Dana Blankenhorn

The Party of Hoover

The political media is catching up with something I first wrote over a year ago.

The Republican Party is the Party of Hoover.

Herbert Hoover may be the most fascinating failed President in all American history. (Even more so than Millard Fillmore.) Not only did he dominate the late Progressive era, feeding Europe after World War I, providing private relief after the 1927 Louisiana hurricane (little fat man with a notebook in his hand) but he re-built his party by hand after its 1932 defeat, his Hoover Institution being among the key builders of what became today's Nixon Thesis. 

What the Hoover Institution was building, as early as the 1950s, was an ideology meant first to do battle with the Republican Anti-Thesis of that time, exemplified by Thomas E. Dewey, then Dwight Eisenhower, and finally Nelson Rockefeller, a practical politics which assumed the basic truth in what New Deal Democrats were saying but sought to lean against it, as into a strong wind. It was by winning this intra-party war through Barry Goldwater, who was nominated the same year Hoover died, that their triumph began, and that of their party. Today's GOP remains what the Hoover Institution built then. 

Call it NixonLand if you like. Bob Dole called the second half of the 20th century the Age of Nixon. But in terms of the Republican Party the whole century was really the Age of Hoover.

And so it remains today.

Hope Rising

Think of this as Volume 11, Number 19 of A-Clue.com, the online newsletter I've written since 1997. Enjoy.

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In most of the items marked Crisis of 2008 I have emphasized the difficulties in the time we're living with, the problems, the dangers.

But it is also vital, sometimes, to look at the opportunities, and to see the hope rising all around us.

I'm fortunate to find such things often in my work. Sometimes I bring them to you. Here are two just from this week:

• Simple breakthroughs in things like capacitors that can improve the efficiency of electric motors by as much as 300%.
• Breakthroughs in telemedicine which Microsoft is quickly taking advantage of.

Science and engineering are using the benefits of Moore's Law to create progress at a Moore's Law rate. That is breakthroughs are coming faster-and-faster, fast enough (perhaps) to halt the present processes destroying human life on this planet, and even turn them around.

If, that is, they can be brought into the world rapidly enough. The society which brings them to the market most rapidly will have the greatest share in the resulting prosperity.

What we need to make this happen is a process revolution. I am talking about accelerating both economic and political processes. We need to change business' processes so companies make more money solving problems than  causing them, as they have in this decade. And we need to change the way political change occurs at a fundamental level.

A generation ago Republicans talked about making government run more like a business. Now we need businesses to start taking their societal responsibilities seriously.

You do that by changing incentives.

• Right now electric utilities have more incentives to build power plants than to build efficiency into our electrical grid. We can change that.
• Right now drug companies have more incentives to create "me-too" drugs with patent protection than to produce generics we know work. We can change that.
• Right now energy producers have more incentives to withhold product from the market than to produce it. We can change that.
• Right now companies have more incentives to create monopolies than to open new markets. We can change that.
• Right now companies have more incentives to create paper than to see loans are repaid. We can change that.
  

When Al Gore talks about trading carbon credits, this is really what he's talking about, creating an incentive to emit less carbon by simply putting a price on it.

None of these changes are terribly difficult. Most are just a matter of will. And when we put the power of the market to work on the world's problems, pointing to those problems as opportunities with profits going to those who create solutions, positive change can happen quickly.

But that's not all.

My Burma Sorrow

I am sorry about the Burma hurricane. I am sad that its leaders are so paranoid as to refuse aid from the world. I am saddened that so little aid is getting into the affected region and that people are dieing needlessly.

But still...

When I read complaints from our government about the failure to allow aid it's like someone rubbing a balloon before popping it and laughing in my face.

Is it that way to you?

This morning on TV Cindy McCain was complaining bitterly of the Burmese peoples' plight. I have no doubt she felt sincere. But I kept switching back to that picture of her husband, the day Katrina hit New Orleans, standing with our leader, and a birthday cake.

Crocodile tears.

