after four years of same-sex marriages, it's become a very boring issue, except to the people who are in same-sex marriages… Frankly, if you're a straight person in Massachusetts, this has had no impact on you, unless you live next door to a couple of lesbians and you'd have to buy them a present."

We’re hearing a lot now about how Republicans have been reevaluating their practices and policies since last November's debacle. I hope they don’t think they lost just because they had a weak ticket that ran one of the worst Presidential campaigns in history. If they do, they will miss the real lesson of this election and a big reason why Barack Obama will be in running the country: the tired and tattered playbook no longer works for them and it has, at best, prevented us a nation from dealing with the most serious issues and, at worst, bankrupt us economically and morally.

The change will be refreshing.

Jeff

Why I'm Not Going to the Inauguration

MY FAMILY AND I are staying home for Barack Obama's inauguration as President in three days. And so are most of the people I know who live here in the Washington area.

That may shock many others around the country who are, like us, excited about Obama's move to the Oval Office and awed by the historical moment (first African American President). Why, ask many friends and relatives of mine from out of town, wouldn't you take advantage of your proximity to history being made?

I'll let Yogi Berra answer. In response to a question about a popular New York restaurant, the great philosopher once said: "Nobody goes there anymore. It's too crowded."

That's what it comes down to for a lot of us here in the Washington, D.C., area. Sure, we'd love to go to the Inauguration. But, amid reports that more than two million people (down from the initial estimate of four million, which is roughly equal to the entire population of this metro area) will be coming from out of town to attend the festivities, it doesn't sound very appealing. Add onto that some extraordinary provisions police and inaugural event organizers are taking to ensure security and manage the flow of the crowds; huge swaths of the city will be closed to vehicular traffic, a number of Metro (the subway and elevate trains) stops near the National Mall will be shut, which means most of us will have to walk at least a mile to get there, and they are closing all the bridges across the Potomac River that tie Virginia to the District of Columbia, which will give us a sense of what it must of been like here during the Civil War. This could turn a historical moment a hysterical one.

Whether this will turn out to be true or not, the word is that if you don't get on the Metro by, say, 5 or 6 a.m. on the morning of the Inauguration, you will be out of luck. If you're one of the "lucky" ones who gets to the Mall early, you'll be standing for hours in the cold, and all you'll only be able to see the ceremony on one of the many giant TV screens that will be sprinkled from the Capitol to the Lincoln Memorial, the opposite end of the Mall (about two miles or so, I think). Slightly luckier will be those in the ticketed standing area, a privilege reserved mostly for those who have been spending every waking minute since Election Day going through every person they knew who might connected enough to get one of the relatively few available tickets, or who are connected themselves. (The royalty, who have tickets in the sit-down area, right in front of the swearing-in podium, are another story.)

For maybe a few days two weeks ago, I considered taking the whole family down very early and braving the whole thing. But the more I thought of the inconvenience, the fact that I can't stand being in big crowds and what I think is a fairly small pay off (the ability to watch the swearing-in on an outdoor TV screen and to say I was within two miles of Obama, even if I couldn't see him in person), it didn't add up. We're staying home that day.

I've informally surveyed friends and work colleagues over the last few weeks to see what they're doing. This may surprise many of you who don't live here, but hardly anyone I know from around here is going either. Even some who worked hard for Obama during his campaign and some who are political junkies and love this kind of stuff. Even they draw the line.

For them and myself, I've come up with a rationalization for staying home, other than we don't want to freeze our asses off and fight crowds all day long:

Yes, we should celebrate on a day like this. Every Presidential inauguration is historic in its own way, and this one surely is. But the real history will be made after the swearing-in, after the parade and after the dozens of inaugural balls that will go on that night (for a price, there were plenty of opportunities for those, but that's not my scene either).

Let's celebrate the history that will be made with every decision Obama makes, every piece of legislation he gets passed, every challenge this country faces and that he tries to address.

Sure, I'll probably be watching most of that on TV and reading about it in the paper. But, even from a distance, it will be fascinating to see how this new President shapes history, especially given the almost unprecedented preponderance of challenges we Americans and the rest of the world face. It's great that everyone will be paying close attention to every word of Obama's Inaugural Address, searching for some deep meaning in every gesture and facial expression on his and the podium dignitaries' faces, pointing out with almost chauvinistic pride the civil and dignified way in which power changes hands in this democracy. (TV commentators will have hours of air time to fill, so brace for all of this.)

But, like a wedding, what counts is what happens for a long time after the big party ends and the real work begins. That's the part that deserves our close scrutiny and constant presence.

