The Marriage We Call Government

The role of government was one of the recurring themes in the debates during the recent US presidential election. Perhaps you remember the “you-did-not-build-that” controversy that was raging in the media. Obama was panned by many from the right for stating that, even if you succeed in business, you did not make that possible alone. In one of the many caricature cartoons that appeared on the web, a father points to the sandcastle that his children built in the beach, and proclaims to the confused kids “you did not build that!”

One commentator said that, for the first time in her life, she agreed with two diametrically opposed arguments at the same time. Yes, the kids built the sandcastle. But, would that be possible without someone offering beach-service in the first place? It needs investment, security, and other services that need collective action. There are many beaches around the world where security does not allow kids to enjoy the luxury of building sandcastles. The forlorn white beaches of Mogadishu come to mind.

This is just one aspect of the left-right division when it comes to the best way of building a society. The right emphasizes individual action, individual freedom, individual socio-economic independence. The left stands for shared responsibilities, shared benefits, and just allocation of the two across individuals. No matter what the philosophical or moralistic justifications provided for these positions, it stands clear that they represent two distinct visions regarding building a society. If we go extreme right, which idolizes libertarian principles, taxation is a crime and we cannot envision any meaningful role for government let alone a welfare state. If we go extreme left, we land in a communist society where individual choice is practically non-existent.

If government is a marriage, the Democrats would be the mother and the Republicans the father. The Father is no-nonsense and straight-faced. He insists on having disciplined kids, with clear individual rights and responsibilities. The mother, having instinctive, unconditional maternal love for her children, naturally gravitates towards shared responsibilities and rewards whereby the weakest members are protected. The mother is soft-hearted, and caring for outsiders as much as for the less fortunate of her children. The safety-first survival instinct of the father makes him zealous in defending the status-quo, doubtful of the unknown change, and suspicious of outsiders.

Throughout history, and across different societies, familial responsibilities constitute the distinct caring role of the mother and the couching and training role of the father. The father ensures that the child develops into an independent personhood, while the mother makes sure that s/he does not get in harm’s way. When conflicts arise between the two careers, there are cases where the mother becomes defensive and takes the side of the weaker sibling.  

Nowhere is this more evident than in the compelling story of the classic sibling rivalry between Jacob and Esau, which is narrated in Genesis. These twin brothers were fighting hard to earn the blessing of their father, Isaac, that ensured dominance. Esau, the first-born of the two, was “a skillful hunter, a man of the field”, and was tipped for the blessing by the father. But their mother Rebekah went to a great length to ensure that the blessing went to Jacob, who “was a mild man, dwelling in tents.” The ensuing battle between the two sexes is one of the most intriguing stories of the Old Testament.

Many polls indeed indicate that women are almost twice more likely to be Democrats than Republicans (with 41% and 25% of total women shares respectively). While gender can be a good predictor for political affiliation, what could be equally important is the social conditioning that leads one to better appreciate and hence affiliate with one of the qualities of the two genders. (Here, one may wonder on the effect of early family life on the likelihood of a person becoming a Republican or a Democrat. The archetype right-wing thinkers like Ayn Rand must have been brought up in a (relatively) patriarchal family, whereas thinkers associated with the left, such as Noam Chomsky, must have been raised in matriarchal families. You may say the independents are those lost in the arguments between the father and the mother in them).

If we take cue from nature, a successful society needs both the left and the right. It is not a mere coincidence that a typical family is built around a mother and a father, and not just any one of them. Fair representation of both sides by means of a democratic government ensures an equilibrium whereby the worst of one gender is tampered off by the best of the other. In fact, this lesson seems to have been properly internalized. If you take the US, the two parties have equally shared power since their formation, each party governing almost 50% of the years since 1861.  

A good analogy, you might say, except that an election has no resemblance to a wedding. There you have a point; neither do the two parties have the love-bond you typically see in a family. Yet, however unhappy the marriage, societies keep on forming governments. It appears as if people are heeding to the advice of Socrates who remarked “By all means marry; if you get a good wife, you'll be happy. If you get a bad one, you'll become a philosopher.”

And so, we do.

Obama vs. Romney

Many people expected Obama to come roaring back in his second debate, after he showed a rather listless performance on the first. I was quite skeptical of that expectation. I thought debates were like a football match: once it comes to pass, no amount of desperation can give you back the edge you lost, by luck or design.  I expected Romney to come prepared and spirited in the second debate as well, so that the best performance Obama could achieve is a draw. 

