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Articles We Never Finished Reading: Survey Says... Misogyny Is Bad (Thank Goddess)

"There was one description of the president that truly seized me:

'The metrosexual black Abe Lincoln has emerged as a hyper-partisan, hyper-liberal, elitist politician with more than a bit of the trimmer in him.'

This sentence is just so deliciously ridiculous, insulting and incendiary — perfect Republican fodder.

Let’s dissect it, shall we? Scalpel!

First, there is the word metrosexual. It is usually defined as a man keenly interested in grooming and preening. Despite the sexual root, the term isn’t rooted in sexuality. In its truest sense, President Obama of mom jeans infamy — as he told the 'Today Show' in 2009, 'I’m a little frumpy' — is far less metrosexual than Mitt Romney of the perfect hair, copper tan and Gap skinny jeans.

But this term is rarely appropriately applied. On the contrary, it’s often delivered with a snicker to question sexuality and feminize the subject, and femininity in a misogynistic culture is the greatest of sins. Metrosexual has become a roundabout homophobic taunt."

 - Charles Blow, "Dirty Racial Politics" in today's New York Times.

I give Blow credit for identifying a "misogynistic culture" that makes feminization of men an insult; I'm a little more perplexed that Blow seems to suggest that this insult is, well, really insulting. If we're trying to end a misogynistic culture, rather than just admit its existence (powerlessness... there's another good issue to discuss), then it doesn't help to just identify emasculation and then complain about it. That, it strikes me, is just giving the tactic all the more credence. Making a man seem woman-like wouldn't be an insult if we stopped treating being a woman as insulting.

"Metrosexual" is a dopey word and its use in the Ricketts material was, obviously, telling; in the context of that extreme sentence, a volume of assumptions and dislikes of the President certainly were made clear, and who wouldn't expect an Obama cheerleader like Blow (who later admits that Obama is a "moderate left centrist" who can anger "devout liberals", as if liberal ideas were religious dogma) to defend him? Blow is meant to represent a fresher, younger approach to opinion writing, and it's things like identifying anti-woman biases that add to that formulation; but Blow is, in most ways, more of the same on the NYT Op Eds - a supportive Democrat who wants the simplicity of two party distinctions and shows his contrariness by blaming Lefties who Go Too Far.

In general, I never really finish Blow's pieces - his hook is to accompany his pieces with some element of recent survey data, data that invariably shows him to be absolutely riight about his conclusions, which in turn our usually that some Democratic friendly idea, proposal, or candidate is good or right (or both). His opening paragraphs are lively enough (that "scalpel!" reference, however trite, is bracing), but he devolves into boilerplate and statsical citings pretty quickly, and it's prety much downhill from there.

I'd be more impressed if Blow was braver, if his opinion on a particular subject wasn't so obviously telegraphed by whatever graph accompanies his column, or at least if he'd question the whole reliance on poll driven opinionating a lot more than he does. Being more adventurous - which he seems readily capable of - would lift his op-ed writing out of the ordinary, and beyond partisan boilerplate. Or is it too girly of me to point that out?

On Hookers And Secret Services

Okay... so where were we?

I've been sort of chomping at the bit to comment on various stories - Ann Romney, George Zimmerman, you name it - but nothing is quite as captivating as the scandalous non-scandal of The Secret Service in Cartagena, now, is it? (And really... Cartagena? Other than Romancing The Stone... who's ever cared about Cartagena?)

My raction to the Secret Service story hasn't changed much since it broke: so... apparently after work the agents like to drink, carouse a bit, and maybe pick up a local resident for some R&R. And that's bad... why?

I'm not trying to excuse hooking, but in my own curiously twisted thinking on sex and sexuality, it's not people paying for sex that bothers me. What bothered me, say, about the Elliot Spitzer scandal, and made it scandalous, was both the outrageous prices he paid (which was simply foolish) and the fact that being Attorney General means enforcing the laws he was breaking at that time. That's hypocrisy, and that, it strikes me, is scandalous.

(Also, going to prostitutes while married strikes me as tacky and poor moral character, but that's a separate issue.)

So here's my thing: if the Secret Service agents were, say, using counterfeit money to pay hookers... then maybe we'd have a similar case; but  drinking in bars and bringing someone home for sex doesn't strike, entirely, as a firing offense. Again, tacky, perhaps; but not quite the federal crime it's being made out to be. Indeed, I'll be curious to see if some of these attempts to discipline Secret Service employees stand up as proper for a federal employer. Is off hour behavior really fair game for the government as an employer?

