The "Third Culture Kid" and the Impotence of the "Incurious"

In a short thread discussing the intellectual shortcomings and failings of liberal professor, civil rights activist, and frequent Bill Maher panelist Cornell West, Andrew Sullivan posts an email from a reader who writes the most cogent description of President Obama that I've ever read. Money quote:

The liberal label doesn’t fit Obama either. As you have pointed out, like Reagan or Thatcher, at his heart he is a pragmatist. Like a true TCK, he doesn’t romanticize any one culture or ideology. He understands that there is good or bad in everything. Yet another reason why he can also be called the anti-Bush who along with Cheney is trapped in a juvenile Manichaeism.

Look closely at Sarah Palin and George W. Bush. They are not just anti-intellectual but they are deeply provincial people [who] made sure not to expose themselves to much outside of their comfort zone. Sarah bounced from college to college unable to really fit in anywhere but Wasilla. Not even the Governor’s mansion felt like home to her so she left that too. Bush grew up in the upper crust East Coast and found his identity as a simple, “aw’ shucks” Texan who just knows what to do in his gut. He can be detached from the real world when necessary. TCK’s have no choice. They must engage the world.

I strongly identify with this description: as a Jew, who grew up on the largely Italian/Irish Catholic Jersey Shore; who moved as a teenager to the transplanted Okie world of Long Beach, CA; who attended college at the gigantic UCLA (University of Caucasians Lost among Asians); who has lived a large part of my adult life among Latinos and other immigrant populations; and who has stood side by side with people from all walks of life and in all socio-economic strata, I have had to engage fully with all these different levels of society in order to survive. It was not a choice for me to retreat into that with which I could easily identify, mostly because I identified with so little. Those in America who have spent the bulk of their lives among people just like them would easily identify more with a George Bush than a Barack Obama. That is, of course, unless that "George Bush" type were so egregiously daft that he couldn't even attract the similarly intellectually Incurious.

One reason, perhaps, why John McCain didn't prevail against Obama was because he could not be a representative choice of the Incurious. He was a soldier, to be sure, but he was a silver-spoon fed soldier who'd had no amount of difficulty in the armed forces until he succeeded in getting himself shot down. He lived his life as a millionaire. He did not legislate unequivocally (in fact, I think the "maverick" label hurt him because the Incurious typically identify with those who fall into lock-step behind their rigid, theocracy-infused ideology). Even with the Queen of the Incurious as his running mate, he couldn't overcome those shortcomings because he'd alienated the intellectually curious in his party who could not grant power to the one who represented the antithesis of intellect itself.

Who's the Elitist?

Charles Krauthammer parrots the Obama-as-elitist talking point as he extols the virtues of Clinton's culturally-based, racially-tinged campaign of attack. On the gas-tax holiday:

The gas-tax holiday was never an economic or policy issue. It was meant to position her culturally. It heightened her identification with her white working-class constituency. Obama played his part by citing economists in opposing it. That completed her narrative: He had the pointy-headed professors on his side; she had the single moms seeking relief at the pump.

What pisses me off is that Krauthammer has no affinity for the life of the ordinary American. He was born in New York City to Jewish parents of French citizenship, and was raised in Montreal, where he attended The Royal Institution for the Advancement of Learning, or McGill University. Then he attended Harvard Medical School. He's a board-certified psychiatrist who ascended from HMS to the Carter Administration in 1978, writing speeches for Mondale before leaving in 1981 to start writing full-time for The New Republic.

Has this man ever found himself shopping at Wal-Mart or comparing truck tires for his Chevy half-ton? He's about as far removed from working class America as his beloved president. Which makes his commentary about Clinton's transformation from a Bush-bashing leftie to a centrist Everywoman all the more pernicious. As he sees it, Clinton understands that "the way to run against Obama [is by going] back to the center — not ideologically but culturally, not on policy but on attitude." On attitude. Screw policy, screw issues. This is the Rove maneuver of political warfare. Make the other guy wrong to rely on economics, science, and reason. Call him out of touch for forgoing unhealthy foods at the local eateries. Paint him as a clumsy gork for bowling gutter balls; ridicule his playing an urban game like basketball.

And of course we all know which way those "pointy-headed professors" lean. McCain should kiss her ring and pick up the next round of Crown Royal with a beer back.

Scary Statistic

From Nicholas Kristof at the NY Times. Seems that in nine of the last 10 presidential elections, the candidate who was nominated first won the general election. In 1980, Ted Kennedy held on until August, believing he had a real shot against Jimmy Carter when his chances had long since faded. As Kristof notes, Carter would probably have lost to Reagan anyway given his very strong negatives and the ongoing Iran hostage crisis, but Kennedy's hanging on did do some lasting damage to the party.