Again, this is my rationalization. Also, I'm trying not to sound snotty here. If others want to crowd their way down to the Mall and freeze, I truly applaud their determination and hope they have a great time. I have a feeling they will be happy to have done it, unless the weather turns on them (the forecast, as of today, is mid-30s and cloudy, which isn't too bad). But I'm happy with my choice, too.

Jeff

Fighting to Give Peace a Chance

IN1987, AT THE START OF what was to become the first intifada, or Palestinian uprising against Israel in the West Bank and Gaza, I heard a senior Israeli diplomat tell an American audience, "This is not a beauty contest!"

Translation: 'We, Israel, will do what we have to do to respond to the violence and keep order. We can't worry about how it looks or what the rest of the world thinks.'

The trouble with those two sentences is that, in practice, they don't coexist well. It was a beauty contest, whether Israel liked it or not. The rest of the world was scrutinizing and mostly criticizing Israel's every action, which, within the limits of the cameras' frames, appeared to be responding too harshly to a bunch of rock-throwing boys. The fact was -- and still is -- that Israel's image and international political standing suffered badly because it did what it had to do, regardless of how justified it may have been and how it looked to the outside.

As I've written here several times before (see this, this, this, or this), that's the unfortunate position Israel has long faced as it has tried to respond to Palestinian violence -- which, over the years, only seems to have gotten worse and more bent on Israel's destruction. Israel has long been caught between two bad options. On the one hand, Israel cannot sit idly by and ignore threats to the safety of its own people -- such as thousands of missile salvos shot for years by Hamas on Israeli population centers. Nor can it, on the other hand, ever try to defend against such threats without prompting the ire of the international community.

That's especially true today, as Israel heads into three weeks of air and ground action action in Gaza to eliminate -- or at least subdue -- Hamas's deadly missile attacks. As has too often been the case when Israel acts, many innocent (along with the not-so-innocent) people -- women and children among them -- have lost their lives or been badly injured. Life in Gaza is a nightmare for those who have been spared. No no matter where one may stand on the conflict, no one can deny it is a terrible and sickening situation for those innocent people in Gaza.

And few, even those who have little sympathy for Israel, can deny that hitting innocents this time was nearly unavoidable, if Israel were to respond at all. Hamas has located legitimate military targets close to homes, schools, refugee camps and other places where civilians are concentrated. It's difficult for Israel to refrain from going after those targets, from defending itself.

It followed that option of restraint for years. During that time, Israeli towns were under a harrowing and constant threat of missile attacks. (This video tells the story well.) During that time, few voices from the international community raged against the perpetrators, engaged in feverish shuttle diplomacy or hastily convened the U.N. Security Council to pass emergency cease-fire resolutions.

So we have now a familiar dynamic. The latest operation has forged a widespread consensus in Israel, where consensus is rare (you know, three Jews, five opinions...) that Israel's current actions just and necessary. Polls have shown that more than 80 percent approve of the current course, and I suspect that large numbers of Jews in the diaspora feel the same, though probably not as high a proportion as we see among Israelis.

"This is a just war and we don’t feel guilty when civilians we don’t intend to hurt get hurt, because we feel Hamas uses these civilians as human shields," Elliot Jager, editorial page editor of The Jerusalem Post, told The New York Times this week. "We do feel bad about it, but we don’t feel guilty."

In addition to the hostility aimed at Israelis and its supporters around the world as a results, what's most vexing and discouraging is the familiar feeling of isolation. Again from the Times article above: "'It is very frustrating for us not to be understood,' remarked Yoel Esteron, editor of a daily business newspaper called Calcalist. 'Almost 100 percent of Israelis feel that the world is hypocritical. Where was the world when our cities were rocketed for eight years and our soldier was kidnapped? Why should we care about the world’s view now?'" So it is a beauty contest.

It also hurts that so many around the world views Israelis as genocidal maniacs. I know, the terrible plight of Gaza's innocent Palestinians and Israel's determination to keep on attacking until Hamas is neutralized leads people to that conclusion.

The truth is that Israel wishes these innocents had remained safe (thus the showering of warning leaflets and phone calls to Gaza residents urging them to take cover prior to attacks). The truth is that, more than anything, Israelis and their supporters want peace, not what they have now. I hear it all the time from every Israeli who has ever said anything on the subject. They want peace more than anything. They hate seeing people killed or hurt, on either side of the conflict. Hate it!

Can anyone seriously say that about Hamas or Hezbollah? Seriously. Their hate and desire for more casualties, especially Jews, is at the heart of this conflict. Absent that, most analysts say there are a sufficient number of Israelis and Arabs who could come to terms and make a real go of co-existence.