In any case, there's been a lot of huffing and puffing to try and dress up what is basically a salacious exercise in peeking behind other people's bedroom curtains as somehow a major breach of national security. You can almost see the visible relief of many media organizations reporting today's triumph "hooker may have been in President's hotel!" That's, you know, serious. It's almost like, you know, she was in the President's room. Except, you know, she wasn't.

All the heavy breathing doesn't amount to much, and can't really make the agent's behavior seem much more than what it is - tawdry, mostly, with a side order of tasteless. The idea that patronizing hookers might "lead to blackmail" is an old saw that was always meant to comment more on sexual behavior than any actual threat - it's the same nonsense that was trotted out about gays during the Red Scare years, and just as dopey. It's a suggestion that sex is dirty, embarrassing, and rather than be humiliated for a peccadillo, most people would, I don't know, pay thousands and reveal state secrets. Evidence of this actually happening isn't just mostly scarce... it's basically nonexistent. It's the stuff of movie plots and bad novels one buys in airports.

More to the point, these ideas of salacious blackmail seem especially absurd in this era where people's nude photos wind up on internet websites. Shocking? Embarrassing? Does anyone even know what these words mean anymore? The small number of people actually "shocked" to discover that Secret Service agents hire hookers lead especially sheltered lives and are, in general, awfully naive (almost as naive as the people who seem to think this only happened, once, in Cartagena). There's nothing especially shocking, or possibly even embarrassing about the President's guards getting randy after hours in a foreign country. The trope that this "could lead to national security breaches" is pretty much nonsense, and most sensible people, I suspect, get that, even if they hate to admit it. Because once you admit it... then we also have to admit that this story is getting way more play than it ever deserved.

I don't think, as Americans, we'll ever get over our nosiness, our voyeuristic tendencies, or our confused notions about sex generally. That's our culture, and that's how we define who we are - simultaneously wildly open and free, and puritanical and judge-y, all at once. By all means, go overseas and go wild with the foreigners. Just don't get caught. Or we'll really be mad. And if it helps us to pretend that somehow this is crucial to our "national interests", it's just a reminder of the lengths we go to when we need to justify our prejudices. Mostly, I suspect, the excessive interest in this story is about envy. And that's never pretty. And we're lousy at hiding it.

 

Articles We Never Finished Reading: And I'd Rather Be On A Yacht In Greece

Cory Finley, a recent Yale graduate, applied to work at Bridgewater Associates, a large Connecticut-based hedge fund, during his senior year of college. Mr. Finley, 23, said there was “definitely something tempting” about the structure and prestige of a high-paying finance job. But he decided to follow his dream of becoming a playwright instead.

            - Kevin Roose, "Wall Street's Latest Campus Recruiting Crisis" in the New York Times.

Now, look, I'm sure that the financial crisis and the pressure on banks and investment firms to limit bonuses has changed the career plans of some college seniors... but come on. The kid who says "I thought about investment banking, but then decided to be a playwright" is hardly a serious example of what, I suspect, is a dubious trend article anyway. Aside from Finley, Roose has found about one other college grad to speak to their recruiting experience, and padded the article with obvious quotes about how this week's disgruntled resignation letter in the Op-Ed section proves no one wants to work at Goldman Sachs. Is that a trend? Probably not. But back to our poet. Nothing says "I don't need to work" like a 23 year old who can take all the time he needs to craft a play. I know I wanted to take some time off after graduating college and write a novel. Unfortunately, I also needed to do things like eat, and have a roof over my head. Still do. But if anyone wants to fund my foray into novel writing, let me know. I'm totally worth it.

Articles We Never Finished Reading: Not That Different From Each Other

Let me tell you about the very rich,” F. Scott Fitzgerald famously wrote, buttonholing the reader in his short story “The Rich Boy” (1926). “They are different from you and me. They possess and enjoy early, and it does something to them, makes them soft where we are hard, and cynical where we are trustful, in a way that, unless you were born rich, it is very difficult to understand.” Today’s rich are not only different from you and me but different from yesterday’s.

No one who has followed the heedless speculation that led to the 2008 financial meltdown and the subsequent bailouts would think of millennial-era greedheads as being anything other than steel-toed in advancing and achieving their interests; it is the rest of us who appear soft, our trust playing us for suckers. The distance between Fitzgerald’s very rich—now the extremely rich, the 1 percent—and the remaining 99 percent has never been steeper. The 1 percent occupy a higher altitude than the rest of us: their clouds look fluffier; their sunlight gleams with Hollywood gold. In Theodore Dreiser and Sinclair Lewis novels and in film classics from the previous century, the rich are portrayed as builders and expansionists, their pharaoh fortunes amassed from steel, brick, minerals, timber, railroads, shipbuilding, newspaper publishing; even those who won their money on Wall Street seem propped on industrial girders. Round-bellied, a watch fob looped from a vest pocket, these bankers and tycoons command offices as grand as railway stations, eat in dining rooms fit for Versailles. What they do and how they live have weight, imprint. The vast wealth depicted in movie/TV drama today is divorced from manufacturing and an invisible army of laborers doing their part; it’s divorced from anything resembling work. It’s floating and caressing, immortalizing.