My expectation, however, happened to be outright wrong when Obama came fired up and proved his worth as a matchless communicator. As most voters agreed, I think Obama won that debate. Before the debate, some people said that the election will be lost if Obama’s performance was as bad as the first one. According to one reporter, the same people commented after the debate that, if Obama had performed in his first debate as well as he did in the second, the election would have been over then. That leaves the debate score so far between the two candidates at one-one.

What made all the difference? I think, first and foremost Obama’s complacency was a major reason for his failure during the first debate. Being an incumbent who has been in office for four years, and hand having an increasing lead in the polls must have made Obama the lazy guy we saw in the first debate. When quite suddenly all the lead in the polls disappeared, and the chance of winning his second term became as uncertain as a flip of the coin, Obama became the feisty debater we saw in the second debate.  It is just amazing to see that wherever you go a human performs better when he gets a shove.

Then, the second reason is of course that Obama loves town-hall type meetings. He has frequently mentioned his love for talking to people face-to-face (barring Governor Romney, of course). In the first debate, Obama showed his low interest to engage Romney in a real conversation, perhaps knowing very well that their differences are too big to reconcile. Luckily for Obama, the second debate gave him a much-needed audience whom he could directly address.  

No doubt, the debate involved a lot of low politics. Romney once characterized Obama as talk-only (“I know the president is good at communicating his positions.”) Obama did not hesitate to attack Romney for investing in China, and even worse for having a large pension. The two candidates thus seemed happy to bolster their positions among their entrenched supporters at the cost of winning the much-needed vote of independent and undecided voters.

In a stark contrast to his first debate, Obama said NO quite many times: “That is not true, Governor.” And yet, he took every chance possible to talk about the Governor’s plans in the ways he preferred, (mis)characterizing him as a flip-flopper, an out-of-touch rich guy with only the interests of the rich at heart. Obama played a calculated game; many times he tried to have the last say in a topic, and called on the moderator to stop Romney from going back and responding to Obama’s last comments.  He sometimes ignored Romney’s question, and twisted topics in ways that favored his arguments. He appeared to be a master player who knows his game, and one who is there only to win. Indeed, he was displaying some of the qualities of a good basketball player, which he must have honed when playing for his high school team in Hawaii. The firm positions he took in some cases, and the cool attitude he displayed while making them clear is reminiscent of the young Obama’s basketball career, described as follows from his biography:

“[H]e never bullied or became belligerent on the court, even while stating his case and standing his ground. He was not always right, but he almost always won the argument, and he did it without making anyone mad.”

Coming back to Governor Romney, he indeed made several of the points that helped him win the first debate. He articulately listed the string of promises Obama had failed to deliver, and called the president’s records a disaster. Unfortunately, his plans for cutting the deficit were seriously challenged by one of Obama's most successful lines of attack: “Now, Governor Romney was a very successful investor. If somebody came to you, Governor, with a plan that said, here, I want to spend $7 or $8 trillion, and then we’re going to pay for it, but we can’t tell you until maybe after the election how we’re going to do it, you wouldn’t take such a sketchy deal and neither should you, the American people, because the math doesn’t add up.”

More importantly, the Governor’s arguments lost the touch of brilliance they carried in the first debate. For obvious reasons, Romney has put all his eggs in one basket, and the economy was nearly the only thing he is here to fix. Even about the economy, his best arguments seemed to involve nothing more than spouting endless numbers that show the economic performance he wished to achieve. It is doubtful if anyone understood the singnicance of these numbers, let alone the likelihood of their achievement. 

  

Second the Governor appeared out of touch, and indeed insensible to the subtleties of social policy in most areas other than the economy. The way he answered questions regarding women’s rights was not formative policy wise. The awkward statement about the binder full of women soon became more memorable than any other useful thing he said. 

I could clearly feel my preferences shifting back to Obama after this debate, revealing the power of debates in changing minds. Indeed Romney has managed to erase any gaps he had with Obama since his successful first debate. The success of Obama’s second debate seemed to have small if any effect on the polls. Apart from the Gallop poll that shows Romney leading by a wide margin, all other polls show that the race is essentially a tie. It seems the presidency will go on unrewarded until election night. As the sudden shift after the first debate showed, Americans can be quite astute at changing their minds and picking a hero in a flash. So perhaps we should remain open for more surprises during the third debate and the remaining few days before the election.