When I see Secretary of State Rice demanding that Burma allow aid in, all I can think of is what she was doing when Katrina hit New Orleans. Shopping for shoes.

When I read about U.S. diplomats bemoaning the destruction of Burmese rice fields, I think about how all they cared about after Katrina was getting the casinos back into operation, and how we're now benefiting from higher rice prices.

The Road to Chengdu

The tickets are paid for. The visa application is in the mail. It seems likely that my son John and I will be heading to Chengdu, Sichuan, China on May 22, taking his exchange teacher home.  (Not this way, of course.)

A decade ago, I would have gone with great optimism, a representative of American values. Now? Well, consider these two stories, and where in the world they occurred:

• Hundreds of people quietly protest a new refinery, expecting to be heard.
• Regime opponents are subject to political prosecutions, to having their homes torched, while elections are stolen and public opinion is ignored.

The first story is from Chengdu. The second is from Alabama. As others have noted, the Bush war against democracy continues apace, and even seems to be accelerating.

I think it's time for us to get off our ideological high horses and start talking first principles, not just the what but the why.

The Wright Reality

No matter how we feel about "phony" controversies they usually have an important point behind them.

They define the limits of acceptable speech.

Take the Jeremiah Wright mess, which Bill Moyers is still agonizing over. Why is Wright condemned for statements like "God Damn America" while preachers like John Hagee, who (along with Falwell and Robertson) said the exact same things (only with different reasons) go merrily on. Isn't that a double standard?

Well, yes and no.

It's a double standard in that one man's speech is seen as out of bounds and another man's speech is seen as within bounds. True. But the whole purpose of the exercise was to define the bounds of acceptable political speech. It was to make Wright, and everything he says, out of bounds while enabling extremists on the other side free rein. (Actually, free reign.)

In this, as in other phony controversies over the years, the Right has been masterful. Through this process of phony controversy the acceptable discourse within our society has been pushed ever-more to the right, so it's becoming impossible to even publicly utter obvious truths. I'd say that's an important result.

For instance, the following sentence is, politically, completely out of bounds within the American political discourse:

A World Without a Moral Center

As I may have mentioned here before I'm scheduled to visit Chengdu, China next month. Blogging will be sporadic.

Given the recent headlines over the torch run I'm certain you're wondering what I might tell my hosts.

The answer is -- not much.

For one thing I expect few there to know English. But even without the language barrier I'd mainly want to listen. Listen to my son try to puzzle out the language barrier after three years of Mandarin. Listen to people greet me, and try to explain things by speaking Szechuan ve-ry slow-ly (as though that would help).

But there's another, more important reason. I no longer have cause to condemn anyone.

Neither, frankly, do you.

Final Warning

After the shiny, happy people feeling you got from reading my last post, now I'm going to bring you down.

Over at Juan Cole's shop, former University of Chicago professor William Polk reads the tea leaves and pronounces the War With Iran to be at go time.

To last week's US News warning he adds the personal recollection that Dick Cheney also made a trip to Saudi Arabia in March 2002 -- ostensibly diplomatic but (we now know) his warning, and assurance, that Saddam Hussein was a dead man.

The article contains the tantalizing possibility that Israel's recent attack on Syria was just a test of its radar and anti-missile defenses, but Polk then adds news that there has been an unprecedented build-up of U.S. Navy assets in the Persian Gulf:

Of course, deploying forces along Iran’s frontier does not necessarily mean using them. At least that is what the Administration says. However, as a historian and former participant in government, I believe that having troops and weapons on the spot makes their use more likely than not.

Instead such forces create a "climate of war" like the one which set off The Guns of August and World War I, a climate which both Bush the Wiser and Bush the Dumber have given in to before. He adds that the rationale for war is contained in the 2005 National Defense Strategy, which asserted America's right to engage in first-strike warfare anytime, and anywhere, it chose.

What can halt the march to war? Just one thing.

It's Not That They're Clueless

Think of this as Volume 11, Number 11 of A-Clue.com, the online newsletter I've written since 1997. Enjoy.