- the generally perceptive James Wolcott, blathering about images of wealth on TV in the latest issue of Vanity Fair.

Now I generally like Wolcott, and I especially like him when it comes to culture watching - he takes it seriously, and he watches a lot - but this one is weak. Never mind the kind of lazy premise, a chance to quickly rope in a wide swath of series television in a highly generalized observation; the problem actually lies in the premise itself - his notion that somehow wealth today is vastly different from wealth in the past. This is just absurd - the first decade of the Twentieth Century was called The Gilded Age for a reason, and it wasn't because the men who made fortunes were "builders and expansionists"; it's because they made enormous profits in their businesses, and even more money in stocks and financial dealings. The Rockefellers and Vanderbilts, Morgans and Whitneys and Astors were not especially different from the wealthy bankers and hedge fund types of today: flush with absurd amounts of cash, spending it on pointless displays of generally poor taste. Wolcott generalizes off of Theordore Dreiser and Sinclair Lewis... as if he's never heard of Edith Wharton or Henry James, the real chroniclers of this life of ease and indolence. Indeed, he goes so far as to dress up this middling case with a familiar line from the greatest of these observers of wealth, Fitzgerald himself, as if to miss entirely the point of The Great Gatsby.

I'm not trying to suggest that film and television are doing some great job dramatizing the realities of life as most of us face them; but what's deeply problematic in Wolcott's narrow view is some sense that This Just Happened and It's Not Like How They Used To Do It. The reality is... this is exactly how they used to do it, and it works. And perhaps the most telling failure to see this lies in Wolcott completely overlooking the largest and most tasteless display of excessive wealth: Downton Abbey. Or doesn't that count?

Like Death And Taxes... And The South Will Rise Again

All right, yes, I couldn't have anticipated quite so much going quite so wrong for Mitt Romney in one week - and my point about the Iowa GOP and the New Hampshire GOP actually having problems with each other still stands, more emphatically - but the attempts to manufacture lots of "Mitt might fail" drama after South Carolina's primary seems like a stretch. I don't know if Mitt Romney can win this fall or not (though I'm more convinced not), but two things I do know are that our next President will not be Newt Gingrich. Or Rick Santorum.

The past week is a reminder that Mitt Romney is well set up for losing if only for this: five years, millions of dollars, lots of preparation... and this is as good as he got. And what he's got is, well, nothing. His campaign team apparently couldn't imagine winning New Hampshire and losing South Carolina. He wasn't prepared to talk about Bain in detail, his personal income, or his taxes. And still, he offers little more in the way of a campaign than "I'm not a loser like Barack Obama, and I've run a business. QED, bitches."

If there's a reason this year's election looks so dismal - and most emphatically is not, as Mitt likes to suggest, the election of our lifetimes - it's because both of the major parties most likely candidates seem unable to rise above inept campaign strategies. Mitt's a lousy candidate surrounded by apparent mediocrity; while the President insists on shouldering this unpleasant task for our own good, surrounded by advisors whose best case appears to be "well... who else is there?" One can't really blame for priary voters in the Republican Party for voting as if screaming for a lifeboat. Anything, anything... but not this.

There's lots of pundit theorizing, but the question of why Newt Gingrich won South Carolina is just not that deep: South Carolina reasserted itself, this week, as the acid test of who is sufficiently seen as Southern and right wing enough to satsfy the most extreme elements of the right wing base. This generally means a Southerner; not - as many northerners like to oversimplify it - because the south is racist. It's more than that. The notions of disdain for other types of existence is about a lot more than race; it's also anti-intellectual, anti-urban, anti-cosmopolitan of any sort. Mitt Romney, probably, never stood a chance in South Carolina, simply because he's an educated northeasterner from a wealthy, patrician family in the most traditional sense. And really, a similar rejection of northern working class success explains why Rick Santorum, as well, probably also never stood a chance to consolidate his bona fides as the conservative alternative. Newt, in the end, was the guy from the state next door (remember how that same logic is supposed to invalidate Mitt's win in NH?), who spoke Southern and right wing talk radio as no one else could... or would want to.  South Carolina's right wing base roared up and delivered a message that scares the national party to death: ignore the South at your peril. 

