The View from Right Field

"Stealth Liberalism," Compassionate Conservatism and Sarah Palin

In Friday’s Wall Street Journal, Kimberley Strassel claims that the Democrats are offering a "stealth liberalism" (in the words of her headline writer). According to Ms. Strassel, the Democrats are proposing one of the largest tax increases in history but calling it a tax cut for the middle class. While proposing a near universal health insurance plan, Obama’s website emphasizes that no one would be forced to join his plan. Obama says he believes in free trade (now that he has won the nomination), while Democrats in Congress still refuse to vote on free trade deals with strong allies like Colombia and South Korea,

I understand Ms. Strassel’s frustration, but then I feel we have been living through a form of "stealth liberalism" for the past eight years. President Bush did cut taxes, but in other areas we have had the functional equivalent of big government liberalism presented as "compassionate conservatism." While Obama’s health insurance plan may be the biggest new government entitlement program since Medicare, Bush’s drug program for seniors is plenty big on its own, and it has significantly increased deficit projections for the future.

Bush dramatically increased federal spending for primary and secondary education. By cloaking this increase in the clothes of No Child Left Behind, Bush tried to present this as "compassionate conservatism." The opposition of teachers unions, and therefore the Democrats in Congress, to the testing requirements distracted many people from what was really happening: a huge increase in both federal government spending and federal government regulation in an area traditionally, and appropriately, left to the states.

And then there was government spending in general. Overall government spending during the first six years of Bush’s presidency, while Republicans controlled Congress, did not increase "conservatively". While they were not the biggest part of the increase, the explosion the number of earmarks is a perfect example of how a Republican Congress gave us a big government administration clothed in conservative rhetoric.

Which brings me to the absolute genius of the Sarah Palin selection. In Sarah Palin, John McCain has found a running mate who fought against the very kind of thing that went wrong during the Bush administration. Sarah Palin fought against the Ted Stevens/Don Young/"Bridge to nowhere" branch of the Republican Party in Alaska.

Ms. Palin’s selection gives conservatives in the Republican Party hope that we will be able to reclaim what can make us different from Democrats. Instead of buying votes with earmarks and government spending, we can earn votes by sticking to our principles.

Ms. Palin’s selection has the potential to excite the conservative base of the Republican Party in a way that none of the other possible vice presidential candidates could have. And this will be important not just in votes but in workers. Elections are won with volunteers. Ms. Palin’s selection should re-energize the Republican volunteers. With them, it will be a tough race. Without them, it would have been impossible.

Obama's Judgment on National Security – and Baseball

According to a CNN poll that came out yesterday, the American people trust John McCain over Barack Obama by a clear margin when it comes to foreign policy and national security issues. Of those polled, 78% said McCain could handle the job of commander-in-chief; only 58% thought Obama could do the job. McCain was viewed as the stronger leader by 51% to 41%, and McCain had a nine-point lead, 52% to 43%, on the question of who would have better judgment in an international crisis.

This last question is particularly interesting because one of the bases of Obama’s campaign has been the quality of his judgment. When the question of experience came up in the Democratic primaries, Obama emphasized his early opposition to the war in Iraq and said that good judgment is more important than experience.

When things were going poorly in Iraq, Obama’s argument had a certain appeal, especially in the Democratic Party. When Bush proposed the surge, Obama made it clear, right away, that he opposed the surge and that the surge wouldn’t work.

The success of the surge has caused Obama a problem. Now, not only doesn’t he have experience, but on the most important foreign policy/defense question to arise since he became a senator, Obama got the answer exactly wrong. Even worse, he wouldn’t admit that he got it wrong. Even when things started getting better, he denied the surge was working. Then, when he finally could no longer deny that things had gotten better, he still wouldn’t admit he was wrong about the surge. He just said that our soldiers were so good, they made it better.

