Viva La Revolución!

I have no talent for admitting I'm wrong. Not because of any surfeit of pride. But rather because it is a skill I have never had occasion to practice.

Until now.

Recently, I wrote about the coming liberal dictatorship. I foresaw a world in which the instruments of power, sharpened by our current leadership to compel absolute submission, would be wielded by a liberal administration for ends every bit as extreme as intended, but far less palatable to people who live in Texas.

That could still happen. But it's like a television program preempted by breaking news: it may be in the can, but it's not what anyone will be watching.

Our constitutional crisis has been supplanted by an economic crisis. We paused momentarily to put our head between our knees and breathe into a paper bag, and when we looked up, we discovered we're having a socialist revolution--engineered by neo-conservatives!

Holy. Fucking. Shit. I'd like to think this is a simple matter of a spectacularly misguided policy coming to a head like an angry, puss-filled carbuncle. But we've been fleeced so many times by the carnies who run this country that we can hardly be faulted for suspecting this catastrophe is just another Republican sleight-of-hand designed to reclaim an initiative that seemed hopelessly lost. Are they once again stealing a march on their political opponents by doing something so unexpected, so out-of-left field, so bat-shit crazy that those who would resist are simply paralyzed with shock?

If so, admiration overwhelms my disgust. I mean... it's just... diabolical! And it's so freakin' BIG that even I never conjured such a thing in my wildest dreams--and I am not in the habit of constraining my imaginings. If you only knew the sick things I am picturing right now...

Just think! In the course of a few days, the people who have for a decade belittled their detractors with the epithet of socialism, who made a sacred mission of kneecapping the mere patina of a welfare state created in the 1930's, who have attempted to demonize Russia in a barely-disguised ploy to reanimate the politically convenient bete noir of world communism--these same people have swarmed to a one trillion dollar takeover of the entire American financial system like sailors on the decks of the battleship Potemkin!

Look! There's Henry Paulson driving the kulak financiers of lower Manhattan into the overcrowded bar cars of the MetroNorth railway. Soon they will disappear into the cavernous conservatories of their Greenwich homes, where they will forevermore consume canapes and cognac in miserable obscurity.

And there! There's Ben Bernake storming the New York stock exchange in a tricolor cockade! It impossible to tell what's happening amidst the cigar smoke and the roar of the press corps, but rumors fly that Goldman Sachs has declared a commune of lower Trinity Place. And who can calculate the human cost? The dry cleaning bill alone will run to six figures!

And now a hush falls on the nation. For returned from his long march to Crawford Texas is Chairman Bush, the Great Leader! For love of him, children expose their parents for shorting T-bills. With a glance and gesture he makes spareribs tender and biscuits moist.

Viva La Revolución! To the barricades! All power to the soviets! Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité!

Uh...

Something feels oh so wrong here. Aren't socialist revolutions supposed to come from below?

That the cries of "Power to the people!" are coming not from the downtrodden peasantry, but from the Tsar and his minions is testimony to the fact that what the people are going to get here is anything but power. It is a whole boatload of grief.

How bad is it? It is all the way bad. The bad, to borrow the idiom of Spinal Tap, will go to 11.

Envision the worthless paper of 10 million home loans that America is buying as the sorriest looking Ford Pinto in the used car lot. It's a colossal lemon. And the problem with lemons is not a philosophical one to be debated by earnest sophomores in bong-hit fueled bull sessions. The problem with lemons is that they break down right on the entrance ramp to the freeway in rush hour while your wife howls in labor on the passenger side and the air conditioning doesn't work and it's 105 degrees and the rest of your little monsters are trying to disembowel each other in the back seat and you feel you have no choice but to do the job for them yourself and that's going to take some explaining if and when the highway patrol ever arrives.

That's the problem with lemons.

For our economy, catastrophe is every bit as imminent as it was before our dear President signed us taxpayers up to bail out his rich friends. More so, perhaps, because those Wall St. wizards--major asshats though they be--actually do know a fair amount about navigating difficult financial straits. But they no longer give a damn what happens. They're off the hook and our fates are now in the hands of a completely different but much less skilled collection of asshats called Congress.

Why do you think there were so many smiling faces on the floor of the stock exchange when the bailout plan was announced and the Dow surged? Because we've been rescued? Of course not. The traders were smiling because they've been rescued.

We'll be sure to write frequently to those former Wall Streeters at their spas in Hawaii and let them know how it's going as the housing market goes from slide to plummet. As credit becomes impossible and business contracts. As pain cascades through the population in the form of sweeping layoffs. As inflation soars because that will make paying back the massive debt we've taken on cheaper.

We've chained ourselves to this falling anvil with the same rash ignorance with which we bought that 10,000 sq.ft. McMansion last year. And now we're living in one of those 1970 conspiracy movies where the hero is killed just before he can save the world, the bad guys get off scot free, and everything is most assuredly not going to be alright.

Looking for a bright spot in all this is like looking for the bright spot in the Triangle Shirtwaist fire. The only brightness comes from the roaring flames, which serve to silhouette the doomed figures in the window frames just before they leap.

But let's indulge in a brief bit of Panglossian self-delusion anyhoo, yes?

One upside is that the crackers of middle America, stunned by sudden crisis, will probably not come to their senses until just after they've elected a colored fella President. Boy, will they be grumpy once they realize.

And this: It's true that America will be vomiting and watching our hair fall out for years as a result of the radioactive fallout from this disaster. But can you imagine how this would have been packaged if the Fannie Mae / Freddie Mac / Lehman brothers / AIG mushroom cloud had come even one hour after Barack Obama locked down the election in the predawn of November 5th?

Our present storyline sure wouldn't be about the apocalyptic comeuppance of mindless deregulation. Or the destruction of the myth that the mindless Darwinian churning of free markets is somehow tempered by an inherent goodness. Or about the essential hollowness of a society built on the corrosive notion that wealth is the same thing as virtue.