At the same time, the impotence of relying, yet again, on a Southern strategy as embodied by Gingrich is all too clear: Gingrich is a lousy candidate, whose own moral failings don't remotely jibe with Evangelical voters. There's lots of discussion, naturally, about how Gingrich's marital failings werre conveniently overlooked on his way to victory, but I'll double down on my thinking that America is in no mood to reward divorce, especially as practiced by someone like Newt Gingrich.  The mess of Gingrich's personal life was saved, really, by the bitter, opportunistic way Marianne Gingrich obviously inserted herself into the political process, and by John King's oblivious, ham-handed attempt to shoehorn a nonexistent "issue" of it into the next debate. "Don't vote for my philandering ex-husband" makes people uncomfortable, even if they agree with the description. And Gingrich, dressing down King, was substantively right - King didn't even try to concoct a question that made any sense, and was trying, mostly, to embarrass Gingrich. And Gingrich, obviously, is beyond shame. 

Romney, on the other hand, isn't: what was fascinating about his tax and salary debacle was how much he betrayed the realities of class, and of his life in the upper class in particular. It's tacky, when you're rich, to talk about just how much money you have. Romney, clearly, isn't comfortable either explaining, or God forbid, justifying his own lavish wealth. He's oblivious to how his own money compares to others - calling his $350,000 plus in one year's speaking fees "small" is probably, comparatively, correct for him. It's just tuneless (and tasteless) when relating to the public as a whole. His tax rate, too, is probably not the biggest deal; it's interesting to note that Romney more or less made the same admission Warren Buffett did about his effective tax rate. Buffett, of course, gets a pass; he favors tax increases. As the more sardonic among us note, me included, nothing precludes Buffett from sending the government more money than he owes. Which is to say... in the end, is Buffett really so superior to Romney, on taxes? So why is Romney's relatively honest admission such a bad thing?

Like John Kerry before him - and more than a few others as well, before them - Romney can't win unless he learns to step out of his own patrician class understandings and expectations. South Carolina was, in no small measure, a reminder of just how and why the Republican base has moved to reject the "Country Club" core of its past; the democratization of wealth and education has up-ended traditional notions of class in our country... but class divisions don't just go away. They are cultural and societal, constructs, not just economic and political ones. Romney's tone-deaf invocation of Class Envy (both in New Hampshire and even after South Carolina) will ruin him in a general election; what's striking is how Republican voters - the ones who piously claim that "class warfare" is a liberal construct - are also, clearly, turned off by that logic. Romney's experience at Bain Capital, it turns out, isn't just an easy target for liberals looking to paint him as Mr. One Percent; appaently even many ordinary Republicans get that a pampered millionaire scion makes a terrible spokeperson for the virtues of American wealth.

The Republican Establishment, really, can't mask the internal dissensions and divisions that are tearing their party apart; what's apparent after three contests, and Florida will likely make more plain, is that there is no one person who can unify and give voice to the conservative right. The wisest Republicans, still, seem to be the ones who decided to flee this year's contest - Paul Ryan, Chris Christie, John Thune... and on and on. They know, as most of us do, that Republicans can't really beat Barack Obama because they don't really have a coherent alternative policy to sell. But South Carolina is a reminder that attempting to find a coherent policy is both impossible in the current climate and can't happen without alientaing some group or another. Newt Gingrich will, most likely, be the voice of the angry Southern conservative at this year's convention, which might be enough to make him the nominee, but I doubt it. Either way, until the Republicans can figure out how to effectively get beyond their Southern base, they've got nothing. And wouldn't nothing be better represented by Mitt Romney, anyway?

...But For The Shouting!

It was the oft repeated sentence of last Tuesday and early Wednesday, and I'm not sure people appreciated the significance: Mitt Romney was the first Republican, ever, to win both the Iowa caucus and the New Hampshire primary.

Now, never mind what is says about Romney or his chances... doesn't the fact that Iowa's Republicans and New Hampshire's Republicans have never been able to agree on who would best be President speak volumes to what's wrong with the GOP? ... and then they go and both agree on Mitt Romney?

Much like 2008, the Republican primaries are over, even if no one got the memo yet. Romney's opponents have had two chances to stop him and both essentially failed. Rick Santorum nearly tied him in Iowa, but then only managed to tie Newt Gingrich for 4th in New Hampshire. Ron Paul attracts about a quarter of GOP primary voters. Jon Huntsman and Rick Perry should have given up months ago. Newt Gingrich is a smart man and a terrible candidate. 