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My blog friend Oliver Willis calls those in charge of our financial house clueless.

That's an easy mistake to make.

In fact, it's in the nature of our economic system that you go right up to the line of legality in order to maximize profit. Anyone who doesn't do that is an economic loser, either in the short run or the long run.

You want to go right up to the line, peer down over the edge, and maybe move your toes back a bit. That's what your lawyers are there for, to move your toes back a bit.

This is fine so long as the law is reasonable. If the law is reasonable and cops are on the beat, walking right up to the line of legality and staring down into the canyon is both legitimate and good business. It's what makes markets efficient.

The problem in this case is the law was made unreasonable, and the cops chose to look the other way.

All the problems Bear Stearns caused were through the creation of new, "unregulated" markets. An unregulated market is a market that's looking for scandal. Because there is no reasonable line you can walk right up to, it's easy as heck to become Wile  E. Coyote in such a market -- everything is fine so long as you don't look down.

The defaults on sub-prime mortgages last year were when we started to look down.

The End of Impunity

One thing which has marked the last two decades, and it's as true for ordinary people as for our leaders, has been a sense of impunity.

Democrats complain often of how the Bush Administration displays impunity. The rules don't apply to them. They make up their own reality. The President cannot break the law.

We talk a lot less about our personal impunity. We can buy what we want. We can walk away from our debts. We don't have to make hard choices.

Democrats most fear talking about the impunity inherent in their own positions. We'll get out of Iraq on our own schedule, and stay in Afghanistan "to win," they say. We'll give ordinary people tax cuts and raise spending on health care and education.

The end of all this impunity is a big theme in our current crisis and all of us -- Democrats, Republicans, consumers, businesses -- remain in the denial stage of the process.

Last week's biggest story may have been Joseph Stiglitz' (above) estimate of the Iraq war's cost -- $3-5 trillion. (It's all here in his book.) The figure seems unimaginable so let me put it into perspective.

It's going to cost the U.S. its autonomy. It's going to cost our currency. It's going to cost you your life savings, and me mine. It's going to end the era of American impunity.

Revenge, Reform and Justice

Think of this as Volume 11, Number 6 of A-Clue.com, the online newsletter I've written since 1997. Enjoy.

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The countdown to the end of the Bush era has begun.

We think.

But as we gaze over the immense crimes of this time, and seek justice for the damage to our world, our people, and our finances, the demand for revenge and justice is getting in the way of reform.

I share the thirst for revenge.

If no one pays for all this, if no one is held legally responsible for Iraq and Katrina and torture and the massive thefts which may add up to trillions of dollars we don't even have, then the whole country becomes like the Reagan labor secretary Raymond Donovan (right), plaintively wailing (after being found innocent of corruption) "where do I go to get my good name back?"

Fact is, with countries, it's not so easy. The guilt for this era will never wash off our hands. Not entirely. No matter our politics, the crimes of George W. Bush, his henchmen, and his followers, done in our name, are our crimes as well.

The Habit of Submission

Having just spent a week traveling by air, following several years of being away, I may have a unique perspective on the way the system has changed.

Whenever I was in an Airport, I was induced to conform. Watch what you read. Watch how you move. Watch your stuff. Be suspicious. Take off your shoes. Submit to inspection. Show us your papers.

This is the price we now routinely pay to travel by air. The people I saw in all the Airports I visited, both large and small, shared the same glass-eyed, vacant expressions. The same resignation.

In today's air system you have no rights. This was made clear to us when we arrived. Our non-stop flight was replaced by a one-stop, no notice, no apology, no nothing. The airline didn't even transfer the reservation correctly. We had to stand at a desk, helpless, for 40 minutes, while someone went into a back room to check, manually. We had arrived in plenty of time to have breakfast after getting through security, but this meant we could barely grab a single overpriced sandwich before being shuttled into our cramped seats.

And of course, the connection was two hours late.