Romney vs. Obama

On Wednesday October 3, 2012 President Obama and Governor Romney were scheduled to make their first presidential debate. I was very much looking forward to this debate. Obama is an eloquent speaker with a great mastery of rhetoric, and Romney was also a very seasoned speaker. Plus they were debating on the state of the economy, which made me more excited about the debate. Unfortunately, I had a deadline 2 days later and I was in the mood to work late. Then again, I convinced myself to lose this night (only to night, I told myself).

This attraction to politics, it is like a curse. Just five years ago, I was not at all interested in these things. I remember getting so much annoyed at a friend of mine who used to fret about such issues. Now I have developed this taste for checking the news, attending the views of the pundits, and sometimes taking my own position.

The first thing I observed when the two candidates started speaking was that Romney was quite energetic, aggressive even, while Obama was in a much laid back position. He even sounded tired and looked sleepy. That was not a good sign for the President.

The first half of the debate, the President was completely dominated. Romney spoke with a great sense of urgency, and he seemed to have a clear idea of what he wanted to communicate and how. He pursued the President, attacking him mercilessly. You might even say he exhibited a superiority demeanor, looking down on the President and presenting him as a naiveté on economic issues (“I've been in business for 25 years; [but] I have no idea what you're talking about.” Responding on the accusation that companies got government subsidies but shipped jobs abroad.)

There is so much on the table related to economic issues that can be thrown against the President. And the Governor did exactly that and with great intensity. Obama’s America has the slowest recovery since the Great Depression, and Romney had no qualms blaming all that on Obama, although in reality the President inherited a collapsing economy. All of a sudden, the President appeared weak, vulnerable, incapable of comprehending the problems surrounding him, and with no clear proposal on how to fix the US economy. And there was no sign of his charm and animation; he instead wore a professional bearing and tried to explain the complexities involved in the problem. He did not appear to have clear and simple answers, and his explanations seemed incomplete and unsatisfying.

In the last half of the debate, the President seemed to gain some footing as he shot some points on his opponent. He rightly pointed out the lack of specificity on the plans of the Governor. The Governor had made an excellent use of his position as the opposition, and Obama’s position as an incumbent. He highlighted all the weaknesses in the policies Obama introduced, and promised to repeal them (the rise of income tax for high income people and larger small businesses; the more than 700 billion USD cuts from Medicaid due to Obamacare; the assignment of too-big-to fail status for a few banks in the Dodd-Frank Act). On the other hand, he pointed out all the strengths in the policies of Obama and promised to keep them (coverage of pre-existing patients on Medicare; strengthening of bank oversight in the Dodd-Frank Act).

But Obama did not pursue Romney as much as he was pursued and attacked.  With some minor exceptions, he never retorted to serious attacks although there were many opportunities. That seemed to some extent intentional, to avoid causing any surprise and unsettle the status quo in which he was leading the Governor with an increasing margin. In any case, he showed some good grace in keeping his cool in spite of the heat he was facing.

That is not to say he was not unnerved though. He was seen a few times pursing his lips, and shifting uncomfortably perhaps as the realization downed on him that the debate was not going as planned. A few times he seemed incapable of grasping the direct, strong attacks that were thrown his way. I later heard a psychological explanation that made sense. Mr. Obama has been in charge of the most powerful office in the world for four years now, and in those years he never had anybody speak out face-to-face against him, and heard no negative remarks spoken personally against him so directly and forcefully. It’s indeed easy to realize that a person can completely adapt to a new environment in a four year time span. And the past four years, it is easy to imagine that the only things that were thrown Obama’s way were accolades (including the Nobel Prize) and appreciation and awe. And now, here you have a man standing before you and belittling you so sharply (“Mr. President, you are entitled to your own airplane, your own house, but not to your own facts.” “But you have been a president for four years now!”).

I think Romney was a clear winner of the debate. There are many things that qualify him as the winner. If we begin with his approach, “He appeared presidential,” as the pundits would put it. This could mean he looked the President as an equal (I would say he actually appeared to look down on him), and he projected the image of himself being a president in a very strong way, so much so that it sometimes felt it couldn’t be otherwise.