Unfortunately, the choices, again, are rotten. To the Israelis, the only clear path to peace is, ironically, through military action. As Sallai Meridor, Israel's Ambassador to the United States, said at a pro-Israel rally I attended last week in Washington, "We are fighting terror to give peace a chance." Again, the endgame for Israel is peace, not conflict, hard as that may be for some people to imagine.

It seems very sad really, to fight for peace. And it will not win any beauty contests. But can anyone offer a better alternative?

Jeff

Reasons to Be Hopeful in 2009

FOR THE NEW YEARS DAY HOLIDAY, my family and I went to New York City. We saw a Broadway musical, went to some museums, looked at Christmas windows, ate a lot, and waded through huge crowds. It was a fun time for all of us. On top of that, the visit gave some shape to the reasons I'm feeling optimistic about the year ahead.

I'm not saying that 2009 will be pain-free or prosperous, though I hope that's the case for all of us. Far more careful and knowledgeable analysts than I are suggesting that the economy might get worse before it gets better. What do I know?

But I don't feel, as some might, that this nation has fallen off a cliff and is headed for a loud, terrible splat at the bottom of the valley and that it will take us years to recover. We're probably headed for a tough year; I'm bracing myself for that. But I think we'll bounce back sooner than later. Here's some of the highly unscientific evidence I saw in New York that gave me such (cautious) optimism. 

Foreigners everywhere. Everyone in my family remarked that nearly everywhere we went we heard foreign languages or foreign accents -- almost more than we heard American English. In fact, it became a sort of game to us to be able to get close enough to hear, over the din of a crowd, whether we were hearing French, British or Australian English, Russian, German, Spanish, Italian or Arabic. Sure, there are a lot of people living in New York who speak other languages, but I'm talking about people who were clearly tourists and, by the way, spending money.

What's that mean? Well, it reminded me that America is still attractive to many others around the world, though, according to the Travel Industry Association, the U.S. share of international travel has dropped by 35 percent over the last 13 years as the world market for tourism grew by 61 percent. Yes, we're losing some ground there, and we need to do something about that. But American is still a magnet to many and likely to remain so, even after the dollar strengthens against other currencies. I don't mean tourism only but other quality goods and services America offers.

It also reminded me that we're very much part of the world, and, once this global economic malaise subsides, that will also be a source of even greater opportunity for us than it has been in the past -- economically and culturally.

That will take some effort on our part. More Americans need to learn to be a little less insular and more open to engaging with the rest of the world. But I think we've been headed in that direction for at least a generation, and the next generation will be even more so. And our success as a nation will depend upon our ability to find and serve new and growing markets around the globe and to tap the best minds we can find wherever we can find them.

Immigrants everywhere. During one of the many taxi rides we took during our three days in New York, I struck up a conversation with a Pakistani cabbie, who eventually got around to speaking with pride about his three children -- two in graduate professional schools and one in college. All of them sound likely on their way to prosperity and to making great contributions to their community and country.

Okay, it's anecdotal, and so are the dozens of identical stories I've heard from other proud immigrant cabdrivers (I talk to a lot of them) who've come to this country to work hard and support kids who will go on to be model Americans. Through immigration, this country continually draws and develops new talent and staves off the the sort of demographic implosion that many other developed nations with little immigration (such as many E.U. countries and Japan) have faced as their populations age and shrink. (Though, as you've heard this rant from me in the past, if we don't fix our immigration laws, we'll be squandering this advantage.) Moreover, people from other countries are still fighting to get into America. Given the choices, they're bullish about the promise of America, why shouldn't I be?

Innovation. New York reminds you of how much this country innovates, especially in areas such as  fashion, art, music, books, theater. Sure, it has some of the technical innovation we usually associate with, say, Silicon Valley or areas like the the Washington, D.C., Metro area, which houses a lot of biotech companies. And it's all there, in New York, bright and shiny.

Our success as a nation has long been due to innovation, even as we have lost our edge in manufacturing and agriculture to many other parts of the world over the last generation or two. We invent things, improve upon them, figure out better ways to make and distribute them. We Americans, who tire quickly of the latest new thing, are more likely than most to demand and quickly adopt the newest and most cutting edge stuff. That kind of environment is nurturing of new innovations. If anything, the rest of the world is trying to catch up to us in that department, as this article in the Economist argues.

True, there are many signs that we could lose our lead on innovation, and there are many who have called for increased investment in cultivating our talents in the sciences and engineering. But our innovation infrastructure, while quite possibly hampered by the current recession, won't be vanquished by it. It's a very solid base to soften our fall.