Ignored in the Big Shitpile

There are three big problems, laid on top of one another, in the financial mess known as the Big Shitpile:

1. Bad loans were mixed with good ones and sold as securities, even options.
2. Millions of adjustable rate mortgages are re-setting to higher rates over the next three years.
3. Homes are priced at twice their value.

There are a lot of "solutions" being proposed by both parties for the first two problems. (Picture from Bayareahousingbubble.)

No one is even talking about the third, because its implications are too massive to contemplate.

But this is the stark reality. What we're reading now, even the pessimists' argument, is not yet even realistic.

When any bubble bursts, the actual value of things gets cut in half. Usually it over-shoots this mark, then it resettles at the halfway line and starts proceeding upward again, slowly.

• This is what happened to the NASDAQ after the tech bubble burst. It fell from 5,000 to under 2,000, but now trades at around 2,600.
• This is what happened to the Japanese stock market after it peaked in 1987 at around 37,000. It now trades at about half that value, and investors are happy to be there.

This is also what happened in the 1970s, the last time we had a housing crash. Homebuilding stopped in most markets -- at least those outside the oil patch. The price you could get for an existing home fell to much less than its replacement cost, and stayed there. Renting made sense.

That is where the U.S. housing market is headed. That's where it has to be headed in order to regain free market equilibrium. That's the way markets operate.

But you'd never know that from the nonsense being proposed right now:

• Easing the pinch on some "sub-prime" borrowers does not make more credit available for new mortgages. 
• Enabling refinancing of adjustable-rate debt doesn't make the value of the underlying home any greater.
• Giving developers incentives to price some homes below-market is useless.
• A moratorium on foreclosures sounds nice, but it's just delaying the inevitable.

Awakening the Netroots

Perhaps nothing illustrates the impact of Howard Dean's achievements than the caving of his party's Congressional wing this month.

It's the reaction to them that's important.

The FISA filibuster and the Bush Christmas Present Budget are angering the Netroots and, hopefully, re-energizing them.

It's a cold slap in the face, one that's overdue.

It's one thing to build a party, or a movement, as Kos has done. It's quite another to see that movement directed toward a goal, and directed toward actively confronting a party, really taking it over. That was the lesson Howard Dean himself tried to teach before becoming DNC chair, when he formed Democracy for America.

That's now taking place. The anger over at DailyKos, at Americablog, at Firedoglake, and elsewhere in the Netroots over what is happening now is palpable.  For much of 2007 netroots bloggers were, when outraged, mainly outraged at President Bush. They cut their own party's leaders considerable slack.

No more. I hope, and expect, that the result of this anger will be a growing sophistication on the part of Netroots activists and a growing number of Netroots-inspired primary challenges, such as those now going on in Illinois and Maryland.

We don't just need more Democrats. We need better Democrats.

Avoiding Nixonism

One of my great fears for 2008 is that Democrats will simply recapitulate the events of the last political crisis, that of 1968. (Picture  of the House Democratic leadership from Firedoglake.)

This would mean the narrow election of Hillary Clinton, slight increases in Democratic majorities, followed by a host of actions supported by the political right.

That's a mirror-image of what happened after 1968. Nixon's win was narrow, the domestic agenda of his first term was liberal, and his battles against the liberal assumptions of his time made him paranoid, resulting in Watergate. The Watergate scandal delayed the changes movement conservatives desired by over a half-decade. The distance between the 57% vote share by Nixon and Wallace in 1968, and the beginnings of the "Republican Revolution," in 1980, was 12 years.

Democrats can't afford this. Americans can't afford this. The world can't afford this. We can't wait 12 years to begin the War Against Oil. We can't wait 12 years for major action against global warming. We can't wait 12 years for a return to social mobility. We can't wait 12 years for honest government.

The Democratic outrages of the present day, their repeated capitulation to Republican demands,  and their delight in power without responsibility,  are not new. The Money Party has dominated American politics almost without let-up throughout its history. What New York wants, New York generally gets.

