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America's problem with gun ownership. BBC Radio 4 - Letter from America by Alistair Cooke (1993 broadcast)

A 14-minute rebroadcast version of the 1993 gun ownership program from Alistair Cooke's Letter from America BBC series, which ran for 58 years (2,869 installments), the longest-running speech radio show in history. "Does a multiple murder on a Long Island train prove that America has a problem with guns?" This program is available through December 29, 2012.

The problem of US gun ownership, and why the American constitution doesn't actually guarantee a right to bear arms, as examined by broadcaster and journalist Alistair Cooke in 1993.

Paddy O'Connell introduces a shortened archive edition of Letter from America first broadcast 19 years ago on 29 October 1993.

In this edition, Alistair Cooke took the American nation's temperature on gun control in the midst of that early-90s panic, as Congress was about to pass the Brady Act in 1993, after more than a decade of lobbying by Jim Brady, President Reagan's former press secretary, shot with the President in an assassination attempt in 1981.

Alistair Cooke's talks on American life, history and politics - Letter from America - were broadcast weekly on BBC Radio from 1946 -2004. Over 920 archive editions are available to listen or download for free on the Radio 4 website.

Presenter: Alistair Cooke
Introduced by: Paddy O'Connel
Archive producer: Zillah Watson.

via www.bbc.co.uk

Margin of victory

The Economist looks at the remaking of the president:

Mr Romney won the white vote by 59% to 39%—an improvement over John McCain’s showing in 2008. But in Midwestern swing states, that margin was narrower: just four points in Wisconsin, for example, and 15 in Ohio.
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Over the course of his presidency, [Obama] has pointedly unveiled policies designed to appeal to each element of this coalition.
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Perhaps the best illustration of Mr Obama’s campaign-by-niches is his wooing of gay voters. The 5% of voters who identified themselves as gay in exit polls opted for Mr Obama by 76% to 22%—enough to account for his entire margin of victory.

via www.gorevidalpages.com

Image.

Adversaries - summing up Washington's situation

From The New Yorker -- a summing up of Washington's situation the last 50 years, in 340 words.

For the past generation or two, Washington has been the not so hallowed ground for a political war. This conflict resembles trench warfare, with fixed positions, hourly exchanges of fire, heavy casualties on both sides, and little territory gained or lost. The combatants wear red or blue, and their struggle is intensely ideological.

Before the nineteen-seventies, most Republicans in official Washington accepted the institutions of the welfare state, and most Democrats agreed with the logic of the Cold War. Despite the passions over various issues, government functioned pretty well. Legislators routinely crossed party lines when they voted, and when they drank; filibusters in the Senate were reserved for the biggest bills; think tanks produced independent research, not partisan talking points. The "D." or "R." after a politician's name did not tell you what he thought about everything, or everything you thought about him.

To Phyllis Schlafly and the New Right, this consensus amounted to liberalism, and in the nineteen-seventies they began to use guerrilla tactics--direct mail, single-issue pressure groups, right-wing think tanks, insurgent campaigns. By the nineties, conservatives had begun to take over the institutions of government. Liberals copied their success: the Heritage Foundation led to the Center for American Progress, the Moral Majority to People for the American Way, Bill O'Reilly to Keith Olbermann. The people Washington attracts now tend to be committed activists, who think of themselves as locked in an existential struggle over the fate of the country, and are unwilling to yield an inch of ground.

Meanwhile, another army has invaded Washington: high-priced influence peddlers working on behalf of corporations and the wealthy, seducing officials of both parties and daily routing the public interest. The War of Organized Money goes on almost unnoticed outside the capital, but the War Between the Colors reflects a real divide in the country, the sorting of Americans into ideologically separate districts and lives. From time to time, a looming disaster--such as the upcoming budget crisis--leads to negotiations and a brief truce. But the fighting never really stops.