Never mind his approach; his plans to fix the economy also involved many strong points. He presented a very convincing if too general and one-sided perspective of the problems facing the US economy, and how to fix them. Obama, on the other hand, seemed more attuned to addressing issues of social justice and state-building from a social perspective, both of which seemed irrelevant today. But those are the issues I will address in my next blog. 

New York

New York -- As described by Barack Obama in "Dreams from My Father"

I knew he was right [that New York was changing me], although I wasn’t sure myself what exactly had happened. In a way, I was confirming Sadik’s estimation of the city’s allure, I suppose; its consequent power to corrupt. With the Wall Street boom, Manhattan was humming, new developments cropping up everywhere; men and women barely out of their twenties already enjoying ridiculous wealth, the fashion merchants fast on their heels. The beauty, the filth, the noise, and the excess, all of it dazzled my senses; there seemed no constraints on originality of lifestyles or the manufacture of desire-a more expensive restaurant, a finer suit of clothes, a more exclusive nightspot, a more beautiful woman, a more potent high.

Uncertain of my ability to steer a course of moderation, fearful of falling into old habits, I took on the temperament if not the convictions of a street corner preacher, prepared to see temptation everywhere, ready to overrun a fragile will.

My reaction was more than just an attempt to curb an excessive appetite, though, or a response to sensory overload.

Beneath the hum, the motion, I was seeing the steady fracturing of the world taking place. I had seen worse poverty in Indonesia and glimpsed the violent mood of inner-city kids in L.A.; I had grown accustomed, everywhere, to suspicion between the races. But whether because of New York’s density or because of its scale, it was only now that I began to grasp the almost mathematical precision with which America’s race and class problems joined; the depth, the ferocity, of resulting tribal wars; the bile that flowed freely not just out on the streets but in the stalls of Columbia’s bathrooms as well, where, no matter how many times the administration tried to paint them over, the walls remained scratched with blunt correspondence between niggers and kikes.

It was as if all middle ground had collapsed, utterly. And nowhere, it seemed, was that collapse more apparent than in the black community I had so lovingly imagined and within which I had hoped to find refuge. I might meet a black friend at his Midtown law firm, and before heading to lunch at the MoMA, I would look out across the city toward the East River from his high-rise office, imagining a satisfactory life for myself-a vocation, a family, a home. Until I noticed that the only other blacks in the office were messengers or clerks, the only other blacks in the museum the bluejacketed security guards who counted the hours before they could catch their train home to Brooklyn or Queens.

I might wander through Harlem-to play on courts. I’d once read about or heard Jesse Jackson make a speech on 125th; or, on a rare Sunday morning, to sit in the back pews of Abyssinian Baptist Church, lifted by the gospel choir’s sweet, sorrowful song-and catch a fleeting glimpse of that thing which I sought. But I had no guide that might show me how to join this troubled world, and when I looked for an apartment there, I found Sugar Hill’s elegant brownstones occupied and out of reach, the few decent rental buildings with ten-year-long waiting lists, so that all that remained were the rows and rows of uninhabitable tenements, in front of which young men counted out their rolls of large bills, and winos slouched and stumbled and wept softly to themselves.

I took all this as a personal affront, a mockery of my tender ambitions-although, when I brought up the subject with people who had lived in New York for a while, I was told there was nothing original about my observations. The city was out of control, they said, the polarization a natural phenomenon, like monsoons or continental drift. Political discussions, the kind that at Occidental had once seemed so intense and purposeful, came to take on the flavor of the socialist conferences I sometimes attended at Cooper Union or the African cultural fairs that took place in Harlem and Brooklyn during the summers-a few of the many diversions New York had to offer, like going to a foreign film or iceskating at Rockefeller Center. With a bit of money, I was free to live like most middle-class blacks in Manhattan, free to choose a motif around which to organize my life, free to patch together a collage of styles, friends, watering holes, political affiliations. I sensed, though, that at some stage-maybe when you had children and decided that you could stay in the city only at the cost of a private school, or when you began takings cabs at night to avoid the subways, or when you decided that you needed a doorman in your apartment building-your choice was irrevocable, the divide was now impassable, and you would find yourself on the side of the line that you’d never intended to be on.

Unwilling to make that choice, I spent a year walking from one end of Manhattan to the other. Like a tourist, I watched the range of human possibility on display, trying to trace out my future in the lives of the people I saw, looking for some opening through which I could reenter.