Hillary needs to bow out, and very soon (as in the next two weeks). Someone on NPR mentioned yesterday that having her exit, only to have her win a primary or two after her departure, would be devastating to Obama. McCain served Bush some serious embarrassment in 2000 after he quit and then won a primary. She should perhaps hang on long enough to take West Virginia and Kentucky -- two states where the outcome won't matter a hill o'beans in the end -- and then emphatically throw her support behind Obama.

The Dems have a huge obstacle to overcome. They must reconcile with white voters who would rather vote for McCain -- or not at all -- if Obama is the nominee. Some serious education must be provided for these uneducated voters who think that a vote for McSame is better for America than a vote for Obama. If they can't be swayed, then I fear that only confirms what I and many others have been saying all along: Americans really are that stupid.

Who's the real enemy here?

The NY Times editorializes that Obama and Clinton now need to stop stabbing at each other over inconsequential matters and to debate the issues. Big news there, right? Well, that's just the means to the end. The piece vividly illustrates what's really at stake. As the title suggests, "It's About the White House." The lucky man or woman who gets to occupy that building for the next four to eight years can shift the balance of power back to where it should be; that is to say, in balance for the first time in eight years. We don't need more justices on the Supreme Court like Roberts and Alito. I love this quote about McCain's speech on Tuesday:

Since ... Roberts and Alito [joined], the Court has ordered Seattle and Louisville to scrap voluntary school integration, protected employers who illegally mistreat their workers, and constrained women’s right to choose and voters’ right to vote. Mr. McCain did not mention, of course, how the Roberts-led Court blithely overruled Congress by nullifying a key part of the McCain-Feingold campaign finance law. He did wax nostalgic about what “the basic right of property” has meant “since the founding of America.” (He did not mention that in 1789 many women could not own property and African-Americans were property, but he did criticize the idea that values evolve over time.) .

(Warning: slight tangent here) Not to mention the recent ruling that the three-drug "cocktail" used for lethal injection executions does not violate the Eight Amendment. You see, there were only a few people who may have experienced great pain during the process. If you're gonna execute people, then you have to allow for some of those bastards to feel pain. (OK, tangent over)

The real enemy in this presidential race is already crafting his national campaign while the eventual winner is caught in a petty contest about who has the bigger balls. According to one midwestern white guy, Clinton's got more "testicular fortitude." Whatever. Stop bickering at each other and set your sights on getting past the old fart and his ever-bending straight talk.

More on Energy... and start taking your Smart Pills

I'm directing the next sentence of this blog to my mother, who I know is reading this: Mom, both you and dad need to stop thinking that the next election rests on what Fox News says or on what the next president will do about preserving the status quo on healthcare, and read this Op-Ed by Thomas Friedman in today's NY Times.

In case you hadn't heard, McCain and now Clinton are both supporting a "gas-tax holiday," whereby the 18.4 cents per gallon federal tax on gasoline would be suspended during the summer. McCain has no offset for how to pay for it, so really he is going to borrow from the Chinese just like his mentor, President Bush. Clinton wants to charge a windfall profits tax on the oil companies, which is only slightly better. At least she's trying to find a way to offset the loss to the government budget. But the tax has the opposite effect; it causes oil companies to shift profits to their foreign operations because those aren't taxed.

I'm not going to paraphrase Mr. Friedman because he just put it so well:

This is not an energy policy. This is money laundering: we borrow money from China and ship it to Saudi Arabia and take a little cut for ourselves as it goes through our gas tanks. What a way to build our country.

When the summer is over, we will have increased our debt to China, increased our transfer of wealth to Saudi Arabia and increased our contribution to global warming for our kids to inherit.

No, no, no, we’ll just get the money by taxing Big Oil, says Mrs. Clinton. Even if you could do that, what a terrible way to spend precious tax dollars — burning it up on the way to the beach rather than on innovation?

Do Americans really want to drive their SUVs to the beach just to put their heads in the sand?

As I said earlier, it's less consumption we're after, not more. Repealing the tax, however temporary, would reveal the government to be the world's greatest enabler. "Gee, I know we need to reduce our dependence on foreign oil, but we can't kill their summer vacations when gas is $4 a gallon! Let's make it $3.82. That'll give the people what they need!"

I think the government needs to go to a Codependents Anonymous meeting. And we consumers need some kind of program of our own too.

"Straight Talk" Candidate?

An editorial in today's New York Times calls out McCain for making the kinds of shady deals that would bely his persona as the straight-talking politician. As the Times reported last Tuesday, seems that, with all the talk of reforms for campaign finance, he's used his influence in Washington to secure lucrative several land-swap deals for a prominent Arizona real estate developer. In exchange, the developer, Donald R. Diamond, has raised money for McCain over the years, including $250,000 for this presidential campaign.

It's all legal, and it's not unusual, and often the results are positive for all involved. The federal government owns a lot of prime land, land that can support development of homes, business parks, etc. Further, many private landowners hold environmentally-sensitive parcels that can't be developed. These swaps often add to the federal parkland inventory.