Global connectivity. Immigration. Innovation. Those are at least three reasons why I feel we'll get through this rough patch. We need to do more to enable us to take full advantage of these assets. But we're in as good a position as any country to build on them and to thrive once again.

Happy New Year.

Jeff

A Good Manager Needs a Good Ball Club

SOMEONE ONCE SAID that a 'good coach cannot win a game but a bad coach can lose one.' I'm not sure who said this (someone told me it was Jim Valvano, the loquacious, late coach of the North Carolina State men's basketball team, but I can't confirm) or whether that's an exact quote (thus the single quote marks). But it has always struck me as mostly true. And it might be something for us to keep in mind at this moment in time.

A good coach is one who leads, teaches, sets strategy, makes the best resources available and inspires and motivates. Ultimately, though, it's his players who have to put all those assets to good use. And it is they who have to play the game to win.

Thus a corollary aphorism, this one from Yogi Berra. When asked what makes a good baseball manager, Berra delivered one of the most straightforward, and precious, answers of his career as a folk philosopher: "A good ball club."

A bad coach is weak in those ways that a good coach is strong, that weakness can lose games, even with the best players. I won't mention any names, but I can recall a couple of college basketball coaches who could never seem to put the great season together and yet whose players went on to become all-stars in the NBA -- a sign that the coaches didn't know what to do with their talent. I've also seen some who, at crucial moments, made some ill-advised decisions that cost their team the game.

I think the same distinctions -- between the good and bad ones -- can be made about political and business leaders. The good ones cannot bring about success by themselves -- only their constituencies and their subordinates can. But the bad leaders can mean disaster.

That's worth considering during this interregnum between two Presidents. We know all too well now that a bad President can lose spell trouble for a nation, and perhaps many nations. We've been suffering under miserable coaching for the last eight years. He has left us ill-prepared to face our challenges, and he and his staff have made awful decisions at crucial moments in the game.

We are about to usher into the Oval Office someone who has all the signs of being not just a good, but a great President (though, as we know, so much can change, and quickly). And I think that a great, or even just good, President can help all the of the rest of us be better collectively and individually. He can enable us to win the game of ensuring widespread prosperity, security, stability and well being. But it's ultimately up to the rest of us to use the tools he and his administration provide to win the game.

I share with so many the enthusiasm for this newly elected president. As I said, I think he has what it takes to be a great President. But I worry sometimes that the expectations for him are beyond all reasonable proportion -- as if he will, somehow, single-handedly make all the bad stuff go away and the good stuff appear.

As I said nearly a year ago, when the primary season was just starting, "[S]o many of us Americans convince ourselves that if we can only put this one person in office, life as we know it will be transformed for the better. The economy will improve; social problems will be resolved; the general physical and mental well-being of all Americans will be better; the sun will shine every day."

In that sense, I argued, our elections -- not the way they work, but the way they sound and feel -- seem slightly un-American to me. "The political culture of this country," I wrote, "established by Enlightenment thinkers and reinforced over and over since then, is one that deemphasizes the importance of our leaders. This is not a monarchy or a dictatorship, where we must do whatever the Big Guy tells us. Indeed, our founders had precisely the opposite in mind when they laid down the fundamental American political creed, and this rejection of an aristocracy became one of the chief attributes of what is known as 'American Exceptionalism.'”

Apparently recognizing this and the danger of not living up to impossible expectations, our new President-to-be has done an excellent job, I think, of trying to tamp down the outsized anticipation without losing his ability to inspire. Take, for example, his brilliant and gracious speech in Grant Park on the evening of November 4. "The road ahead will be long. Our climb will be steep. We may not get there in one year or even one term.... There will be setbacks and false starts. There are many who won't agree with every decision or policy I make as President, and we know that government can't solve every problem. But I will always be honest with you about the challenges we face. I will listen to you, especially when we disagree."

The humility has even won over many who didn't even vote for him. And, during this period of transition, he has been measured so far in the manner in which he has talked about how he will tackle these difficult challenges. There is no swagger, no macho cowboy act, like hurling badass threats at adversaries or clearing brush at his ranch just for show. None of the usual political bullshit.

Once we have the tools that this leader -- this potentially good coach -- provides, the rest is up to us. It's up to the rest of us to manage our finances better. It's up to the rest of us to create real value in the products and services we generate at work. It's up to the rest of us to restore trust in our business and personal relationships, the real glue that keeps a society civil and prosperous. It's up to the rest of us to treat one another with respect. It's up to the rest of us to refrain from unprovoked violence against others. It's up to rest of us to use natural resources more carefully and less voraciously. It's up to the rest of us to understand more about the rest of the world, which has been growing more distant from and often hostile to us in recent years.