-- George Packer, "Adversaries," The New Yorker, Oct. 29 & Nov. 5, 2012, p. 88.

via www.gorevidalpages.com

The Invention of Political Consulting : The New Yorker

The field of political consulting was unknown before Leone Baxter and Clem Whitaker founded Campaigns, Inc., in 1933.

via www.newyorker.com

Jill Lepore's "The Lie Factory" in the September 24, 2012, issue of The New Yorker is facinating. Baxter and Whitaker were California Republicans. They represented many clients, not just politicians. They used their knowledge, savvy, and insights to successfully thwart attempts to create government administration and expansion of health care. 

Camapign operatives and political consultants, take note! Here are some nuggets from Campaigns, Inc.

• Begin every day with a two-hour breakfast to plan the day.
• "Every voter, a consumer."
• Harper’s later reported [about the successful campaign to defeat California's Proposition 1]

“In a typical campaign they employed ten million pamphlets and leaf-lets; 50,000 letters to ‘key individuals and officers of organizations’; 70,000 inches of advertising in 700 newspapers; 3,000 spot announcements on 109 radio stations; theater slides and trailers in 160 theaters; 1,000 large billboards and 18,000 or 20,000 smaller posters.”

• Lepore continues:

In 1940, they produced materials for the Republican Wendell Willkie’s Presidential campaign, including a speaker’s manual that offered advice about how to handle Democrats in the audience: “rather than refer to the opponent as the ‘Democratic Party’ or ‘New Deal Administration’ refer to the Candidate by name only.”

• Save seventy-five per cent of your budget for the month before Election Day.
• Campaigns, Inc. created an ad agency, a newspaper wire service that sent a political clipsheet every week to "fifteen hundred 'thought leaders.'"
• Make it personal: candidates are easier to sell than issues.
• If your position doesn’t have an opposition, or if your candidate doesn’t have an opponent, invent one. "You can't beat something with nothing," [Whitaker and Baxter] liked to say. 
• Pretend that you are the Voice of the People.
• Attack, attack, attack. Whitaker said, “You can’t wage a defensive campaign and win!”
• Never underestimate the opposition. 
• Keep it simple. Rhyming’s good. (“For Jimmy and me, vote ‘yes’ on 3.”)
• Never explain anything. “The more you have to explain,” Whitaker said, “the more difficult it is to win support.”
• Say the same thing over and over again.
• Subtlety is your enemy. “Words that lean on the mind are no good,” according to Baxter. “They must dent it.”
• Simplify, simplify, simplify. “A wall goes up,” Whitaker warned, “when you try to make Mr. and Mrs. Average American Citizen work or think.”
• Never shy from controversy; instead, win the controversy.
• Whitaker: "if you can’t fight, PUT ON A SHOW! And if you put on a good show, Mr. and Mrs. America will turn out to see it."
• Turn your liabilities into assets!

An example of that? Campaigns, Inc. had a candidate who was "a grave, resolute man." So, their strategy involved stressing that such qualities are strengths at a time of war.

• Try not to speak for more than fifteen minutes—people get bored—and never for more than half an hour.

Gore Vidal (1925-2012)

In Memoriam

Left: Warrant Officer Junior Grade Gore Vidal circa 1944, the Gore Vidal Papers, Houghton Library, Harvard University; right: Gore Vidal in 2006 © Stathis Orphanos

October 3, 1925 – July 31, 2012

Writer and provocateur of America's mid-century political and literary circles, Gore Vidal was raised in a prominent Washington D.C. Democratic family but describes himself as a conservative. He was the son of airline pioneer Eugene Vidal, grandson of Oklahoma Sen. T. P. Gore, stepbrother of Jackie Kennedy, and friend of writers and actors including Tennessee Williams, Anaïs Nin, Christopher Isherwood, Tim Robbins, and Paul Newman. A man of contradictions, he has been described as controversial, playful, acerbic, arrogant, and warm; as a gadfly, a conspiracy junkie, a paleo-isolationist, an America-hater, and a patriot; but also "the master essayist of our age" by the Washington Post and America's "greatest living man of letters" by The Boston Globe. He explored history, religion, sex, politics, and power in 25 novels--including his "Narratives of Empire" series about American history--several plays, movie scripts, and more than 200 essays.