No sir. If this atomic blast had been delayed, there would be only one storyline trumpeted by the tools of conservatism and a p-whipped (c-whipped?) media: Barack Obama as pilot of the Enola Gay. That's right. We'd be told that an otherwise vibrant economy had collapsed at the mere thought of the prosperity-hating policies he would inevitably implement.

So we can breathe a big sigh of relief that the world is ending sooner rather than later.

This economic convulsion also alters the landscape of political possibility in intriguing ways. Free marketers talk reverently of creative destruction--the rise of new mercantile opportunity from the decaying matter of endeavors that have failed and fallen. But they never considered what might grow from the steaming corpse of their entire beloved system.

For example, though the words "universal health insurance" were spoken in the campaign, only a fool could have believed the idea more than a political pipe dream. But the shattering mental impact of seeing the establishment dissolve, combined with the soon-to-be-palpable effects of unemployment and the credit crunch on our already tenuous access to the proctologist we desperately need may yet give unexpected substance to that dream.

Not all political pigs will fly. But don't be surprised if some sprout wings and, like turkeys, make a whole lot of unforeseen commotion.

And finally this: Conservatives are ever fulminating that Obama---contrary to his voting record or his public statements--harbors secret intentions of outfitting America in Mao jackets and handing out Little Red Books. But now they've been compelled by the deformed product of their own extremism to lurch leftward in advance of his arrival. Will they therefore restrain their urge to tag his administration as the enemy of all that is American? As the undoer of freedom? Will they exhibit that most minimal degree of decency that shames us from accusing others of our own failures?

Don't be ridiculous. Of course they won't. And their misrepresentations will be swallowed hook, line and sinker by a culture whose worldview is shaped and reshaped by no experiences more distant than those of the previous two weeks. By February, Barack Obama will be solely responsible for our metasticizing economy, the plight of Katrina victims, the terrorist attacks of 2001, and the burning of the capital by British regulars in the War of 1812.

Yet some small weight has undeniably been lifted from Obama's shoulders. Centering economic governance will no longer require a massive heave to the left certain to provoke opposition from formidable conservative constituencies. And in the continuing chaos to come he'll find more freedom of action than he could have hoped for six months ago. It's a lot easier to be a builder when the demolition's already done.

And let's be fair (even if it isn't much fun), the real villain here isn't conservatism, any more than the savior is liberalism. The villain is absolutism. It's extremism. It's the absurd idea that if less regulation is good, no regulation is even better. Would any rational person argue that commerce is possible without the regulation of contract law, accounting rules, and the like? And if that's true, shouldn't we just scotch all the scorched-earth, anti-regulatory ranting and start a measured discussion on how to do it right?

So here's to hoping we can get back on track for balance and moderation. That we can enact the kind of regulation that let's us maximize the benefits of the free market while minimizing the risks. That we can stop chasing the chimera of perfecting our system, and settle in to the hard, never-ending, and unavoidably messy task of optimizing it.

Until then, Viva La Revolución, baby!

Lie to Me Some More

Bob Woodward thinks that, in politics, sometimes it's OK to lie. He cites an instance in which Barry Goldwater deceived the press about the content of a conversation he had with Richard Nixon.

Just imagine, Barry Goldwater and Richard Nixon in bed with a lie! What next? Santa Claus a myth?

The commenters on Woodwards piece were as shocked as I'm sure you are. Like a condemning chorus in a Greek tragedy, they proclaimed lying an absolute evil.

Let us dismiss that peanut gallery. Nine out of ten people who post comments on blogs that have not the panache of this blog are either bitter, beaten, bored, angry, hateful, drippy, obsessive, compulsive, or hopelessly insecure. The remaining 10% are just people who have no freaking clue how mind-blowingly stupid the things they write make them appear! Sweet Jesus. If these are our best and brightest we are doomed, doomed, doomed. Make no mistake...

And true to form, Woodward's trailing pack of clucking Mrs. Grundy's get it exactly wrong. Lying in politics is no crime. In fact, it is a foundational prerequisite for effective governance in a democracy. This I shall shortly illustrate with mathematical certainty.

But first, I cannot allow Mr. Woodward's scurrilous defamation of the venerable craft of lying one's ass off to go unchallenged. This lie he selects as his example, this pedantic, pedestrian little misdirection, is no more representative of the awe-inspiring canon of political lies than a platypus is of mammals or Joe Lieberman is of Democrats. In a world of Rembrandts and Picasso's, Woodward offers dogs-playing-poker as a basis for disparaging art.

And it's inexcusable because really, of all people, who knows lying better than Bob Woodward? Given his sordid, lifelong entanglement with this seductress, he ought to of recused himself from the topic entirely. Or did he just forget to mention that, yes, he does have some passing acquaintance , but only through love, sex, marriage, joint parentage of numerous mixed-race offspring, divorce, and purely coincidental hookups (twice!) in the stall of the men's room at CBGB's. Oh, and she donated a lung and a kidney to him in '86.

To betray this complex if debauched mistress after she bestowed upon him so much professional success demonstrates weakness of character. And ironically, his disavowal is a lie in itself. For lies are good. And so are liars. Follow the track of my irrefutable logic now, but be warned: you will be wiser when we reach our journey's end, but by then soap and water will have lost all power to make you feel clean.

I begin with an indispensable premise: A lie is only a lie if the teller knows they are lying. This is why insanity is a defense and also why Fox News anchor Chris Wallace looks so unconflicted when he speaks. Unfortunately, this precept is of little practical use for identifying lies in the wild, where they survive and thrive only in shades of gray. The black and white ones have long since been hunted to extinction by wives who, I'm sorry to say--and contrary to our half-hearted protestations--actually are less important to us than a silly basketball game.

So if all lies are lies by degrees, by what criteria are we to distinguish the inoffensive fib from the monstrous whoppers contrived to conceal the highest crimes that our rulers commit? Like torturing innocents. Or slaughtering civilians. Or being fellated in an alcove of the Oval Office.