Based on the CNN poll, it appears that Americans agree with Barack Obama that judgment is the key question when it comes to foreign affairs and national security. It also appears most Americans trust John McCain’s judgment over Barack Obama’s.*

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* Speaking of judgment, I am not going to get involved in the merits of Senator Obama’s comments about Cubs fans and Wrigley Field. (In case you missed it, here is what he said to ESPN’s Stuart Scott: "The Cubs, they’re nice. You go to Wrigley Field, you have a beer. You know, the beautiful people out there, people aren’t watching the game. It’s not serious. White Sox, that’s baseball. … South side.") My question is: Why would he be so dumb as to say that? It is one thing to be for a team. You shouldn’t change that. But to gratuitously insult the fans of another team when you are running for President is stupid. It’s bad judgment. People will vote against you for something like this. It indicates to me that Barack Obama really doesn’t understand what is important to a lot of people. And that doesn’t say much about his judgment, either.

China's Future – And Ours

Frank Rich’s op-ed column in Sunday’s New York Times was mostly the normal McCain-bashing and Obama-promoting that one expects from Mr. Rich, but half-way through he drifted off onto the Olympics and China:

"You couldn’t watch NBC’s weeks of coverage without feeling bombarded by an ascendant China whose superior cache of gold medals and dazzling management of the Games became a proxy for its spectacular commercial and cultural prowess in the new century. … Americans watching the Olympics could not escape the reality that China in particular and Asia in general will continue to outpace our country in growth while we remain mired in stagnancy and debt (much of it held by China)."

Rich’s story of China’s "commercial prowess" and growth that will "outpace" us reminded me of two similar predictions in the past. First, when I was taking an introductory economics course in college (back when dinosaurs roamed the earth – or at least Lyndon Johnson was President), my professor would talk to us about the growth rate of the Soviet Union’s economy versus that of the United States. The Soviet Union’s growth rate was so much higher than ours that there was no question that, at some point, the Soviet Union would overtake the United States economically. It was inevitable. Except that it never happened.

We later discovered the truth about those alleged growth rates. For one thing, the numbers they were based on were lies. Maybe the top people weren’t technically lying (because they didn’t really know what was going on), but the numbers weren’t real. Factories would say that they made things that they didn’t make. If the plan said a factory had to make a certain number of products, they said they made them, even if they didn’t.

In addition, many times the products that were made weren’t worth anything. There were lots of products that were made that nobody wanted. Either too many of them were made or they were terrible quality or they weren’t worth the price that was being charged for them, and the system had no way to stop the products from being made. (As somebody once said, the Soviet Union’s national product was definitely gross.) All of which made the growth numbers as illegitimate as the system they were supposed to be about.

Second was Japan in the 1980s. It is hard to remember now, but back in the ‘80s the big story was the economic growth in Japan and how Japan was going to overtake the United States. Japan’s special kind of bureaucratic-led business planning was hailed as the way of the future and the reason why Japan would eventually become the world’s number one economic power. Except that it never happened, either.

The Japanese system got stuck in the 1990s and growth stopped. The system that had looked so good in the ‘80s couldn’t handle the new challenges it faced in the ‘90s. The economy froze up when Japan couldn’t make necessary reforms to an economy that wasn’t working anymore. The system was paralyzed by vested special interests that wouldn’t allow difficult decisions to be made.

But what is important about these examples is not the exact thing that went wrong in each case. The important thing is how wrong these predictions were. The Soviet Union not only didn’t pass the United States, it was gone as a country less than 25 years after my economics class, in large part because of the economic system that was supposedly going to surpass us. Similarly, Japan never became number one. In fact, in some ways, Japan has become more of an example of what to avoid than a model of what to do.

In like fashion we should take with a grain of salt, and a healthy skepticism, predictions about China. Maybe China will ultimately have a higher GNP than the United States, but it has so many more people, that the average income per person still won’t be close to ours. And even that assumes nothing is going to change in China or the world.

Just as the experts didn’t see the rot that would eventually cause the collapse of the Soviet system or the inflexibility and refusal to make necessary reforms that would paralyze the Japanese economy and stifle its growth in the ‘90s, we do not know all that is going on in China and whether its present course is sustainable. What we do know is that a system that is flexible enough and free enough to adapt and change will, on average, do the best job of providing economic growth and improving living conditions for its people.