And Republicans are stuck with Mitt Romney.

Like McCain, Romney hasn't so much won the race as beaten an entire party's apparatus into submission. Much like John Kerry, Romney attracts about slightly less than half of the voters of his own party, a bad sign for attracting anyone else. And, like Kerry, the thing that is supposed to make Romney ideal for this race - his "private sector" business experience - is much like John Kerry's war record out of Vietnam... it looks best if one doesn't examine it too closely.

Also, not to get too East Coast superior about it... but is Massachisetts really the best place from which to launch a national politica; career? I mean, since John Kennedy... anyone? 

This, then, is 2012, much the way I expected it to be, and which has already proven itself in the first two weeks: this race will be Barack Obama versus a deeply damaged Mitt Romney, and Barack Obama is likely to win reelection. It's all over but for the shouting.

And sure, there will be a lot of shouting... but really, will it matter? Romney's biggest flaw, it strikes me, is that, like many of our Presidential also-rans, just can't seem to put together the necessary mix of self confidence and clear thinking on his opponent needed to win as a challenger over an incumbent. I saw Romney in an extended interview on CNBC the morning after New Hampshire, as well as watching his victory speech the night before... and two things shown through: he's awkward, and his arguments against Obama are depressingly generic.

Romney's argument against Obama appears to be this: he's a "European Socialist" whose destrictive policies have hurt America and he doesn't understand captalism or free markets, stoking the fires of class envy and resentment in ordinary folks. I would point out, as others have... that none of this is precisely accurate. Much of it, and the examples to support the argument, is right wing boilerplate from talk radio and conservative talking heads. As Al Sharpton (of all people!) pointed out Tuesday night, Occupy and other angry voter demonstrations are not about "envy" of wealth... they're about perceptions of economic injustice. And as a number of others have pointed out, you could take apart that whole notion of the good and the bad about "Eurpopean Socialism" for days.

More pointedly, Romney makes these arguments poorly. Still. He stumbles through his examples, mumbles his applause lines, and he looks especially uncomfortable when trying to say bad things about otherwise nice people. It's one reason that Romney's relied, especially heavily, on surrogates. I'm not saying Romney s a nice man - he strikes me, still, as esentially cold - but I think he was trained to be polite, and he has a hard time doing otherwise. I think he'd politely like America to realize that Obama is wrong. And, really, that's kind of cute (pure Country Club Republican, which is, after all, his upbringing). But it's no way to win a rough and tumble election process. Especially if you're a wealthy scion of a politicallly connected family who seems constitutionally incapable of empathizing with the difficulties of others.

Unless Romney gets significantly better, and his argument gets sharper - and frankly, he's had more than 5 years to figure a lot of this out, so far, and this is where it's got him - it's hard to see how his combination of awkward and unpleasant and specifics-free presentation will be enough to beat a sitting President, even one as spectacularly mediocre as the current one. There will be a lot of shouting, a lot of name calling, a lot of back and forth... but I tned to think we know where this is going. And most of us would be happy, I suspect, if it all just happened sooner, rather than later.

That imatience, I think, goes a long way to explaining the other developing trend of this election, a real disdain among voters for the media, especially 24 hour operations on cable and in the blogosphere. If nothing else, it's interesting to wonder where we go if Americans actually lose patience with the cureent cycle of endlessly chewing over some minor comment, replayed endlessly out of context. Already Mitt's "I like to fire people" comment is largely buried and left aside, sure to reappear, but not really crucial to the outcome that's largely foreordained. Can anyone, really, sit through another panel of likeminded talking heads on any of the cable "news" shows? Three hours of it, at least, on CNN, MSNBC and Fox on Tuesday night, the night when it was obvious, 15 minutes after the polls closed, that Mitt Romney had won New Hampshire. After two hours... was there anything, I mean anything, left to discuss?

I honestly thought I'd find this state of politics depressing, but in some sense, it's really very freeing. Who needs to spend the next 2 or 3 months watching Mitt Romney wrap up the GOP race? Now I've got time to catch up on my reading, watch some DVDs and find something else interesting - actually interesting - to write about. It's all over but for the shouting. And that's why they make earplugs.

The Mitt-aphors, And Why They Matter

Back in 2003, when I was an early energetic supporter of Howard Dean (I know! And here I am, now accused of backing the 1%!), I had a hard time explaining to other liberals just what was so bad about John Kerry. We all did. It was hard to explain why what seemed good, maybe even great on paper - the Vietnam soldier who wound up opposing the war, the liberal good deed doer turned Senator from Massachusetts - in person looked just so, so terrible. And yet there he was... the inevitable nominee. Everyone just knew it.