The dark side of this, however, is that the land owners often condition these swaps on receiving subsidies, usually on the backs of taxpayers. This makes these land-swaps no different than all the federal earmarks written into the budget every year, such as the now-infamous "bridge to nowhere," a $223 million pork-barrel project in Alaska that brought Republican Senator Ted Stevens some serious grief.

This is also not to say that neither McCain nor the Republicans are alone in this type of influence-peddling. As the editorial points out, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada makes McCain's work look mild in comparison to some of the land-swaps he's orchestrated in his home state.

Still, McCain's running for president as the "Straight-Talk" Candidate. My previous post ought to serve as a prime example of the kind of candor of which McCain is capable. These land-swaps ought to be fully explained, and he ought to lead the way to reform the land-swap process so that it minimizes the impact on taxpayers.

Still, it strikes me as just more of the same from our elected officials. I don't know: it must be the shirts that they all wear, because they sure seem to need an awful lot of back-scratching.

But how do you really feel, Senator?

"It's nonsense, it's nonsense, it's nonsense, it's nonsense, it's nonsense. I don't have anything additional to say. It's nonsense, it's nonsense, it's nonsense, I don't have anything more to say ... it's nonsense. I reject it categorically," - John McCain, referring to his endorser, John Hagee's view that Katrina was payback for gays and sins in New Orleans.

Hillary won't leave yet

She beats Obama by 9.2%, less than the 10% most experts agreed would be needed to stay in the race. However, she remains formidable for one very important reason: she wins the Democratic voters that the party most wants to win, who are the working-class white men. Obama couldn't connect with them. What's also nagging me is that he hasn't won a single big "swing" state other than Illinois. Hillary took all the others. In Pennsylvania, she won big in 70% of the state, and Obama only won big in Philadelphia. Hillary takes the old voters, Obama the younger. She gets lower-income voters, he gets the affluent.

Surprising: today on NPR, Obama's spokesman said that Obama had gotten more overall votes than Clinton, and that per recent polling he does better against McCain in a general election than Clinton in all of those big states where Hillary won. I haven't seen the polling data, but if that's true, that would be one thing to hang your I'm-for-Obama hat on.

I'm not sure where I fall with this protracted contest. Many of the more cynical political bloggers are proclaiming McCain as the winner in last night's primary. As long as he's the only presumptive nominee out there, he's the only one who gets to present a national campaign strategy and frame a national message without the distraction of having to run against anyone in his own party. Obama occasionally tries on the nominee's clothes, but at most it's a tux rental that he has to return the next day or pay extra. Clinton still portrays herself as the one who's ready to lead, but where that is, I'm not sure. Obama seems to want to lead us away from polarization, and I like that. I certainly don't agree with Republicans on most things, and the more that they lean towards Christianism, the less I resonate with any of their positions on issues. But enough damage has been done to this country and we don't need four more years of political skullduggery, the way the GOP tried to take down Bill Clinton, and the way they took down Gore and Kerry (and let's not forget good ol' Max Cleland). Putting Hillary in the White House will certainly make it easier for the Republicans to go on hating, because she's a Democrat, because she's a Clinton, and because she's a she.

I got an email from a colleague who said some Europeans were predicting McCain would win by boiling it down this way:

On one side, you have a bitch who is a lawyer, married to a lawyer, running against a lawyer who is married to a bitch who is a lawyer. On the other side, you have a war hero married to a good looking woman with big tits who owns a beer distributorship.

Is there a really contest here?

We are (becoming) the illiterates

Remember my earlier post about Douglas Bruce, the Colorado representative who called Mexicans "illiterate peasants?" And here and here before that I lamented how stupid the American people were. According to an op-ed by Bob Herbert in the NY Times, looks like I'm dead on:

A recent survey of teenagers by the education advocacy group Common Core found that a quarter could not identify Adolf Hitler, a third did not know that the Bill of Rights guaranteed freedom of speech and religion, and fewer than half knew that the Civil War took place between 1850 and 1900. ... nearly 20 percent of respondents did not know who the U.S. fought in World War II. Eleven percent thought that Dwight Eisenhower was the president forced from office by the Watergate scandal. Another 11 percent thought it was Harry Truman.

Bill Gates calls the nation's high schools "obsolete," meaning that they cannot prepare their students for what they need to know today in order to be competitive in the marketplace. Nearly two-thirds of the high school students in America either drop out or graduate without the necessary preparation for the next stages of life -- meaningful work and/or post-secondary education.

And how much are you hearing from the presidential candidates about this? Not one iota. It's much more fun to read about Obama's gutter balls, or Clinton's beer drinking, or McCain's shoving a fellow legislator. Those are the real issues.

As a father, my commitment to my sons is that, no matter what, their education and preparation for life will be my primary job.