The criteria are two. The magnitude of a lie is a function of the speaker's critical thinking ability and their humility. You see, a conscious lie--and all lies must be conscious--can be told only by someone with enough critical thinking skills to see the element of falseness amidst the partial truth of what they say. And the more nuanced the topic, the more intelligence is required for the speaker to grasp why at least some facet of what they have said is--may I be blunt?--bullshit.

But it's not enough to have the smarts to recognize you are full of shit. You have to be inclined to consider the possibility to begin with. This is where humility comes in. For only those accepting of their own fallibility can admit error, thus converting an inoffensive thought into an insideous lie.

Let us consider a non-political scenario painfully familiar to husbands and boyfriends.

"Do these pants make me look fat?"

You know your partner is now an armed, unexploded grenade. Would that she had asked you of your secret life of serial murder or inquired about your consumption of fetishistic pornography.

A simpleton might respond reflexively, his vocal chords providing an unintermediated account of the inverse image at that moment rendered upon his retinal membranes. Perhaps he offers up some suicidal gem like, "I don't think it's the pants," insuring that henceforth, his relationship with his children will be conducted entirely on alternate weekends. Regardless, whatever he says will be the truth as he sees it, for he has not the powers of introspection required for artifice.

But let us rewind our scenario and replace our dullard with a sharper tool. Like a chess master manipulating a mental image of a board, he instantly tracks each possible permutation of play to conclusion. His mind swirls with Sophistry, finding in the most minute cracks of his prison walls a potential handhold for escape. What exactly, he ponders, constitutes "fat?" Perhaps the blame may be squarely laid upon the pants themselves? What possible opportunities for extrication abide in the gulf between looking fat and being fat? Is this a trick question, a test of honesty? If so, how overweight must he suggest his spouse is to retain his credibility without discomposing the fragile underpinnings of domestic tranquility?

These factors and others--wind speed? currency exchange rates? viscosity?--they weigh internally in less time than required for a cycle of a hummingbird's wings. And then they whisper something in their dear one's ear that causes her eyes to well with tears of love.

Those words, those brilliant, irresistible, evasive words they utter before slipping inconspicuously away to catch the fourth quarter of the aforementioned basketball game... are they a lie?

To know we must look beneath thick layers of skin and fat, beneath the membrane covering the ribcage, into the thoracic cavity, where pumps the heart. (Alternately we can insert a probe into the vein of the thigh and access the heart that way, but it takes longer and is not covered by insurance.)

Is it the heart of an arrogant fuckhead? If so, look no further. The arrogant can speak only truth, for they are infallible--just ask them. No matter how patently flimsy their ploy, their conscience is unstained, for they believe that they shit cookies that cure cancer.

But if our heart belongs to someone humble and self-effacing, some pitiful self-loathing doormat who is a case-in-point for why nobody wants to read The Lives of the Saints, they can undoubtedly give you ten good reasons why what they said was not wholly true.

And as paradoxical as it seems, it is a fact that a statement which is 99% true is also 100% lie.

Call engine company number 2. Somebody's pants are on fire.

And so we are left with only one possible conclusion, one that runs counter to all intuition and which is liable to make us want to curl up into a fetal ball under the stairs: Only the best people lie. The brilliant. The humble. And the more brilliant and humble they are, the more they lie.

Perhaps this can be conveyed more effectively in graphic form:

Study the chart. Internalize it. Print it out, ball it up and store it in your urethra so that years from now, when you are languishing in prison for the perverse crimes you have committed and which I don't even want to know about, you will have something worthwhile that you might be reading if only it wasn't hopelessly lodged in your penis.

But in the meantime, remember, lying is good. Liars are good. And never more so than in politics. So the next time you are alone in the voting booth, ready to play your inconsequential part in this futile charade we call democracy, give your vote to the biggest liar on the ballot.

Don't Just Pander--Lie!

It's pandering season again, and our brave presidential candidates are out on the trail falling all over themselves to spew tripe about energy issues.

There is no shortage of examples. In Iowa--where it's all corn, all the time--they expressed support for an expansion of the energy-negative, water intensive corn ethanol initiatives that are helping to drive a devastating world-wide food crisis. But at least ethanol will do next to nothing to improve our energy security outlook, thus failing to realize the one goal that was supposed to compensate for all its drawbacks. Hooray!

In coal-producing states, they talk up coal-to-liquids synfuel programs, carbon capture and storage and assorted fairy tales about "clean coal." Apparently, the presidential contenders have been taking in a lot of coal industry PR. Just imagine what might be accomplished if Big Coal put as much effort into improving their energy efficiency and greenhouse gas profile as they do into creating the appearance of such progress.

And everywhere the candidates go, they promise to make gas cheap again. How? By telling the Chinese, sorry, no more for you--we called dibs. Or by threatening OPEC, or else asking them ever so nicely, or--oh look! A shiny penny!

What were we talking about again?

Naughty, naughty politicians. Telling us what we want to hear just so we'll vote for them. It makes us bristle with indignance. All the more so because their assessment of us is as accurate as it is damning.

Truckers begging to be lied to

Yes, our politicians have read us like a book once again. They are what we see when we collectively look into a mirror. While we like to toy with the delusion that they might speak bracing truth to us simply by opening their mouths and forming the requisite vowels and consonants, our electoral system is in fact a self-selecting system designed to insure that those who might say something that upsets us will never get the get to stand at the podium. In other words, our politicians will never be better until we are better.

This leads to an obvious conclusion--what is needed is a program of self-improvement for the American people. Perhaps if we invest in education and imbue the next generation with the kind of critical thinking skills so sorely lacking today, if we elevate the importance of social and political activism to the same level as facility with video games and fashion sense, if we restore respect for values like hard work and sacrifice--maybe then we'll look in the mirror and see the kinds of leaders that can grapple with the challenges we face.

Yeah, right. If you for even one moment find such fantasies credible, you clearly know nothing of America. We have neither the attention span nor the self-discipline necessary to effect such a revolution.