That's what I think of, just now, when I listen to Republicans complain about Mitt Romney.

Like Kerry to conservatives, when Liberals don't like Mitt Romney, it's because, well, he's a Republican. You don't need to say much more than that (though we all do), because really liberal people don't vte for Republicans, or if we do (and actually, I never have), it's for Republicans who aren't actually Republican (like the time I wanted to vote for John Anderson, back when I was 14).

When Republicans talk about not liking Mitt Romney, or not wanting him as their nominee - again - it's complicated. On paper he's great - the experienced business leader who got elected Governor in a "liberal" state, the seasoned campaigner who's really serious, and full of the ideas that conservatives seem to like, these days. And yet... they just don't feel good about him, and their not sure he can win it.

Everyone, it seems, has a metaphor to describe the Republican voters and their semi-disdain for Romney - it's like the difference between the girl you date and the one you marry; or it's like the car that you know is solid and reliable, but doesn't excite you. It's like, you know, they know they'll probably make him the nominee... but it's ike they don't really want to do it.

It's like... the way we were about John Kerry.

The question isn't whether or how MItt Romney can beat the metaphor, or whether, at this point, he'll lose to Newt Gingrich(!); the thing about the metaphor is that it matters. It matters because it's true, and it matters because, like Kerry, the Republicans are probably right to be worried. They can, and probably will, nominate MItt Romney. And he'll probably lose.

The Failure Formerly Known As Our Last President

Of course the "Super Committee" - what a dopey name - "failed." It was designed to fail, set up to fail, populated with people for whom failure was the only option. When President Obama announced the deal to extend the debt ceiling, with its absurd conditions, including a committee which would generate $1.2 trillion in cuts... or else... the painful stench of failure was already there. 

And really, it just never went away.

It's easy to pin this failure as Example 376 of How Washington Is Not Working. I find the sight of the pundits, all weekend and through yesterday, earnestly insisting that the Comittee wasn't a foregone exercise in failure, but an earnest attempt to get it done, both sad and hilarious. Nobody thought there was a workable deal. And the people who thought This Time Would Be Different are especially foolish and gullible.

Of course, Washington isn't working...but simply blaming the current crop of politicians is too easy. This is failure that Americans actually voted for, and we, as voters and citizens ought to own up to our role in it. These people in DC fail because, in no small part, we want them to fail. We don't want to pay more taxes, we don't want to see government services cut, many people just want what we had before the economy fell apart.... or more precisely, the economy we had mostly under Bill Clinton.

We elect people who promise not to make the hard choices... and then wonder why they don't make them. 

So beyond the obvious failure, the one we knew was going to happen months ago, what else was at work here, and what happens now? Well, I'd argue that the real success here, the one that was set up months ago, is a long term success for Democrats, and it's success that builds on the real failure that we've been struggling with for close to ten years... the failed Presidency of George W. Bush.

Why are we in this "debt crisis"? Well, we're here for a couple of reasons. One is because of a set of tax cuts, passed during the Bush years, which have decimated the amount of revenue the government takes in by artificially cutting everyone's income tax rate. The other reason is the implosion of financial markets, driven by an explosion in mortgage bonds fueld by bad loans... and exacerbated, in no small part, by a President who insisted "everyone should own a home," and who pushed policies and programs that would do that, including pushing people into loans that many shouldn't have taken and couldn't afford.

Since 2006, Republicans have lost election after election because of the failures of George W' Bush. That includes his policy failures, and the campaign of deep divisiveness pursued by his advisors. It also includes a failure on the part of current Republicans to repudiate the Bush-era disasters, and to develop new strategies. It's why Republicans have "problems with their base" and "Tea Party" politics driven by anger and loyalty tests to failed, contradictory philosophies.

Democrats, too, struggle with the Bush-era failures; though we made steady progress back to elected majorities in Congress and elected a President, the hangover of failed Bush policies has made dealing with the aftermath difficult. President Obama has proven to be weakest on economic issues, putting a team in place whose connections to banking and finance and acceptance of the status quo added to our problems. With no significant reform of foreclosures, big banking, or the mortgage industry, we have few real options for solving our current economic crisis. And on tax cuts, President Obama and congressional Democrats have been afraid to speak plainly that the Bush tax cuts - all of them - simply must go.