The Last Jim Edgar Bumper Sticker

Our 1993 Geo Prizm died yesterday. Actually, it probably died Thursday, but I didn’t know for sure until I talked with the mechanic Friday morning. I feel bad about the car; it was only 15 years old, after all; but I feel worse about the bumper sticker on the car. You see, the Prizm may have been the last car in Illinois with a Jim Edgar bumper sticker on it.

We bought the car in 1993, and we got the Edgar bumper sticker in the fall of 1994, and I have proudly driven the car, with the bumper sticker on it, ever since. In fact, when our son took the car to college with him in 2004, the stipulation was that he could have the car, but the bumper sticker stayed.

It was a big deal to me because I was proud to have supported Jim Edgar, and worked for him as a Republican precinct captain, in 1990 and 1994. Jim Edgar was a governor of a type we do not seem to get any more. He was honest and he didn’t waste money.

In 1990 Illinois was in a financial bind. The state income tax had been increased from 2-1/2 percent to 3 percent on a temporary basis. Edgar knew the increase would have to be permanent, and that is what he told the voters (unlike his Democratic opponent). But he also told them he would not increase the tax beyond that. The voters believed him, and he did what he said.

Edgar also managed the state and its budget properly. When he came into office, Illinois had a huge budget deficit because the prior governor and the state legislature had spent more than they had. Eight years later, Edgar left the state with a budget in balance and a surplus on its books.

Unlike some governors since then, he didn’t make stupid promises of not increasing taxes when that wasn’t right. He also didn’t spend the state into a financial hole and use budget tricks to avoid doing things like at least starting to properly fund future retirement liabilities.

And so, when our Prizm died, the bumper sticker for our last good governor died with it. While I will miss the car and the bumper sticker, I miss the governor even more.

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Update (8/23/08 3:00 p.m.):  I changed the title of this post. 

The 2008 Cubs – So Far

A couple of thoughts on the Cubs’ season so far. First, one does not want to get overly excited. And I am not. But there is a reason for it. Last night I started watching a videotape that I have of the play "Bleacher Bums." Bleacher Bums is set in the summer of 1977. In 1977 we had not won a World Series for 69 years or a pennant for 32 years. We still have not won a World Series or even a National League pennant, but it is different today than it was in 1977. It is different because we have been in the postseason. Obviously, we have not gotten far enough, but we have been there, and that makes just getting to the postseason different now than it used to be.

1984 was different than today because it was the first time. That was great. And 1989 was different because we had only been there once before, and in 1989 we pulled away in September (just about a first for doing that {in my lifetime}), and we were just one series win (four out of seven) away from a pennant and the World Series.

1998 was different because it was, effectively, the first time in the postseason for my kids and that was great. Of course, we didn’t do anything (though who knows what might have happened if Tapani had been able to get that ball past Javy Lopez), but in ’98 just getting to the postseason was pretty darn exciting.

But we didn’t move on, which meant that 2003 was a big deal (especially because, like 1989, we won it in September). And in 2003 we won the first round. That was fantastic. But then.

By 2007 it was nice to be in the postseason, but just being there was not enough any more. We needed to actually do something, something more than just being there. So it was exciting to be there, but it wasn’t as exciting as ’84 or ’89 or ’98 or even ’03.

Which means 2008 is exciting, but it is only partly as exciting. You know that you have to go beyond just getting into the postseason. And the postseason is a whole new season – each time. It does not matter how many games you have won before. You start at zero – again. (Also, the stupid White Sox winning the World Series in 2005 means that just getting to the World Series is not as big of a deal as it would have been in 2003 or before.)

In sum, and I know this sounds weird coming from a Cubs fan: It is great how well we are doing, but we have been to the postseason before. Just getting there is not enough. We have to win those new seasons, too. And only one out of four (or eight, depending on how you count) is going to make it.  There is a long way to go – and a lot to do – to get too excited now.