But not always. When the crisis is deep enough, and when leaders are courageous enough, the Money Party can be beaten back for a time.

The Reckoning

We are past the time of the Good German.  We're even past asking who might be a Bad German.

The Reckoning has begun.

We forget how The Reckoning can begin before the war ends. In Germany The Reckoning began long before the Soviets entered Berlin. It was in full swing at the time of the 1944 plot against Hitler (a plot in which I recently learned a distant relative (right) participated).

So it has begun here, with George W. Bush still in office. The great hope of the Administration, the fact that will keep W's butt out of jail, is to show Democrats' complicity.

Democrats were complicit. Democrats on the Intelligence Committees, and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, were apparently briefed on torture and stood silent. The CIA's insistence it acted within the law, that it it was only following orders, Mein Herr, is more evidence that the search for conspirators is well under way.

Essentially our Congressional leaders are being blackmailed, in the full light of day, by the regime's leaders. Protect us and you won't be hurt, they say. And these leaders are knuckling under.

In 2006 the cry was for more Democrats. Today the cry must go out for better Democrats. Despite the risk which our major media (which is also fully complicit in torture, in war crimes, and in the theft of this nation's Constitution) will claim exists, Democrats need to wage war on their fellow Democrats, right now. Netroots Democrats must demand that those Democrats whowere complicit in these crimes be held to account, in order that those Republicans who engaged in criminal conduct be held to account.

What is at stake is our own complicity in these crimes. Your complicity. My complicity.

The Prosperity Gospel

I probably shouldn't be writing this. I'm not black, although my neighbors are. I'm not wildly into religion, either. Although some of my best friends in life are.

But this is politically important, the start of what could be a turning point which will renew Republican domination of the South and threaten Democratic majorities nationwide.

It has to do with black televangelists, specifically the Prosperity Gospel. I saw the godfather of these boys do his thing in the 1970s, when I was a student at Rice. His name was Rev. Ike. Even in a secular setting, on a naked stage, it was easy to see his appeal.

Ike's spiritual descendants, specifically Creflo Dollar in Fulton County and Eddie Long in DeKalb, are now the dominant black preachers in Atlanta. They probably think of themselves as the Ralph D. Abernathy and Martin Luther King Jr. of their time. Certainly their political power is equivalent. Long even has one of Dr. King's daughters in his New Birth Church, and held Coretta Scott King's funeral service there.

Well, Sen. Charles Grassley wants their financial records, as part of a Senate investigation, and needless to say both men are pissed. First Amendment, they cry. Separation of church and state, they scream. Never mind that several white preachers have also been served. Never mind that obeying the summons is not mandatory.  Never mind, in fact, they are going to fulfill the committee's request.

What Grassley wants to know is why Long, Dollar and their fellow prosperity preachers drive fancy cars, own fancy homes, wear fancy cars, and pay themselves like Fortune 500 CEOs. The answer, their congregants will likely respond, is that the congregations want it that way.

From here on out, I'm going to try and link only to blogs written by black folks, who I find are in a better position to offer criticism than I am.  What I'll say in the mens' defense is what I noted earlier,  that many of my black neighbors, like the white middle class of 40 years ago, are seeking a clear separation between their experience and that of the poverty they left behind.  This leads them to embrace social conservatism, conspicuous consumption, and to seek preachers who endorse these choices, who embrace the same values.

The Choice

It's unfair.

The tribunal, in its infinite wisdom, has given us a choice.

Either my son is guilty-as-charged and must be returned to his "zone" school, which they know can't teach him anything, or he must prove not only that he has ADHD but that the ADHD caused the incident in question.

To stay in school, he must be branded.

It's unfair.

What Works

My current family crisis, which reaches a climax of sorts just hours from now, has taught me a lot.

About myself. About my strengths, and frailties. About my family, about love. About my wife, whom I love more than ever. About my son, whom I admire now, not just as a father, but as a man whose maturity is hard-won, one with his own stories to tell.