The "Super Failure" though, may offer some glimmers of solutions down the road - if the automatic cuts are adhered to, then some progress on spending will happen... and it will happen to the Defense Department, where it is long overdue. But more importantly, it now seems likely that the Bush tax cuts may well expire fully at the end of 2012. It seems clear that Congressional Democrats will not be blackmailed into bad deals over making the Bush cuts permanent, and the will to extend them past 2012 weakens every day. Further, the Super Committee debates, which rehashed familiar arguments on all sides, led more than a few pundits to a natural conclusion - we can talk about the Bush tax cuts ending, because more people are realizing that a main reaosn our deficits are so enormous is because tax policy makes no sense.

Republicans are, clearly, pinning a lot of their hopes to the elections next year, that dissatisfaction with President Obama - and managing to shift blame for much of the Bush hangover on to him - will give them the Presidency and greater control of Congress. There may be a scenario where Mitt Romney can become President... but it's still pretty unlikely, and no one, really can say what Romney's approach to economic policy would be with certainty (that's the underlying concern about his all over the place previous positions). But it doesn't matter when we're talking Bush tax cuts; those expire after the general election before the next President takes orfice. If Obama loses the eection... who thinks he'll sign off on a further extension of the Bush cuts? His best mischief would be to let them expire... and forc Romney to try and argue that recreating them makes sound budgetary sense. That won't happen, either.

Allowing the Bush tax cuts to expire will force us to move forward on other discussions - how to really tackle health care costs, reexamining the problems with banks and foreclosures, and probably having some sensible discussions about separating what's essential in governmetn spending from what can, and should, get cut. We could reform payroll taxes by raising the income ceiling. We could do tax reform that reduces deductions and resets tax rates in a smarter way than the Bush approach. There's a lot of options, and if the Bush cuts expire, we could start to figure out what they are.

Republicans need to lose next year because the Bush Presidency needs, still, to be fully and complretely repudiated. Our media avoids mentioning the failed Bush Presidency, partly because it's divisive, and partly because we don't like to talk about our past, especially our recent past. And the silence over the failed Bush presidency has alowed Republicans to pretend both that it never happened and that if it did happen, let's remember the parts we like. The failure of the Super Committee - whether we're talking the failures of deep political divisions that squashed meaningful debate, or the practical failures of deep debt and a wrecked economy, all stem directly, and pointedly, from the failures we lived through under George W. Bush. Thank goodness, really, that the Super Committee failed rather than giving us yet another way to paper over the Bush Administration's failures without directly naming them. The stench of failure you smell... that's the lingering smell of that failed President we had last time. Let's not go there again.

The Occupation Ends... And The World Goes Round

If it's worth having a "two month anniversary", can I at least get a few moments to ask what Occupy Wall Street managed to accomplish in two months?

And if I say, at best, the OWS movement has been a literal mess... do I still really have to apologize for not being a good lefty?

Either way, I'm still here, and I'm still saying it: two months of this poorly thought through, lousily executed protest and all we've got to show for it are our chains - I mean, those metaphorical ones where we 99% are shackled to the wheel, grinding away for the 1%. Or something.

Little over a month ago I said what, I figured at the time, was not wildly out of line: it seemed hard to tell what OWS was trying to accomplish, it was hard to see how a lot of people camped out in a park would amount to much, and the likelihood of things breaking down into disarray and chaos and possibly violence seemed all too real. Can I at least get a point for having some small amount of prescience?

For about a couple of weeks, I had a post in mind about the fact that New Yorkers are, in fact, an extremely patient people - we get a bad rap for being angry and impatient, but it takes patience, and a remarkable sense of grace to live in the highly concentrated, congested quarters of America's largest city. And when it comes to acting out - and acting up - New Yorkers often turn out to be awfully patient. We just avoid Times Square, or go to the beach on Pride Parade week, or shop downtown while the New York City Marathon is running. Inconveniences happen. And most days, you will still have to wait in line for your morning coffee. Patience isn't just a virtue, it's essential.

That's why I don't think it's surprising that a lot of other cities and a number of other Mayors lost patience with their "Occupy" protests long before Bloomberg moved into Zucotti Park. Denver and Oakland and Portland and Seattle may give off West Coast (or Mountaintop) vibes of easy acceptance and anything goes... but all that mellowness is hard won and, well, leaves a dark cranky undercurrent. Live Free and Peaceful... just don't get out of line or cause too much trouble. Or we'll show up with tear gas and pepper spray.

By the time Bloomberg and Co moved in to Zucotti, patience wasn't jut thin, it was pretty much gone. "What do you want" has gone from being a plaintive cry to a sneer to a near screaming response. We get it... you're angry... but WHAT THE HELL DO YOU WANT? The reality, the sad reality, really, is that OWS has never quite figured that out. They're kind of mad about banks and world finance, they're kind of upset about foreclosures, there's a lot of "We Are The 99%"... but none of that amounts to a coherent case for changing something, never mind a set of proposals, always asked for, about some practical things that could be started right away, to really change things, or make a difference.