P.S. Yesterday's game was pretty exciting, though. The Cubs scratched out three runs on just six hits and two walks. (Hitting into three double plays didn't help, and how could Alfonso Soriano get the only two walks?) Carlos's fourth home run of the year was the difference. (Carlos has gotten a hit in his last seven starts and has the best batting average of anybody on the team with more than 40 ABs.) Kerry pitched a 1-2-3 ninth to save it.  Cubs 3, Reds 2. We haven't done that well in one-run games, so it was good to win a close one. Go Cubs Go.

No Problem Left Behind

This is from the lead editorial in Sunday’s Chicago Tribune, "When schools fail our kids":

"When schools fail, as they do too often in Illinois and other places, their students are not the only ones who suffer. The rest of us pay the price: a less productive economy and more social ills. So voters this fall need to ask which presidential candidate is likely to do more to improve American education.

Unfortunately, neither Barack Obama nor John McCain has done nearly enough to chart a path to better schools for all."

The Tribune is right; the problem with some of our public schools is serious. While arguments about solutions go on and on, kids’ lives are being wasted.

But does the solution really lie with Barack Obama and John McCain, as the Tribune seems to think? No, it doesn’t. Our national government is big and it has a lot of money, but it cannot solve all of our problems. First, not all of our problems can be solved by government. But even when it comes to those problems that government can solve, the federal government cannot solve them all.

I understand the desire of people to look to Washington to solve our schools’ problems. For those who think the solution is more money, Washington has a lot of it (along with a printing press for even more). For those who think the teachers unions are too powerful and we need more competition in education, the hope is that they can get what they want by winning one battle in Washington instead of having to fight separate battles in every state. But both of these views are wrong.

Education is not a one-size-fits-all kind of problem that the federal government should handle. Local people in local districts know what is best for their schools. They are the ones who should be deciding.

Besides, both Senator Obama and Senator McCain have other things they will need to worry about if they become President, things that need a national answer and can’t be done at the state level. Senator McCain has said he needs to know more about economics. He should spend some time thinking about that. Senator Obama needs to do a lot of studying on foreign affairs and military matters to make up for what is a pretty thin record in those areas.

The United States has different levels of government so that not every problem needs to be solved in Washington – and because not every problem can be solved in Washington. Local governments and state governments need to solve our education problems, and the voters need to make sure they do. Our leaders in Washington have other things they should be doing.

Hitler and Bush; Germany and the United States

Timothy Snyder goes on at length in Sunday’s Chicago Tribune comparing the decline of democracy and the rise of Hitler in Germany in the 1930s with George Bush and what Professor Snyder claims has happened in the United States since September 11, 2001.

According to Professor Snyder, the legal basis for Hitler’s concentration camps was the same as that for the prison at Guantanamo Bay. Germany in the 1930s and the United States today both have "a runaway executive branch" (though Germany’s was worse). And so on.

While Professor Snyder does ultimately acknowledge that the United States’ "policies in the Middle East have nothing in common with Hitler’s genocidal purposes", he doesn’t get around to saying it until the thirteenth paragraph of a 17-paragraph article. And the very next paragraph claims, while admitting we have not committed any crimes "remotely comparable to the Holocaust", that Bush’s United States has "disenfranchised voters," "forged elections," "fought a war of aggression," etc., etc.

About the only thing missing from Professor Snyder’s comparison of Hitler and Bush is a claim that, just as some historians now believe the Nazis started the Reichstag fire that Hitler used to justify his policies, some people say Bush, or at least his cronies, were the ones behind the 9/11 attacks.

Georgia On My Mind

While one wonders if China is reprising Berlin 1936 with its Olympics, one also wonders what is being reprised in Georgia. Is it Czechoslovakia 1938 or Berlin 1948 or maybe Berlin 1961?

Czechoslovakia 1938 was Neville Chamberlain bringing "peace in our time" back from Munich. It was, in fact, Czechoslovakia 1938 that gave appeasement a bad name. Appeasement was an acceptable term before Munich. (See here.) Czechoslovakia 1938 was giving in to Hitler and maybe missing a chance to stop World War II before it started.