PHOTO GALLERY, The New York Times: Gore Vidal 1925-2012

The New York Times: Prolific, Elegant, Acerbic Writer

San Francisco Chronicle: Gore Vidal, Celebrated Author, Playwright, Dies

BBC News: US Author Gore Vidal Dies Aged 86

The Guardian: Gore Vidal, US writer and contrarian, dies aged 86

CNN: Chronicler of American life and politics, dies (and CNN "This Just In" blog: A dozen thoughts from Gore Vidal)

The Atlantic: Gore Vidal - A Salute to Self-Absorbed yet Selfless Genius

Word & Film: Remembering Gore Vidal - Cultural Polymath, Political Gadfly, and Social Butterfly

AntiWar.com: Gore Vidal - the Last Jeffersonian

HuffingtonPost: The Legacy of Gore Vidal

 

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The Bull about the Bully Pulpit - George Edwards and the Powerless Presidential Bully Pulpit : The New Yorker

When you’re running for President, giving a good speech helps you achieve your goals. When you are President, giving a good speech can prevent you from achieving them.

via www.newyorker.com

Ezra Klein wrote an interesting piece in The New Yorker, "The Unpersuaded," about the work of George Edwards, the director of the Center for Presidential Studies, at Texas A. & M. University, outlining a strong argument that presidents--even those considered good communicators--have far less power to persuade with public speeches than many Americans realize.

Consider the following about presidents Clinton, Reagan, and Franklin Roosevelt:

Between his first inauguration, in January, 1993, and his first midterm election, in November, 1994, [Clinton] travelled to nearly two hundred cities and towns, and made more than two hundred appearances, to sell his Presidency, his legislative initiatives (notably his health-care bill), and his party. But his poll numbers fell, the health-care bill failed, and, in the next election, the Republicans took control of the House of Representatives for the first time in more than forty years. Yet Clinton never gave up on the idea that all he needed was a few more speeches, or a slightly better message. “I’ve got to . . . spend more time communicating with the American people,” the President said in a 1994 interview. Edwards notes, “It seems never to have occurred to him or his staff that his basic strategy may have been inherently flawed.”
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Reagan succeeded in passing major provisions of his agenda, such as the 1981 tax cuts, but, Edwards wrote, “surveys of public opinion have found that support for regulatory programs and spending on health care, welfare, urban problems, education, environmental protection and aid to minorities”—all programs that the President opposed—“increased rather than decreased during Reagan’s tenure.” Meanwhile, “support for increased defense expenditures was decidedly lower at the end of his administration than at the beginning.” In other words, people were less persuaded by Reagan when he left office than they were when he took office.
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[P]olitical scientists Matthew Baum and Samuel Kernell...found that [FDR's fireside chats] fostered “less than a 1 percentage point increase” in his approval rating. His more traditional speeches didn’t do any better. He was unable to persuade Americans to enter the Second World War, for example, until Pearl Harbor.

In fact, Edwards' evidence suggest that many presidents achieve their policy goals most efficiently without publicly advocating for them. For a president to publicly address a policy goal, according to Edwards, is often to solidify partisan opposition against it. But it can also strengthen support  among the president's own party. Presidents' public persuasion attempts often have a politicizing effect--whether they like it or not.

Edwards:

“Barack Obama is only the latest in a long line of presidents who have not been able to transform the political landscape through their efforts at persuasion. When he succeeded in achieving major change, it was by mobilizing those predisposed to support him and driving legislation through Congress on a party-line vote.”

Of course, this is not to say that presidential attempts to persuade cannot effect the rhetorical landscape. Jeffery L. Bineham, a rhetoric professor at St. Cloud State University, notes in a letter to the editor of The New Yorker that "death tax," "wars" on poverty, drugs, terror, and mottos like "government is not the solution but the problem," are all examples of presidential speech entering the political lexicon.

Krugman v./+ The Economist, and the Muted Middle

When Krugman of the economic (and social) American left and The Economist of the economic British and European right are agreeing...it's wise to pay attention. 

They're agreeing on characteristics of both the European economic crisis and to an extent what actions should be taken by various nations, including the US, to best deal with respective national economic problems.