It's the Math, Stupid! or How the Gas Tax Holiday Won't Help You

When I heard last week about McCain's proposed "Gas Tax Holiday," I knew it was a ploy to buy votes. At that time, I wasn't sure how much the federal gas tax was -- maybe 50 cents a gallon? When I found out that it was only 18.4 cents a gallon, I just laughed out loud.

This "holiday" is supposed to last just three months, from Memorial Day to Labor Day. So just do the math; I'll use my family as an example. When I fill up I usually add about 15 gallons to my car; my wife about 18. I fill up weekly, she fills up semi-weekly. For me, that's 15 tanks of gas (adding two extra tanks for additional summer driving); for her, 8.5 tanks. So...

Me: 15 tanks X 15 gallons = 225 gallons X $0.184 = $41.40 in savings
Lisa: 8.5 tanks X 18 gallons = 153 gallons X $0.184 = $28.15 in savings

That's $69.55 in savings for my family. This would be enough for us to buy groceries, or pay our electricity/water/sanitation bill, for 4-5 days. In my opinion, a good amount of savings would be about $200 for the summer. This would require a family with two cars to buy 1,087 gallons of gas over the summer. With an average gas mileage of, say, 25 miles a gallon, that would mean that a family of four would have to log 27,175 miles on the roads this summer. I don't know about you, but it takes me a year and a half to drive that much.

I brought this up with my father (a Fox News Republican who voted twice for Bill Clinton, by the way), and he said that $100 was a good amount of savings. But we've all been joking for weeks about how little the economic stimulus package passed by Congress will do for the economy. But $200 in savings? No voter's going to cast his vote for someone over a $200 savings, and if he is, then he's agreeing to be bought for $200. He would be even more stupid than I thought, and I think he's pretty stupid already. McCain (and now Hillary Clinton, who has jumped on his bandwagon) is engaging in nothing more than political games-playing. Sure, it sounds good, but it'll do nothing really to help anyone.

Biden holds forth on McCain, the election, and National Security

A Biden adviser released an excerpt from a speech he's giving today at Georgetown University. He says, "When people say, 'This is the most important election in my lifetime,' they're right."

"When it comes to Iraq, there is no daylight between John McCain and George W. Bush. They are joined at the hip. When it comes to Iraq, there will be no change with a McCain administration… and so there is a real and profound choice for Americans in November.
"Fifteen months into the surge that President Bush ordered and Senator McCain embraced, we’ve gone from drowning to treading water. We are no closer to the President’s stated goal of an Iraq that can defend itself, govern itself and sustain itself in peace. And we’re still spending $3 billion every week and losing 30 to 40 American lives every month.
"We can’t keep treading water without exhausting ourselves. That’s what both the President and Senator McCain are asking us to do. They can’t tell us when, or even if, Iraqis will come together politically, which was the purpose of the surge in the first place. They can’t tell us when, or
even if, we will draw down below pre-surge levels. They can’t tell us when, or even if, Iraq will be able to stand on its own two feet. They can’t tell us when, or even if, this war will end.
"Most Americans want this war to end. They want us to come together around a plan to leave Iraq without leaving chaos behind.
"They’re not defeatists. They’re patriots who understand the national interest – and the great things Americans can achieve if we responsibly end a war that we should not have started.
"I believe it is fully within our power to do that. Then, with our credibility restored, our alliances repaired and our freedom to act renewed, we will once again lead the world. We will once
again address the hopes, not play to the fears, of our fellow Americans. That is my hope for next November."

Much as I like Joe Biden as a venerated elder in the Senate, I just can't get 100% behind what is excerpted here. Neither Obama nor Clinton would get us completely out of Iraq, and McCain will actually make things worse. We need to face the reality that our presence in Iraq is now required to prevent further damage to the region. I think the war is wrong, our reasons for starting it were wrong, and Bush needs to be prosecuted for his failure to defend our Constitution (from himself!).

However, if we leave before the Iraqis can defend themselves without our support, we will create a power vacuum. Maliki is worthless and Sadr too powerful. Also the Shiite majority are too allied with Iran. Iran wants to go nuclear and dominate the region, and getting deep into Iraq will give them way too much real estate. In fact, last week it announced an expansion of its uranium enrichment program, prompting concerns in both Israel and Saudi Arabia. We need to face the reality that Bush's mistake, endorsed by Congress, is now America's mistake. We all need to see it through and leave the region better off for our having been there in the first place. I certainly don't like it, and I don't think anyone does. But I also don't like the idea of just cutting it off and pulling out immediately, because I think that things will get worse over there if we do. I don't think that the enemy will follow us home, but I do think that it will plunge the world economy into chaos over the supply of oil. Much as I hate to admit it, we will still need the black stuff to fuel our engines for years to come.


Ugh... excuse me while I go throw up now.