But I have a better idea, one that can succeed because it leverages some of the core American virtues--traits like indifference, disdain for detail, admiration for successful cheats, and the inability to remember what happened five minutes ago.

Rather than vainly hope for politicians too spineless and ethics-bound to promise us the pain-free, no-cost quick fixes we demand, let us look instead to candidates with the courage to transcend mere pandering in favor of full-blown, bald-faced lying.

You see, the problem with pandering is that it is a half measure. It begins when politicians commit to policies they know to be inherently dangerous or impossible to effect. So far so good. Such nonsense will secure their election, and there's no harm in words. But then, suddenly, they find themselves in the Oval Office, holding the levers power that could effect positive change beyond the dreams of ordinary citizens. This is their moment to atone for every instance of hypocrisy, every verbal act of moral cowardice committed between Walla Walla and Williamsburg. All they have to do is something smart.

But instead this is the moment at which--tragically--they develop a conscience.

For months on end they traipsed the country, saying anything--anything!--that would convince America to jump in the sack with them. But there's something about sitting at that desk that makes a new President feel bound to execute the absurd and counterproductive schemes they cynically preached from the stump. It's like some excruciating, Sisyphean dream we're forced to endure over and over again. And all because they merely pandered when they should have lied.

So once you're in office, remember: to hell with your idiotic promises about rolling back gas taxes! Coal-to-liquids? Never met the guy. Obfuscate! Deny! Blame it on a drinking problem! Anything rather than seek to execute the vacuous policies that we elected you to implement.

Please, save us from ourselves. If you don't lie to us now, we will never forgive you.

Clinton's Cards, Obama's Deal

Hillary Clinton is playing a hand dealt by Obama. And the dealer peeked.

Actually, he did more than peek. He laid out all the cards face up and selected the aces for himself. Aces like hope, freshness, change, and unity.

To Hillary he sent deuces and tres like competence, hard work, reliability and experience.

And now she's cornered. It's clear she's made the decision to play her hand to the hilt, raising the ante round by round. But if she thinks this can work, her naivete is stunning. And isn't Hillary supposed to be the shrewd one?

She should have cried foul the moment he took out the cards and with feathery touch sent them acrobatically arcing from one hand to the other. At the very least, she should have fought for a new deal like it was a matter of survival. Because it was.

Now it's too late. She has a losing hand. And the harder she plays it, the bigger she will lose.

Granted, Hillary entered the game confronting some intrinsic challenges. One is that she's a woman. There are those who would argue that this creates an unfair and impossible obstacle for her. How can any woman display the toughness that makes a credible Commander in Chief without also being pegged as an abrasive shrew?

Before long, a woman will come along who is equipped to use her gender as a point of strength. A woman who taps naturally into all the positive feelings people have towards the powerful and influential women in their lives. Voters will defend this woman when she's attacked as if their own sister were under assault. And they will bend to her will to avoid disappointing her, out of an almost holy respect, as they do for their mothers. Such a woman will come along, but it appears her name will not be Hillary Clinton. Except in a case of monumental coincidence.

You may lament the superficiality of a politics that elevates personality and carriage to a par with policy. But as well to rue inconvenient realities like the need for sleep or ear wax build-up. These things aren't going away either.

And while women have a bigger hill to climb in presidential politics—at least until someone breaks the glass ceiling—gender expectations cut both ways. Dennis Kucinich can never be President. He's short. And those ears! Even his wife, ravishing as she is, cannot restore him to manhood.

So Obama and Clinton are competing for the voters' affections each against a different set of gender expectations, like apples and oranges. But only one of them can be the winner, and Obama is proving that people like his orange more than Clinton's apple.

Some—you?—may find Clinton to be more personally compelling than Obama. You see in her a commanding presence, evoking warmth, loyalty and a host of protective instincts. But if so, you are incontrovertibly in the minority. In a race in which the policy differences between the two candidates are barely discernible, the wave of enthusiasm that is carrying Obama can only be attributed to the impact of his style and personality. It isn't just minorities that gravitate to him. It isn't just men. It isn't just Democrats. His support cuts across virtually every demographic except the sourest of dead-end conservatives. People like him more than Clinton.

She was slow to grasp both the fact and the significance of this. Perhaps she smugly believed Obama's expansive style would be his own downfall, that America had learned its lesson about selecting Presidents for their likeability. Given the experience of the last eight years, we might have come to believe that anyone we like enough to elect president must also be utterly incapable of doing the job. We might have forgotten that a winning personality does not preclude intelligence, and in fact what a powerful aid personal magnetism can be in the pursuit of well-considered goals.

Even if the Clinton team recognized early in the race that Obama was winning hearts, they can hardly be blamed for sitting pat as the candidate for the head. If the utilitarian fluorescence of her personality seems pale in comparison to the radiant aura generated by her competitor, what could she hope to do about it over the course of a few short months, if ever? Politicians make required mechanical adjustments when their pollsters identify negative responses to their bearing or facial expressions. Acting differently is mere stagecraft. But being different is a much taller order. Witness the plasticine smile that John McCain's advisers have hot-glued to his face in recent weeks. We'll see how that works out. The electorate may go slack and numb when confronted with even a glimpse of tax policy detail, but they can spot a phony in a second.

So Clinton stuck to her plan and waited for the Obama brush fire to show itself no more than a flash-in-the-pan.

But she underestimated both the staying power of Obama's talents and America's hunger for inspirational leadership. A preponderance of the electorate has recognized—consciously or not—the staggering scope of the challenges ahead. When in the memory of the living have so many explosive issues—the economy, international relations, energy security, global warming, immigration, terrorism—come to critical mass at the same time? For many years our leaders have denied, ignored, or obfuscated these difficulties. We've pulled the blankets over our head and in the suffocating dark shouted slogans of pride, courage and belligerence. But now we are gathering ourselves to face the onslaught. It's not bravery. It's an involuntary reaction. We are turning to face the wave just before it hits. And we are scared to death.