What they agree on are mostly facts--realities; yet, realities shockingly seldom heard in the US especially among commentators on the political right, both partisan Republicans and self-described libertarians.

(Image: cartoon of Adam Smith, Karl Marx, Friedrich Hayek, and John Keynes. Heaven forbid that even if they weren't all equallycorrect and incorrect, each thinker might each have been at least somewhatcorrect--and incorrect! Heaven forbid one of them mightn't have been 100% correct and the other three 100% wrong!)

Both Krugman and The Economist have recently pointed out that the European crisis is rooted as much or more in monetary policy than in fiscal irresponsibility evidenced by bloated welfare programs.

In terms of welfare programs' role, Krugman notes in "What Ails Europe?" that:

[I]n 1991, when Sweden was suffering from a banking crisis brought on by deregulation (sound familiar?), the Cato Institute published a triumphant report on how this proved the failure of the whole welfare state model.... Sweden, which still has a very generous welfare state, is currently a star performer, with economic growth faster than that of any other wealthy nation. 

So, welfare programs' generosity aren't hurting Sweden. But note that Sweden is not a Eurozone country, either. Perhaps it's the Eurozone itself that's the problem. (Wait for it. The Economist ends up saying as much!)

But, Krugman looks at Eurozone nations, too, not just Sweden:

Look at the 15 European nations currently using the euro (leaving Malta and Cyprus aside), and rank them by the percentage of G.D.P. they spent on social programs before the crisis. Do the troubled GIPSI nations (Greece, Ireland, Portugal, Spain, Italy) stand out for having unusually large welfare states? No, they don’t; only Italy was in the top five, and even so its welfare state was smaller than Germany’s.

The Economist in "A Very Short History of the Crisis" noted much the same recently:

Before the crisis the governments of both Ireland and Spain ran budget surpluses. Both meticulously kept within the limits for deficits and debts set down by the stability and growth pact—unlike Germany, which flouted the rules for four years from 2003 (and avoided punishment). Nor did Italy lurch into extravagance. (Emphasis mine.)

Krugman's summary of the European crisis is as follows, with The Economist's below that. Both note that large welfare bills are at least in part a result of the crisis.

Krugman:

By introducing a single currency without the institutions needed to make that currency work, Europe effectively reinvented the defects of the gold standard — defects that played a major role in causing and perpetuating the Great Depression.

More specifically, the creation of the euro fostered a false sense of security among private investors, unleashing huge, unsustainable flows of capital into nations all around Europe’s periphery. As a consequence of these inflows, costs and prices rose, manufacturing became uncompetitive, and nations that had roughly balanced trade in 1999 began running large trade deficits instead. Then the music stopped.

If the peripheral nations still had their own currencies, they could and would use devaluation to quickly restore competitiveness. But they don’t, which means that they are in for a long period of mass unemployment and slow, grinding deflation. Their debt crises are mainly a byproduct of this sad prospect, because depressed economies lead to budget deficits and deflation magnifies the burden of debt

The Economist:

Debt in [the GIPSI nations] has become a burden not because of government profligacy but because each enjoyed a decade of low interest rates and was then hit by the financial crisis. Easy credit fuelled debt in households and the financial sector. The European Central Bank oversaw a binge of cross-border lending. In the crisis unemployment and hardship have deepened, increasing the bill for welfare. Some countries, such as Ireland and Spain, have needed to find money to prop up their banks. These new expenses fell on the state just when tax receipts collapsed—catastrophically in countries that had seen a property boom

Krugman and The Economisteven share some degree of opposition to austerity as a way of addressing economies worsened by the 2088-2009 Great Recession, though Krugman is much more opposed. Also, he sees debt as a short-term necessary evil to be outweighed by the benefits of stimulus (i.e., government spending and tax relief) if the stimulus is sufficiently large, while The Economist is more fearful of debt and deficits.

Krugman's lack of alarm may be evidenced by statements like this:

[C]ountries that aren’t on the euro seem able to run large deficits and carry large debts without facing any crises. Britain and the United States can borrow long-term at interest rates of around 2 percent; Japan, which is far more deeply in debt than any country in Europe, Greece included, pays only 1 percent.