About community, about belonging. About blogging. About you.

Mainly it's taught me about what works. What works for me. What eases pain, what calms my nerves, what helps me keep panic at bay.

What works for me, when I get nervous, are talking, writing and walking. Talking about my problems relieves my pain. Writing about them helps put them in perspective. (Coca-Cola, when I'm real nervous and can't eat, can be a blessing. Music, fitting my mood, playing in the background.)

Walking, which is the exercise my father favored before I knew him, the exercise my son favors now, may work best of all.

Once this is over I have made some vows. I will get help for my own condition, help I have put off by hiding from the world behind a typewriter. I will become more involved in the community, with neighborhood groups, perhaps with my son's church. I will become an advocate, hoping to give others some benefit from lessons hard-won.

But first, let's take a walk.

 

This Week's Clue: Panic is Easy

Following is the essay you can designate as Volume 10, Number 43  of This Week's Clue, based on the e-mail newsletter I have produced since March, 1997. It would be the issue of October 29.

Enjoy.

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Posting has been slow here lately. This latest issue of a-clue.com is later than any I have yet published.

I remain in a panic.

Relief should come some time tomorrow. I have done everything possible to make that happen.

But you never know. And when we're talking about our own fates, or those of our family, this uncertainty is bound to cause nervousness. In the case of someone who, like me, deals with ADD plus anxiety (which is at the root of all the current problems) you may say the nervousness is squared.

I should tell you -- before you join me in panic -- that even a total failure tomorrow will not spell doom for my family. There are laws to protect people like me. We have been assured they will be deployed, and then considered, by those in authority. I have also learned, as so many do when facing great pain, that we have friends, not just inside the family but outside it, preachers and therapists and educators who have been extraordinarily patient with me.

So there is hope.

The 1967 Game: Who Are Your Parents Now?

One thing I'm very certain of is that not everyone lives in the here-and-now.

By that I mean many people reference everything around them to some past time. For Joe Lieberman, for instance, it's always 1962, High Camelot, he's a young idealistic liberal, and the alliances of that time still hold.

I suspect that for Dick Cheney it's 1974, his boss Richard Nixon is being forced to back-down over Watergate, and he's determined to overturn the precedent. For Hillary Clinton it's also 1974, but she's on the other side of that divide.

For many of my black neighbors, it's still 1967, but 1967 as it was in white America. Remember, we're now 2 generations (in the ghetto, nearly three) from the actual 1967, a date which is just one generation removed in white America's experience of time.

Most middle-class  black folks I know are first-generation middle-class. By that I mean they are enthusiastic about their position. They love the accoutrement, the kit, the big car, the suburban manse, the suits and the dresses. They believe firmly they have achieved their status through hard work, discipline, and spirituality. They dress for church. Their preachers (left) preach a gospel which says they deserve their wealth, and that the poor deserve their poverty because they lack discipline and give in to temptation. It's their fault, and it gets laid-off on you, you're doubly victimized.

They still like the R&B. That thing with the white shirt, and the tie, and the jacket, and the smooth syrupy singing, they like that. Snuggle up on a Saturday night with a Hennessy after the kids are in bed. Light some candles, turn the sound on low. They also like Steve Harvey. He does "Grown Folks Radio" now. If Perry Como were black, and young, they'd love him too, I think.

These people also have kids, many of whom are enamored of the whole hip-hop thing. (To the right, Curtis Jackson, alias 50 Cent.) They rebel by turning up the music, by posing, with pants hung low and gangster-ish body language. These middle class black kids are a lot like white poseurs of the same age, but the black parents don't see it (and neither do the white, which makes things dangerous for these kids). What they see are thugs. The parents agree with Bill Cosby, with his criticisms of the culture and the young people. He's right, but is the solution really confrontation, a black-on-black civil war between youth culture and the old people? Isn't that just letting yourself get used by The Man? I don't think they care.

I knew these people growing up. They were Jewish, or Italian, many had served in World War II.

They were my parents, too.