There is a profound emotional vulnerability that accompanies such an imminent trial. Clinton might argue that this moment should put experience, reliability, and familiarity at a premium. Indeed, those are great qualities to lean on when you spot the storm ahead. And they will be needed when we're tossing in high seas as well. But here, as we stare up into the yawning belly of a breaking mountain of water, what people want is courage. Someone who makes them feel rather than think. Any more prosaic narrative becomes an irritating distraction.

All this was manifest, if still partially obscured, right after the Iowa primary. That's when Obama slid the cards towards her and asked her to cut the deck. Clinton hesitated, her campaign paralyzed by the shock of that first blow. Had she gotten up from the table, insisted they play a different game, there might still have been time to alter the dynamic of the race. But confident in her game plan and her formidable tactical strengths, she took the bait. She hammered on her experience and her competence. She leveraged warm memories of the Clinton years and let her husband share the spotlight. She strode into the Augean stables of policy minutia and valorously wielded her shovel. She misread her victory in tiny New Hampshire as a validation of her strategy.

She was snookered.

Now it is obvious that all the thematic terrain she so triumphantly occupied was willingly ceded by Obama in a tactical retreat. What appeared to be a shining prize when viewed from afar—to command the territory of experience and workmanlike capability—turns out to be dreary and lackluster. Any mid-level brand manager would identify her positioning as catastrophic. The harder she fights, the deeper into quicksand she sinks, building Obama up in the process. If she paints herself the worker, he appears the leader. If she is the manager, he becomes the executive. If she is a return to a safer past, he becomes a pioneer into the future. He owns all the high ground, and he will easily reoccupy her territory after she packs up and goes home.

And in a crowning irony, her struggle for viability compels her to co-opt some of the most distasteful Republican talking points. She is playing the fear card, raising the spectre of the disaster that will ensue if we put an untested Commander in Chief in the White House. It's a cry that might serve to shave a percentage point of voters her way in a tight race, but it will never be heard above the roar of pounding feet as the mob rushes to Obama's banner.

With that play trumped, she is driven to go negative and attempt to sow doubt about the lesser man beneath the soaring rhetoric. Such a blatant appeal to cynicism certainly serves to clarify the stylistic gulf between the candidates. But not to her advantage.

Still, what other cards can she play at this point? If she had locked Bill in a closet in mid-January and remade her message from scratch, everyone would have thought her mad, but she might have a chance in the fight now. Instead she took the safe and ostensibly smart route. Since then she's been outfoxed, out-maneuvered, out-positioned, and just plain whupped. Now, the old expression about playing the hand you're dealt is the only one that applies.

And on March 5th, she will have no choice but to fold.

When Cavemen Vote

Barack Obama is all talk. More than an empty suit, he is stupid.

Hillary Clinton is a power hungry shrew who will stop at nothing to gain the Presidency. She will arrange for Obama's assassination if it appears she is destined to lose the primary election battle.

Both of these sentiments are ubiquitous in the discussion threads of political Web sites, staining and obscuring what little thoughtful dialogue can be found there. Even the redoubtable Erica Jong is not immune. In an ill-considered polemic on the Huffington Post, Ms. Jong let her fury cloud her judgment, baselessly intimating that Barack Obama offers no more than "soundbites and attacks on 'the' Clintons." Particularly ironic was that the pitch of her 12-paragraph shriek only served to reinforce the very same false stereotypes about women that she has debunked so artfully over her lifetime.

Was she in this instance a pawn of her own hormones?

Whatever its source, hyperbole about Clinton or Obama arrives always cloaked in terms superlative and self-discrediting. But while we may dismiss the ravings of those intent on instigating discord, it's instructive to consider the role that emotions play in heightening our political enthusiasms and distastes, and eventually turning us all into blathering idiots.

Evolution has equipped the human psyche in wondrous ways. Unfortunately, most of the tools she has equipped us with are designed to protect us from charging tigers, or to assist us to confront feces-flinging upstarts in our clan. We have made successful physical adaptations in civilization's brief time frame. For instance, in a mere few thousand years of bovine domestication we have come to produce the enzymes that digest cow's milk. Meanwhile the kinds of dangers and challenges to our status we must face have evolved as much as our dietary habits. Peril wields carcinogens rather than claws, and every super model that pouts at us from billboards is a seratonin-depressing put-down. These are elements of the new that we have not learned to digest. In fact, it appears that we may require some millions of years to rewire the infinitely multilayered interraleation of our emotions to metabolism and behavior. In other words, we confront the modern world with the emotional equivalent of rocks and pointed sticks.

Make no mistake, the outpouring of bile in this primary process is not the result of conflicting opinions about policy. Its triggers are primitive. Are we being relegated to a second-tier status because we are black, or because we are female? Will we feel personally shamed by a less-bellicose stance towards Iran? Is our place in the social hierarchy threatened when others question our judgment based on our support for one candidate or the other? Who dares affront the tribe of Obama? Or of Hillary? These are the keys to our emotional floodgates. And when the sluice opens, we behave in ways that might make sense when our spouse flirts with another partner, or when there's a burglar in the house, but that are remarkably stupid in the context of a political debate.

For example, when we percieve a danger, we become acutely sensitive to input that we associate with that threat. In the burglar scenario, we become conscious of even the subtlest sounds. Are those footsteps we hear in the hall? In this state, we tolerate a high incidence of false positives--suddenly every creak and clink we hear is an intruder--but our heightened alert might save our lives, and the downside is no worse than a night's sleep lost.

But in the political dialogue, our paranoia is expressed in letters and conversations, and takes on a corrosive life of its own. It evokes equal and opposite defensive responses in others, and is sustained and amplified in the echo chamber of 24-hour news and online social media.

More importantly, as feeling intensifies in response to percieved threats, all our mental capacity is directed towards immediate sef-defense. Our mind gathers itself for an imminent leap, whether to hide, or attack, or to flee. As a result, we reserve little capacity for deliberate and considered thinking. And I'm sorry to tell you that we didn't have much of a surplus in that area to begin with.