As our incoming President also said on Election Night: "And above all, I will ask you join in the work of remaking this nation the only way it's been done in America for two-hundred and twenty-one years -- block by block, brick by brick, calloused hand by calloused hand. What began twenty-one months ago in the depths of winter must not end on this autumn night. This victory alone is not the change we seek - it is only the chance for us to make that change. And that cannot happen if we go back to the way things were. It cannot happen without you."

These are merely soaring words in a moment of triumph, of course. The real work is ahead. A good manager needs a good ball club.

Jeff

Feeling the Chill

I HAVE LONG MAINTAINED that there is no such thing as the "wind chill factor." At least, I don't believe in or abide by it.

The wind chill factor is supposedly "the temperature that a person feels because of the wind". We only hear about it, of course, when the temperatures are pretty frigid -- usually below freezing -- and when the wind starts to pick up. Quite simply, the concept goes, the higher the wind speed and the colder the temperature, the colder it feels to humans. So if, for example, the air temperature is 20 degrees and the wind speed is 35 miles per hour, it feels like it's minus-17 to a person's skin. So they say.

I reject this for three reasons. First, how do others really know that a certain combination of temperature and wind speed feels the same to everyone's skin? How do I know that what I'm feeling is exactly the sensation that someone else is feeling, even if the external stimuli are the same? Isn't that like assuming that the red I see on a rose is the same red that another person sees? How would I know that? It strikes me as empirically unknowable.

Second, why am I allowing someone else to tell me how I feel? Isn't it mentally healthier for me to take charge of my own feelings instead of letting someone else dictate them to me?

Third, even if there is an objective, universally shared sensation, why do I need to know with such precision the pain (or for some, I suppose, pleasure) I'm experiencing? I'm sure that somewhere, for important, yet arcane, scientific reasons, that sort of information might be useful. But do I, a lay person, really need to know that I'm feeling exactly minus-17 degrees Fahrenheit? I'm mean, especially when you get that cold, does it really matter if it's minus-17 versus, say, minus-25? Both are pretty damn cold.

Of course, it's necessary to know that when the weather is so extreme that I should take precautions -- wrap up more, or just stay inside. That's good sense. But wouldn't it be enough for the meteorologists --   who are constantly introducing concepts like the wind chill factor and its opposite number, the "heat index" -- just to say, "Hey, the temperature will be very low -- around 20 -- and the wind will be blowing hard -- 35 miles per hour, give or take -- which means it will be dangerously cold, folks. Be careful. Try to stay home, and if you have to go out, be sure you dress right and limit your exposure...." Something like that gives me all the information and warning I need to protect myself. And when the so-called "wind chill factor" is only in the teens or 20s, well, it seems that the meteorologists are just trying to scare us. That sort of precision has no real meaning to us.   

Trivial and pedantic as this may sound (but not to me; I've been stewing about it for years), I also think it's roughly analogous to the way media and others talk about crises -- such as the economic recession we're facing right now. Okay, very roughly, but bear with me here.

There's no question that the economic crisis story is a priority the media, and it is massive in its scale and potential impact on the lives of millions of people. And, in spite of some of our political leaders to soft pedal it earlier on (remember, for example, Phil Gramm's references to a "mental recession," and "a nation of whiners"? ) we, the public, need to know the whole truth, even the scary stuff. And it's entirely legitimate to feature the wrenching profiles of the casualties of the recession. We cannot live on statistics alone.

But, I dunno, sometimes I feel that, like so many stories of this magnitude, there can be a point at which the reporting can become almost a self-fulfilling prophecy. Economics is a behavioral science. So isn't it possible that the profusion of doomsday coverage can further demoralize consumers and business leaders, who consequently decide not to spend, hire, expand, lend, borrow or do any of the other things that make up the nation's complex of economic activity? Isn't it possible that, like the wind chill factor, we are essentially being told -- unintentionally -- how we should feel?

Maybe that's why I've recently heard some economists and personal finance experts counsel, half seriously, against even peeking at our 401K and stock statements. Rest assured, they're saying, picture is bleak, but do you really need to know precisely how bleak. (Low temperature, high winds = cold. Need you know more?) Does the precision have any real meaning to us, or are we just trying to make ourselves feel bad? I mean, in what may be the most preciously ham handed statement of his tenure, President George W. Bush said in September when he said, “If money isn’t loosened up, this sucker could go down”. Precise and authoritative? No. To the point? Yes.