Even today, as the "Anniversary" is marked by fresh protests, Occupy Wall Street literally couldn't live up to its name. Still. Trying to march to Wall Street with the expressed purpose of "shutting down" the stock exchanges amounted to a lot of street blockades, some arrests... and little else. I spent the morning transfixed by the images on the business channels, where earnest, even caring, reporters tried to make sense of the protests... only to have to turn from that to reporting on the other actual business news of the days... because, regardless, the business of business was going to go on. Most obviously, and most tellingly, the idea of stopping or shutting the exchanges was impossible because "Wall Street" is no longer the center of the stock or bond market - the same internet that makes Twitter and Facebook the tools of the New Fangled Revolutions is the tool that's been destroying our economy at the speed of light. Nobody can shut down the stock markets without finding the "off" switch.

Much has been made of the "hundreds" of protests, the "thousands" of demonstrators, the "huge numbers" of bank accounts closed or moved in the movement's arguably one real challenge to the status quo, the Move Your Money protest. The reality though is that all of these big numbers are drops in a vast ocean of indifference and ignorance. Millions of people, still, probably don't know much about, or care, about Occupy protests. And even among the chattering classes, nominal support for some anger at economic injustice doesn't amount to doing anything at all. Millions of bank accounts are still at the largest (and worst run) banks. I don't love Chase, I think Jamie Dimon is part of the problem... but my checking account is still with them. And a Credit Union is no answer for me, though I still ponder the possibility.

And still, worst of all, I think, is the frustrating sense that blind support for Occupy is some kind of lefty expectation. Either you support the people in the streets... or you sympathize with the 1%. There's no way to say, apparently, still, that one cares deeply about economic justice and economic reforms, bank regulation and reduction of debt... but doesn't see the point of people camped out in parks, or swarming the streets turning a protest against banks into confrontations with police and local authority. Because, clearly, they're all the same. That kind of undifferentiated, nonspecific nature to the Occupy protests is the real and continuing indication that a leaderless mob is no answer to the problems we face. 

I'm sure some will argue that a) this isn't over (I'd agree), that b) this was a necessary step to future action and c) that these protests have had meaningful results, if one just looks hard enough. I don't think OWS is over, but future protests won't, really owe their future success or future support to Occupy; they will be successful when and if the case is made for taking action and expecting actual results. The failure of OWS to do either is real, and OWS owns it, and should, fairly, be termed as failed. As for "meaningful results"... replaying old debates about how police and local authorities handle mobs doesn't strike me as what OWS set out to do, and the results, mainly, are reminders that the public will accept a lot of mistreatment of protesters if the result is a return to normalcy where the protesters go away. And no, that's not me saying "yea mistreatment!", it's simply to say that, as for example in Oakland, our ability to find one side sympathetic gets harder when the mob goes off on a window breaking, stone throwing rampage.

And sure, the protesters remain in Zucotti Park, the leaderless meetings go on, more protests will no doubt occur.  It's going to be hard, though, to sustain that energy through a long winter. Even more pointedly, I'd wonder just who's doing what with all that money ($500,000, I read) and stuff that OWS "owns" though it's "not organized" and lacks a leadership. Today, I suspect, the two month anniversary may mark the movement's last real gasp of relevance. From here, it strikes me as dwindling participation, a lot of conflicts over money and property, and a sense of an opportunity in the distance that was missed. And maybe someone learned something from the failures of Occupy... but my own sense is to doubt that. Which means, come next summer, probably some new protests with similarly boisterous crowds, full of sound and fury, signifying very little at all.

Yet Another Of The Articles We Never Finished Reading

Or, "there isn't a violin small enough":

When Mr. [Tod] Abrams bought the brand-new apartment in 2007, his taxes were just $35 a month; he now pays $374 a month. When the exemption runs its course, in 2018, the monthly tax bill will be an estimated $1,629.

“It is utterly ridiculous,” said Mr. Abrams, a co-president of Alternative Marketing Solutions, which helps publicize films. “I have a home in Los Angeles and Palm Springs, and California is famous for high taxes, yet we don’t pay anything close to what I will be paying.”

- "421a Tax Exemption: Don’t Say You Didn’t Know" by Julie Satow, in the opening discussion of Tod Abrams' "mint condition" 2 bedroom condo, now on sale for $1.575 million (emphasis added).

And BTW, the last article we never finished reading, also in the NYT.