Berlin 1948 was the Berlin Airlift and Harry Truman standing up to the Russians even though it was hard to do so and lots of people were saying that we couldn’t do it, that it didn’t really matter, and that it wasn’t the right place to fight.

Berlin 1961 was the Wall going up. It was a terrible thing, but we decided we could not do anything about it. We knew we had to stop the Russians, but we couldn’t do it there. We would have to let them win because they needed the Wall to be there more than we needed the Wall to not be there. It wasn’t the right place to fight. It would be harder the next time because we lost in Berlin in 1961, but we decided it was better to do that than to make a stand in the wrong place at the wrong time.

So which of these is Georgia? Vladimir Putin and Russia today is not Hitler and Germany in 1938. It is more of a question of whether this is Berlin 1948 or Berlin 1961. At this point, I do not know the answer to that question, and we probably won’t know the answer until after the crisis is over and three or four, or maybe more, years have passed.

In the meantime it is interesting how various commentators and, in some cases, politicians have fallen into their old, late Cold War roles. One side says we have to stop the Russians. The other side says we need to understand the Russians and Georgia instigated it anyway. The first side thinks that letting the Russians prevail will just encourage them to keep pushing – and will lead others to think they have to give in to what the Russians want. The second side says that we’re just as bad and that the Russians are only doing what we did (in Iraq or Kosovo or someplace) and that we have no moral right to complain.* The first side favored Reagan’s SDI plans and wanted to put Pershing II’s into Western Europe in the early 1980s to counter the Russian SS-20s. The second side demonstrated against both of these decisions.**

Personally, I hope we can support the Georgians and stand up to the Russians. The Georgians are really trying to start a democracy in the Caucasus. They sent 3,000 troops to help us in Iraq (probably another reason why some of the people on the second side don’t care about the Georgians). But I don’t have the facts to know if we can. Sometimes the balance of forces, the available resources, just does not allow you to do what you want to do. That was Berlin in 1961. If that is true in this case, we will need to accept that fact – and try harder to be ready the next time.

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* The moral equivalence of Georgia and Iraq (or Kosovo) is an interesting question. I do not think there is a moral equivalence, but I do not have time to address that question today. I hope I can get to it in the next week or so.

** When I read that Barack Obama said the Berlin Wall came down because of the world coming together as one, I wondered what world he was referring to. Certainly not the one I remember.

Classic Baseball

One of the great things about baseball, especially when you have been to a few games, is how much you can tell about a game just by looking at the box score. You don’t have to read about the game or see the highlights. All you have to do is look at the box score. There was a game like that last night in San Diego.

First, the starting pitchers. 45-year old Jamie Moyer started for the Phillies. 42-year old Greg Maddux started for the Padres. Two of the oldest pitchers in the major leagues, both of whom first pitched for the Chicago Cubs in 1986. I saw Moyer’s first major league start, as did my wife and kids, on June 16, 1986. He beat Steve Carlton, 7 to 5. Maddux started in September of that year. I didn’t see him in person until 1988, but even that was 20 years ago. With major leaguers today, it’s either high pants or pants down to the shoe tops – but not these two guys. They may be the only players left wearing socks and stirrups. But to the game.

Maddux pitched seven innings, giving up just five hits, one of them a home run in the seventh. Moyer pitched seven innings, too, but he did Maddux one better. He gave up no runs on three hits and two walks. On a night when Carlos Zambrano was throwing 119 pitches in six innings and Kerry Wood had to throw 30 pitches in one inning (the ninth), Maddux only threw 85 pitches in full seven innings and Moyer needed just thirteen pitches more than that for his seven. It took three more Phillies pitchers and four more Padres to finish the game, but it wound up 1 to 0.

Two pitchers with a combined age of 87 pitching fourteen innings between them and giving up just one run. Final score 1 to 0. Classic.

I wonder how many of the people in San Diego last night understood how lucky they were to see that game. I feel lucky just being able to read the box score.

Break

I will be on break for about ten days. We are going to visit our daughter in Washington. While we are there, we will get to see the Nationals’ new stadium. In the meantime, Go Cubs!