Barack Obama's tone, by the way, has none of that bombast and, on balance, is just right. He readily acknowledges that we're up against some tough times; how can anyone in leadership not? But he projects a welcome steadiness that he -- and we -- can steer us through. Even that, to be sure, is meant to engineer (in the best sense) how each of us feels.

I'm not suggesting we all put on rose-colored glasses. To be sure, I'd rather get a comprehensive, sophisticated and honest explication of what's happening around me than not. I need to know what's going on. 

But, if we are to weather this crisis personally and collectively, it seems to me that each of us needs to take control of his or her own emotional reactions to it, rather than allowing the others to dictate how we feel. In that case, some of us will fare better than others. Some of us will feel the pain more than others. But at least that sensation will be ring true to each of us, and that might be critical to our nation's future.

New Hope for Sensible Immigration Reform?

AS I HAVE NOTED ON SEVERAL OCCASIONS (see this and this), there was little good news in 2007 for those who worked or hoped for a comprehensive fix to our broken immigration system. The tide of public opinion scared members of Congress from doing what they had to do to legalize the status of workers already in the U.S., reunite families and enable enforcement of immigration laws. And some shrill voices at both the national and local levels pressed for some highly punitive measures that made restrictionists feel good, scared a lot of immigrants (legal and undocumented) and did nothing to solve the heart of the problem.

These voices seemed to have gotten some momentum, leaving many to wonder when the pendulum would swing sufficiently back to a point that people from both sides of the partisan divide in Congress could get out from under their desks and enact the sensible legislation, like the bill that died in the Senate in late June 2007 (hopefully with some improvements).

With all that is going in the world and in this country, it seems that immigration reform may not be at the head of the line for passage in 2009. But maybe it has a better chance than one might guess at first thought.

A Washington Post editorial today pointed out that "illegal immigration does not seem to be the effective wedge issue in Virginia that some politicians once hoped it would be. One percent of likely voters rated immigration the most important issue in Virginia, according to a Washington Post poll taken before this year's election; the share was nine times larger last year. Rep. Virgil H. Goode Jr. (R), notoriously hostile to illegal immigrants, lost to Democrat Tom Perriello in an upset in Virginia's 5th District, which stretches from Danville to Charlottesville."

Similarly, earlier this month, an immigrant advocacy group, America's Voice, reported "nearly 8 in 10 (78 percent) voters consider illegal immigration to be a serious issue, and overwhelmingly, they favor a comprehensive approach to immigration reform.  By more than 2 to 1 (57 percent to 28 percent), voters prefer enacting comprehensive immigration reform to an enforcement only approach.  While the economy is the top issue on the minds of voters, more than 6 in 10 (62 percent) believe we would be better off if people who are in the United States illegally became legal taxpayers than leave the country because they are taking away American jobs (21 percent)." [My emphasis. By supporting "comprehensive" reform, these survey respondents are presumably rejecting an overly punitive, enforcement-only approach to immigration.]

What's more, America's Voice noted in a post-election report:

"Through public opinion research and analysis of the races, AV found that Americans in the so-called 'battleground' districts and states are tired of slogans and polarization that do nothing to solve our nation’s problems, and are rejecting candidates who espouse them. Voters in overwhelming numbers support candidates that call for a smart, fair, and practical approach to immigration reform, one that will bring the system under control by registering undocumented workers so they can get on the tax rolls and a path to citizenship; ensuring stronger enforcement against employers who exploit workers; and allowing a limited number of immigrants whose work is needed longterm to come to the U.S. legally rather than illegally."

That's great news. It may not be enough to say it's time to dust off the 2007 bill and push it through as soon as possible; it's hard to know at this point if the votes in Congress are there for that just yet.

But it suggests that our political leaders might be able at the very least to talk aloud thoughtfully about immigration reform without fear of being shouted down by their constituents or by rabid radio talk show ranters. Though I doubt the anti-immigrant ranting will stop, it's good to know that it might have less widespread support than our politicians thought.

Maybe -- though perhaps I should be more ambitious than this -- we can spend 2009 helping the public understand that 1) we cannot wait to fix this terribly dysfunctional system and 2) immigrants -- legal or otherwise -- are not the source of our problems. Indeed, as a group they are an asset to the United States. Maybe, just maybe, there's an opening here.

Jeff

Building on the Momentum of Global Goodwill

IN THE DAYS FOLLOWING Barack Obama's election as 44th President of the United States, residents of a village in southeastern Turkey sacrificed 44 sheep in tribute. According to the Turkish newspaper Hurriyet, "Villagers held Obama posters streaked with blood from the sacrificed sheep that read 'you are one of us' and 'we love you.'"