So we find ourselves reduced to an animal state. But if we could collect ourselves for just a moment, we would see how ludicrous is most of the shouting. I suppose it's possible that Barack Obama is a dim bulb, but if so, shouldn't he get some sort of credit for slipping under everyone's radar to become an editor of the Harvard Law Review? And perhaps Hillary will take out a contract on Obama's life, but he'll have plenty of warning because someone on the review committee she's sure to convene on the matter will certainly leak their plans to the press.

And it's not just crackpot opinions like these that have garnered unwarranted credibility. Many of the narratives espoused by an enflamed electorate and boosted by a craven corporate media--hungry as ever for the drama that makes advertising gravy--have little grounding in likely reality. I'll go on the record right now to contest each of these memes.

If Obama maintains a solid lead in non-superdelagates after March 4, there will be a tide of superdelegates eager to demonstrate their respect for the popular will by coming to his support.

If Obama is clearly the popular choice, Hillary Clinton will not implement a burnt earth policy and destroy the Democratic party in a fit of pique. Instead she will gracefully and honorably step aside, voice her support for the nominee, and work to ensure his election in November.

If Hillary wins the popular vote fair and square--which is the only way she'll get or accept the nomination--Democrats that supported Obama will rally to her side. Likewise, Hillary's supporters will stand behind Obama if he is the nominee.

And unless there is a sea change in public sentiment before November, the presidential contest will not be nail bitingly close. Voter turnout during this primary season clearly shows there is enormous enthusiasm on the Democratic side, and a significant lack of the same for the Republicans. When you consider how close the 2000 and 2004 contests were, 2008 is looking like a relative no-brainer.

All this will come to pass. Unless some reader has just said "jinx."

One final point about emotion and politics. It is clear that many are attracted to Obama because he moves them, and they have been seeking such a connection. And it is just as clear that many of Clinton's supporters cleave to her campaign because they are wary of good feelings as a substitute for competence. But like it or not, emotion remains a key factor--arguably the dominant factor--in determining how we relate to everyone we encounter. It determines whether we listen to them, whether we give them the benefit ofthe doubt, whether we forgive them when they err, and whether we follow where they lead. The broader the audience, the more important emotional appeal becomes, because while you may be able to get most people to agree they like you, you will never get them to agree on a health care plan. And nobody has to sway a broader audience than the President.

At least, that's how I feel.

No Rules Means No Cheaters

This week, the Supreme Court dismissed a lawsuit that sought to hold Wall Street bankers liable for losses stemming from the collapse of Enron.

The plaintiff's contended that said bankers conspired to conceal Enron's vulnerabilities from investors. But the court ruled in this instance, as in several others recently, that responsibility should rest exclusively with the liars at companies like Enron, not with the nice people in the financial services industry (is there any other industry left? Oh, right--I always forget about pharmaceuticals and pornography...) who so cheerfully delivered those lies to you and I.

And isn't that only fair? Don't investment bankers put on the pants of their $5,000 Armani suits one leg at a time like the rest of us? Or have their valets do it one leg at a time for them? Aren't they struggling to put food on the table for their families, just like any feedlot salesman in rural Texas. Except with different food. On a nicer table. In a bigger house. And with a staff to handle the dishes. What I'm trying to say is, aren't we all the same mortal clay, trying to make ends meet? And isn't that all the harder when one end is at a beach house in Maui and the other is with the children at their prep school in Connecticut?

After the case was dismissed, Antonin Scalia was emotionally overcome with sympathy for the heroes of high finance. Later, that most soft-hearted of Supreme Court Justices sought to blot out the tormenting images of suffering bankers by making himself a cup of hot cocoa and flicking lit matches at orphans soaked in gasoline.

So the financial services industry will emerge unscathed from the Enron disaster. And after a weekend of celebratory high-fiving, meth binges and raucous circle jerks, they will buckle down on Monday morning and find new pyramid schemes to misrepresent.

Yes, they are abhorrent. Yes, they should be ashamed, and probably would be if they hadn't had their sense of honor surgically extracted to create for themselves the same sort of career advantage possessed by prostitutes with removable dentures. But does the ultimate responsibility lie with the bankers or with the regulations under which they operate? If the rules of boxing awarded extra points for blows to the kidneys and testicles, who would be a dirty fighter?

I'm sure this notion will offend the mechanical flag-wavers, were it possible for opposing viewpoints to pierce the Fox News-hardened protective bubble of their obliviousness. This is America, they'll shout, the land of fair play! Regulation is the great enemy of prosperity! If you knee-cap our entrepreneurial enthusiasm with your schoolmarmish delicacy regarding con games and loansharking, how will we be able to afford the Hard Rock Cafe t-shirts we need to look our best when Jesus returns?

Fair play? America may believe in a level playing field, but fair is anything you can get away with. And if you can get away with tilting the playing field, that's OK too.

Law has always been more important in this country than in the old world. In Romania they have thousands of years of custom--most of which relates to proper ways for killing Jews--to serve in law's stead. But America is basically one giant trailer park. The only customs dictate quiet time after 10 pm on weeknights and who has dibs on the sceptic hookups. Without rules and regulation, we'd be living in... well, exactly the kind of chaos we have today.

So make no mistake, we have both a people problem and a rule problem. The people problem is profoundly intractable. People are just awful, and if God made them, he has a crappy sense of humor.

But the rules problem is correctable. If we can get the people to make the necessary corrections. Wherein it is possible that even a small degree of optimism is misplaced.

For today, "regulation" is as dirty a word as it has been at any time in our brief and tawdry history. The perceived causal relationship between the scuttling of so many structural constraints over the last 25 years and the false sense of general prosperity over that same time frame has reinforced the negative image of regulation in any form. There is no question that each President since Carter has wiped his ass with the pages torn from our country's regulatory rulebook, and that G.W. Bush is a man that uses a lot of toilet paper. The authenticity of the affluence generated in that interval is debatable, however. First, like all compulsive gamblers, we tend to retain clearer impressions of our wins than our losses. Second, much of the residue of success that persists after the bursting of the technology and real estate bubbles reflects money borrowed from countries that build their wealth by producing actual things of value, rather than simply delivering pizzas to each other. Payback will be a bitch, as our children will discover soon enough.