True, but a $15.5 trillion US debt? With interest it's more than $56.6 trillion! That's an astronomically staggering sum. Granted, the US GDP is $15.0 trillion, but can the US's GDP be expected to increase substantially anytime soon as a means of lowering the debt? Republicans say, yes, if taxes and regulations are cut. Output will increase and jobs and consumer spending will follow. Democrats say, yes, especially if government stimulus helps fuel new industries, increases the infrastructure the economy needs, and places money short-term in people's pockets--even the unemployed--so consumer demand doesn't devastatingly fall. To which Republicans have numerous counterpoints, to which Democrats have counter-counterpoints, etc.

It's an endless discussion, really.

An now to another point: it's an endless discussion that also is not going very well. I find the discussion to be most helpful when it's least ideological and partisan. But, that's dispiritingly rare these days.

I recently had the priviledge of joining Peter H. Schuck at a dinner at a friend's home. He's the author of Meditations of a Militant Moderate: Cool Views on Hot Topics. While the book focuses mostly on debates thriving in the first few years of this century, there's a basic principle at work in his analyses--articulated in various places in the book--that's relevant even more now than when the book was published, and it's a principle that I keep finding myself coming back to: the once not-so-shocking principle that many issues are complex, that there's inherent value in trying to understand others' perspectives, and that it's exceedingly rare that one side of in a debate is 100% right while all the other sides are 100% wrong.

This position seems to be one that fewer and fewer Americans hold--it particular, it's exactly the position not-held by commentators on Fox News and CNBC on one hand and MSNBC on the other.* Heaven forbid, some problems' solutions can't be summarized by a bumpersticker slogan. That goes for economics, too. When someone shouts (and it's increasingly frequently shouted) that you can't spend your way out of debt, it increasingly frequently strikes me as an overly narrow simplification of all things to be considered. I feel exactly the same way when someone else shouts that you also can't cut your way to growth. It's been refreshing in the past year when I've heard non-shouting types on TV say that cutting too much government spending too fast is dangerous and in the same breath say that debt is a serious problem. Guess what? These might not be mutually exclusive realities! (Gasp!) But the last word seems usually given on TV to someone insisting that one or the other economic viewpoint is totally wrong. I'm then inclined to remember that as strong as religious fundamentalism is, there's such a thing as epistemological fundamentalism, too: it's called being ideological, and it results in the politization of problem-solving, and it can make problems even harder to sort out.

See also:Keynes v. Hayek, a BBC Business news feature.

*This is the secondary reason why I mostly get my news from The PBS NewsHour and the BBC--the main reasons being the measured tone of the NewsHour and the BBC and the refusal of each to dumb-down content.

On the ground...but not on the yard

I've recently returned from my annual holiday trip home to central Iowa. While there, a state legislator told me Rick Santorum would carry the local county on Jan. 3rd or come in a close second-place behind Ron Paul.

I was incredulous relative to Santorum doing so well. About 48 hours later, the first polls were released showing that a surge in the former US Senator's popularity had been occurring. I then recalled a pundit on ABC's This Week having said earlier in December to not underestimate the potential dividends of Santorum's months-long hard work in Iowa. It reminded me of the value journalists find in informed, honest, and sufficiently forthright sources near to the action, and in their own experience. We'll see if the legislator’s prediction and the pundit's observation hold true. Based on my own inexpert observations while in Iowa, I think Santorum may in fact win or come in a close second-place in the county that I was in, but I think Romney will win the state.

The only frontline observation of my own that I make with any confidence is that yard signs are thin on the ground! I saw only five signs in four days in and around a town of 15,500 people fairly near Des Moines. Also, I saw not one bumper sticker! When I was growing up in Iowa, forests of candidate yard signs cropped up in neighborhoods. Farmers put them in fields and ditches, and sometimes even painted the sides of barns with their favorite candidate's name. Even in December 2007, while driving along I-80, I recall seeing Clinton, Obama, and Edwards signs galore--at least one barnside proclaiming HILLARY in red, white, and blue, and plenty of signs for Huckabee, McCain and others.