He should take it as a compliment, of course. This was just one of many ways in which Obama's popularity has not on swept the U.S. but much of the world. Across the globe, news of his election brought dancing in the streets, tears of joy, approving banner headlines and, yes, ritual tributes such as the sacrifice of sheep.

The big question, then, is whether or not this surge of goodwill toward Obama will improve the sagging reputation of the U.S. abroad. <The answer is that we Americans cannot sit back and hope Obama's afterglow will solve that problem by itself. Indeed, it seems inevitable that once he takes office and has to make tough decisions, Obama will alienate those who disagree with his policies. That said, if he follows through on his campaign pledges, his overall approach to foreign relations -- less unilateral and more collaborative with other nations than his predecessor -- will almost certainly improve how the rest of the world regards the U.S.

But that will not be enough, which is why we should all sit up and pay attention to recommendations that the U.S. have a consciously planned and execute program of public diplomacy. By public diplomacy, I mean "civilian instruments of national security – diplomacy, strategic communications, foreign assistance, civic action, and economic reconstruction and development," as Secretary of Defense  Robert Gates has called for.

Comes now a new prescription for our public diplomacy needs via a just-released report by Brookings Institution scholar Kristin Lord. The report, which was based in part on consultations Lord had with more than 300 people from a wide range of sectors in U.S. society, calls for (and this is from the report's executive summary): "the creation of a nimble and entrepreneurial new non-profit organization, the USA-World Trust, to complement and support U.S. government efforts" as well as private-sector actions.

According to the report, which was unveiled yesterday in Washington, the USA-World Trust will (this is also from the report): conduct research and analysis; tap the vast potential of the private sector and engage companies, non-governmental organizations, universities, and others to work on innovative new initiatives; provide grants and venture capital to endeavors that advance the USA-World Trust’s objectives; identify, cultivate, and experiment with new technologies and media products that support U.S. public diplomacy and strategic communication; and bring together practitioners from the U.S. government, scholars, and talented visitors from the private and non-profit sectors to address public diplomacy and strategic communication challenges.

It seems to make all kinds of sense, and it will probably only cost a fraction of what the U.S. is already spending on our most visible foreign policy initiatives: military action in many parts of the world. Speaking of that, there's widespread recognition, even among people like Secretary Gates and General David Petraeus that, as Petraeus told the Washington Post, “We cannot kill our way to victory.” We need the tools of so-called "soft power" (or, as others call it, "smart power") to win friends pursue interests around the world.

Even though there is a strong cadre of leaders who agree with the idea of such an endeavor as USA-World Trust, the biggest question right now is whether the new Administration and Congress will give it the support it needs: namely, money and a legal status as an independent entity. With all that's going on right now, the Congressional and Administration plates are quite full.

Still, they must see the agenda of public diplomacy as a priority among others. As I have written on this subject in the past, unless we can improve our nation's standing in the world, it will be difficult for us to solve those other problems which are global in nature.

Jeff

[Note: I provided some public relations help around the release of this report.]

Voter Turnout: Better, But Still Room to Improve

ON ELECTION DAY, three weeks ago today, I stood in line for about an hour and 15 minutes to vote. The  line, which must have formed before 6:30 a.m., snaked in and out of the halls of the school where my polling place is held and then more than a block up the sidewalk in front of the school.

In the 15 years I have gone to this polling place, I had never seen such a crowd or stood in line for more than about 15 minutes, even on the busiest days.

I don't really know what accounted for this apparent (though I'm not sure it was real -- It could be that, by day's end, we had a normal volume of voters at my precinct) surge of voters. One could have interpreted from this scene a sense that there was something truly big going on in American politics; a new resurgence in civic participation that has been sorely lacking in the land of the free. It could also have been a reflection of how worried and unsettled everyone felt as the economic crisis continued to unfold. Maybe more people were thinking that voting was the least they could do to respond to the downturn. Or it could have been that people had heard there were going to be a lot of people at the polls so they just showed up earlier than usual.

For all the electricity in the air around the November 4 elections, the unofficial turnout was 61.4 percent of eligible voters (or 130.8 million ballots cast) in the race for President. That's an improvement over 2004, but only of 1.3 percentage points. And it's still below the 1968 peak year level of 62.5 percent.

In 21 states turnout of eligible voters dropped between 2004 and 2008 by as by as little as .2 percent and as much as 8.1 percent. That means a sizable majority saw a rise in turnout by a similar range. North Carolina was the big gainer at 8.2 percent; turnout there was 66 percent. My own state of Maryland saw turnout go up by a respectable 4.9 percent for a total of 67.8 percent of eligible voters. Minnesota's turnout topped all the states and territories with 77.9 percent, but that represented a half a percentage point drop compared to 2004.