But the perception of regulation as an evil persists. And if a free market is good, than isn't a free-er market even better? Shouldn't we make the market so fucking free that the Chicago commodities exchange will grow wings and soar away westward over Minnesota? The answer of course, is no. And not just because of the dangers that an aviating financial center would pose to the good people of Rotchester and St. Paul.

You see, balance is good. Every empirical faculty we possess tells us this is so. In an engine we need just so much fuel and so much air. Creatures in the ocean need just so much salinity and no more. And our financial system needs just the right mix of constraints and flexibility.

The problem is that our culture holds nothing but contempt for moderation and balance. We are the land of 80-hour work weeks, of obesity and anorexia, of multitasking so frenetic that we are developing a new generation of personal music devices designed to respond to contractions of the sphincter, so that we won't have to stop text messaging when we want to skip to the next song. We demand that everyone give 110%, though it leads not only to insurmountable paradox, but pulled hamstrings as well.

Admittedly, our unfettered aversion to fetters has spurred our tremendous material advancement over the years. There are eastern cultures, Hindu and Buddhist, that in contrast to us aspire to optimal balance in all things. And in case you hadn't noticed, an inordinate number of those people are at this moment covered with flies and sitting in a pool of raw sewage. Yet our pedal-to-the-metal economy delivers plenty of volatility and uneven distribution of wealth as it lurches from bubble to bust. And the ratio of good times to bad is likely to deteriorate as we hurl ourselves kamikaze-style against the business end of a hockey-stick curve of debt, energy costs, and a living standard unsustainably out of level with the rest of the planet.

Don't look for any populist groundswell in support of regulation, however. Ironically, no constituency is more protective of our wild west marketplace than those who suffer most egregiously from its fallout: the poor. While the wealthy may welcome the security reasonable regulation provides for gains already accrued, those without are terrified to think that the paths to quick riches might be closed before they get their own millions. It is the simplest of propaganda parlor tricks to convince them that affluence is just around the corner, and to provoke a feral response with the canard that regulators want to take it away. Advocates of preserving and extending the most brutally Darwinian and unalloyed form of free enterprise can feel confident that the unwashed masses are behind them. And hopefully downwind as well.

The Enron fiasco is only one of the smaller calamities precipitated by a lack of regulation in recent years. Remember when all those savings and loan institutions went belly up? That was the result of a regulation failure. And the current mortgage credit crisis is entirely the result of fabulously ill-conceived lending instruments, deceptive selling practices and dishonest risk representation of just the sort that regulation could have prevented. Dr. Moreau himself would only genuflect to the mad financial wizards who created these taxonomy-defying devices. It's no surprise that average home buyers didn't know what they were getting into, but Fed Chairman Bernard Bernanke, a certified genius who is keenly aware that any display of uncertainty on his part can have devastating consequences confessed that he did not have a clue as to how these financial instruments worked. Perhaps it was all a practical joke gone awry. If so, somebody needs to get canned.

There is a moment in a tragedy-bound joyride when the car teeters on the verge of control, and the riders are still shouting with glee, even as their overtaxed synapses begin to furiously fire messages of doom. That's where we are right now. Sadly though, no lesson will be learned unless we hit a tree.

Until then--Wheeeeee!!!!

Republicans are Chickens

Dear Barack,

Your letters are becoming a nuisance.

At some point you will have to learn to formulate your own message. I cannot always be there to whisper in your ear from offstage and to vet your speeches. I have responsibilities of my own. A family to feed and a demanding job in waste management. The waste will not manage itself. Believe me, I have given it every opportunity.

Must I do everything?

Very well then. But listen carefully--I will only say this once.

I can see that you and your democratic co-candidates are showing signs of shaking off the enervating spell cast upon you by the Republicans. The spell that compels you to respond in kind to their message of fear. For too long you've let them frame the debate. All they have to do is say the word "terror" and, like Skinnerian rats eager for a pellet of food, you respond with mechanical bombast and bravado, promising to begin each of your Presidential days by feasting on the still-beating heart of suspected terrorists, relishing the warm infidel blood that runs rich and red down your neck.

It will never work. If the Presidency is to be awarded to the candidate most eager to flay heathens, can any Democrat possibly defeat the holy warrior Huckabee? The bloodthirsty cannibal Giuliani? Romney the Guantanamo doubler? Or that veteran of Vietnamese tiger-cages, Rambo McCain?

You know this. And you are beginning to see that the Republicans are bluffing when they play the fear card, and that each time you respond in kind, you strengthen their hand, validating not only the perceived reality of the danger but also their ham handed, rusty-knife approach to confronting it. You have begun to experiment with a different formulation, nervously watching the polls to see whether the public is open to something other than a vengeance-based policy.

But half measures won't suffice. You can't just say their bluffing. You will have to actually call their bluff.

Edwards can't do it. He's too busy rousing the rabble, invoking the ghosts of the Grange and William Jennings Bryan. Has he been asleep for the last sixty years? Is there anyone left in this country that even knows what a mill is?

Hillary can't do it either. She is a machine. She may, in fact, be the perfect machine for running the country, an unstoppable policy-making leviathan who will vaporize all resistance like some terminator of the French enlightenment. But she has not oratory beyond that suited to automated corporate telephone systems.

For English, press 1.

This message has to be delivered with the clarion call of trumpets, with fatherly assurance, with the easy courage that dispels doubt.

I know Hillary says you get elected with poetry, but must govern with prose. But note that you haven't been elected yet.

Do you have a pencil ready? This is the message:

The lying is going to stop. Now.

Starting today, we are going to live up to our most noble aspirations rather than be slaves to our basest fears.