Does the disappearance of the yard sign reflect a lack of voter enthusiasm, or perhaps indecision—an unusually long wait-and-see stance by Hawkeye Republicans? Or maybe smaller campaign budgets? Maybe lesser focus on Iowa by the campaigns? Has the rise of social media or the dominance this cycle of televised debates displaced the need for the valiant foot soldiers of Iowa caucus campaign advertising, those brave little signs that endure wind, snow, the rare defacement attempt, and the more common assault from dog urine? Here's to the return of the humble yard sign.

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UPDATE: Nate Silver's Iowa 2012 GOP caucus analysis - Updated Jan. 2, 2012 at 12:11 PM ET

	Vote Projection	Chance of Win
Mitt Romney	21.8%	42%
Ron Paul	21.0	34
Rick Santorum	19.3	20

UPDATE: Unofficial caucus results from my parents' precinct in Jasper County, Iowa - Updated Jan. 3, 2012

161 votes:
Santorum 48
Gingrich 39
Romney 31
Paul 29
Bachmann 8
Perry 4
Huntsman 2

CREW's list of 2011's 11 most corrupt Congress Members

Here they are....

For marriage rights for same-sex couples in New York

Only three NY State Senators, all Republicans, are thought to be undecided on how they will vote if gay marriage is brought to the floor of the Senate: Kemp Hannon (hannon@senate.state.ny.us), Stephen Saland (saland@nysenate.gov), and Andrew J. Lanza (lanza@senate.state.ny.us).

But their potential opposition is becoming less tenable as arguments mount against keeping same-sex couples excluded from marriage’s rights and responsibilities. Here are some that have been highlighted on this blog.

The Constitution’s call to Promote the General Welfare (US Const., Preamble & Sec. 8, Clause 1) gives reason for the expansion of civil marriage’s rights and responsibilities to gay couples, thereby also providing legal inducement for same-sex consenting adults to enter into this civil institution’s conservative realities: valuing another’s well-being and not just ones own, domesticity, creating a long-term household--caring more for community, law and order, property values, diligence in employment, long-term investments, etc. Expand it as the vote was for women, as civil marriage was for mixed-race couples. The general welfare is lessened by excluding gay New Yorkers from civil marriage, forcing them into legal permanently-single status and keeping them lesser in rights than incarcerated, cynically married, or even immoral citizens enjoying civil marriage rights by the accident of their birth as heterosexual. Increasingly, such inequality seems driven by animus.

The Economist, one of the most respected business publications in the world--free market and center-right--first argued for gay marriage as far back as 1996. They reiterated their argument in 2004.

If Massachusetts, Connecticut, and other states have done this and benefitted, why mustn’t New York?

Crain's New York Businesses' columnist Alair Townsend's offered commentary in this business publication with its fingers on the pulse of the NYC business community:

the Defense of Marriage Act of 1996, which withholds at least 1,138 rights and protections offered by the federal government to married heterosexuals. But today, our [i.e., New York's] state Legislature should cast off unreasoning fear, and act to protect the rights of an important minority group. 

The Williams Institute (UCLA Law) says in NY are 42,600 same-sex couples. About 7,200 of NY's gay couples are raising children, and the children number about 14,000.

At least two recent polls show a majority of NYers support marriage equality: Quinnipiac and Siena College Research Institute. Presuming that New Yorkers under the voting age of 18 (24% of the state by the 2000 census) were not among those polled and roughly 60% of polled those New Yorkers now support marriage equality--that's 8,664,000 voting age New Yorkers who are in favor of expanding marriage’s rights and responsibilities to gay couples.

Louis J. Marinelli, a former National Organization for Marriage (NOM) organizer and a conservative-Republican recently announced, “I now support full civil marriage equality.”

A NYC Comptroller’s report in 2007 found the City’s economy alone would gain $142,000,000 after legalization of same-sex marriage. And how much more in the rest of the state? It’s not a key argument but nonetheless true: marriage equality will mean more jobs in New York.

"The Conservative Case for Gay Marriage," by Ted Olson, US Solicitor Gen’l under Pres. George W. Bush, can be read here.