I guess we should all be pleased that turnout is heading in the right direction and represents just under a two-thirds super-majority of all those who have the opportunity to carry out the most basic -- and essential of duties as a citizen. At least it's headed in the right direction now.

But, as I asked after the mid-term elections two years ago, when 40.4 percent of eligible voters cast votes nationwide, why can't we do better? In a classroom, 61 percent would be, what, a grade of D? And where are the other 39 percent? Other than the sick and incapacitated, what could have been more important that day that they couldn't make it to the polls?

Many eyes this year were on the so-called "young" vote, which has, in recent years been the most difficult to mobilize. Many thought that Barack Obama's appeal and his brilliantly executed online campaign (which speaks to younger voters through the channels they use), would boost the young vote. Voters ages 18-29 turned out at a higher rate in 2008 than in 2004 in several battleground states.

But analyzing exit polling data, the Pew Research Center showed that, as a share of the total electorate, 18 to 29-year-old voters only increased from 17 to 18 percent. Again, it's the right direction (I'm trying to look on the bright side). Says Pew, "Young voters increased their share of the total electorate by five points in Indiana, four points in North Carolina and Virginia -- all of which experienced sizeable increases in overall voter turnout -- and by lesser amounts in six other key states. By contrast, the young declined as a share of the total in Florida, Pennsylvania, and Ohio."

No, the picture is not bleak, and the momentum (if we can call two straight Presidential elections momentum) is worth some celebration. But can't we do better, people?

Jeff

(Another) Blessing to a Bat Mitzvah

YESTERDAY AFTERNOON, another of my daughters became bat mitzvah. Here is the blessing I gave her.

"In the parasha you’re reading today (Parashat Vayera, which begins at Genesis 18), angels appear three times: first, in the form of what seem to be three men delivering a message from God that Avraham and Sarah will improbably have a child; second, as God’s eyes and ears on the ground, trying to find enough good people to save Sodom and Gomorrah; and, third, as Isaac’s rescuer, who, on behalf of God, steps in just before Avraham sacrifices his only son.

"There are many kinds of angels –- or melachim –- in the Torah, but most have the same attributes of the angels we read about in this parasha; they have the qualities of both God and humans. They straddle two worlds –- the “real” world that we mortals inhabit and a godly world, about which we can only speculate.

"At this moment in your life, as you become a bat mitzvah, one part of you is still firmly planted in the world of childhood; the other is stepping into adulthood. As you stand in these two worlds, you are a melacha of sorts.

"I don’t believe that one suddenly becomes an adult as soon as she utters some ancient words from a scroll of parchment. It doesn’t happen like that. For some, that process takes a long time; there are plenty of people, well past the age of 13, who still have both feet stuck in childhood. For others, it happens too quickly and absolutely, and they have long left their childhood selves behind.

"The best case scenario, I think, is to keep a part of you in worlds of both adulthood and childhood. To hold on to the curiosity, energy and exuberance of childhood; and to embrace the responsibilities and opportunities of adulthood.

"In so many ways, you occupy those two worlds without any apparent effort or self consciousness, at least as far as I can tell. It seems to come naturally to you.

"I saw this about two months ago when I was dropping you off for your first day as an assistant in a first-grade class here at the Adat Shalom torah school. As you looked into the classroom, you lit up and said, 'Oh my God, they have Play-Doh!'

"Almost as soon as I said, 'It’s not for you,' you turned to a crying boy, who was tightly holding onto his mother’s leg, terrified to let go and walk into the room without her.

"You bent over and asked the boy, 'Do you want to go with me into the classroom? We can play with the Play-Do.' Much to his mother’s relief, he looked up at you, stopped crying immediately and took your hand, and the two of you walked in the room together.

"I try not to read too much into snapshots in time. But that moment, which lasted no more than about 15 seconds, was a quick flash of what I’ve seen you do over and over: pivot seamlessly between two worlds and lead others across the threshold. A true shalicha, or emissary.

"I don’t doubt that some of that impulse comes from being a middle child. It could be that birth order has a lot to do with shaping you in this way. 

"However you acquired it, you have been the shalicha of knowledge when you taught special needs kids and of friendship between the many different communities of people you have come to know. You shuttle easily and enthusiastically among your many different interests: sports, music, school subjects, theater, camp and family.

"So my wish for you is that you continue to play that role of shalicha that seems to come so naturally to you. It will serve you well as you go on in life and explore and inhabit so many different and wonderful worlds. And, like a melacha, an angel, may you serve the world well, too."

Jeff