For seven long years we have been told that if want to remain powerful, we cannot allow our fate to be bound up with the rest of the world's community of nations, but must instead think and act only in our own interests.

For seven long years we have been told that the preservation of liberty in our own land could be assured by achieving military domination in others.

For seven long years we have been told that if we wanted to preserve our system of justice and our freedom from physical threats, we would have to torture people, we would have to wiretap people, we would have to shoot first and ask questions later, we would have to consider people guilty until proven innocent.

In short, we were told that we had to make a choice. If we wanted to have self-determination, safety, and freedom for ourselves, we must deny it to others.

And so, despite the nagging sensation that we were abandoning our commitment to fair play, our compassion and our humanity, we chose the path of safety.

But these policies have failed. In seeking to preserve our power we have been weakened. In seeking to preserve our liberty we have been constrained. In seeking to be safer, we have inflamed and emboldened those who would do us harm.

Today America is in anguish, more fearful than ever, pessimistic about the future, and convinced that our country is headed in the wrong direction. Not because we have failed to achieve the security we sought, but because we forfeited so much of that of which we were justly proud in the process.

I have some good news. The good news is that we don't have to choose between safety on one hand and honor and humanity on the other. There is only one path to a better future, and it will take us to the safety we seek in a manner consistent with our highest ideals.

We can be the first in an international family of nations again, leading by the power of our example rather than the threat of compulsion.

We can be a true advocate of liberty around the globe, and in so doing, pacify the animosity that put us at risk.

We can be guided by law and justice, and we will once again be a beacon to the world, a country that even those from other lands feel is their own.

When I think about what has transpired in the last seven years, I think we have been like survivors in a lifeboat, abandoning a damaged ship, still trembling with the terror of our brush with death. Of course, we didn't tell themselves that it was fear that denied us the will to go back and save others. We told ourselves that it would be hopeless to try, that there was no more room in the lifeboat, that those still on the ship should have gotten off faster, and had only themselves to blame.

That is not cause to be ashamed. I believe with all my heart that we are good people, striving to be the best we can. We are human, and so sometimes we are weak.

But the measure of our mettle comes after the flush of fear subsides and we see ourselves with clear eyes. There are still some in our life boat who are spreading fear, who seek to cultivate all that is mean and cowardly in us. But in most I see a new courage, a new resolve, and new clarity of purpose.

Yes, it is true that we cannot escape the challenges we face. There is nowhere for our little lifeboat to sail where our safety and ease are assured. So perhaps returning to cast our lot with those we left to try to save themselves is our only choice. But we are going back not because we have to, but because we want to. Because this is an act that will be frozen in time, and we will relive it every day for the rest of our lives. And we will not have it be to our shame, but to our renown.

This new course we are on will not be an easy one. Change is never easy, and there are, of necessity, profound changes lying ahead. But this change is coming, whether we will or no. To survive in a storm, a ship must put its prow to the gale. We will go forward, confident that our course is both wise and right, and at peace in the knowledge that our triumph will be all the greater for the trials that lie ahead.

Thank you, and gesundheit.

Our Cowardice-Based Foreign Policy

That hissing sound you hear is the air leaking out of America's hegemonic balloon. Someday you will tell your great grandchildren what it was like to be a citizen of the most powerful country on earth. They will not believe you. They also may not understand you, since they will have been raised to speak only Mandarin.

That our present level of dominance is unsustainable we can say with Newtonian certainty. Much as water will find its own level, so will the balance of power between nations swing back to a mean after a period of uneven distribution. Of the factors that have made us the most powerful country on earth, the only one that was uniquely American was the political and economic system that generated wealth like kudzu, and that secret recipe has now become a staple of kitchens in China, Indonesia, and even the once-calcified culinary institutions of Europe. Soon all the world will be asphyxiating beneath the matted vines of a luxury once reserved for us alone.

The party, in other words, is over. If we have not noticed the caterer putting the chairs on the tables, it is because we are too drunk to rise up off the couch. The only open question now is whether we will accede gracefully and play the role of partner in the order of nations, or will we act the megalomaniacal Caesar until the bitter end and lash out indiscriminately at all who come within range of our mindless rage, raving like an addict in withdrawal, grain alcohol in one hand, matches in the other, as we make the planet our funeral pyre.

Hmmm, I wonder...

I'll confess: it's a rhetorical question. The early results are in and the answer is evident in the way our military outlays continue to expand relative to the rest of the world, even though we already spend more than the next 15 most martial-minded nations combined. It is evident in the proliferation of American service uniforms in all four corners of the globe even as American diplomats become an endangered species. And it is evident in our look of disgust as we brush away the filthy hands of nations clutching at our sleeves, hoping for a moment's audience to say, please, sorry to disturb you, but you're kneeling on my throat.

It wasn't always this way. If we have become the world's bully, it is not because we haven't had positive experiences with soft power. In the years after WWII, we took the rest of the world on a joyride of economic and cultural globalization that brought great riches and a significant degree of freedom to swathes of the planet previously unaccustomed to such pleasures. We were then, as now, armed to the teeth and forever demonstrating our good will by shooting people. But our adventures in Vietnam and Korea, the ass-kickings we administered via US-supplied proxies in Latin America and the middle east, and most significantly, the cold war's one-hydrogen-bomb-for-every-household plan were less responsible for our present hegemonic precedence than our far-more-benign role as the world's preeminent loan shark and pusher of drugs like Baywatch, Hotpockets, cigarettes, and warehouse-sized bathrooms. In fact the only drugs we kept just for ourselves were the actual drugs. We also retained dibs on all the Chips Ahoy! cookies, which, because of the drugs, we will definitely want later tonight.

But now, presented with the opportunity to boldly lead or brashly dominate, we've put on our brass knuckles. This approach achieves a trifecta: it is simultaneously futile, shameful and stupid. But it is not surprising, for all Americans are attuned to a whispering voice that only we can hear, a voice that ever contests the better angels of our nature, calling us something worse than murderer, worse than liar, worse than cheater...

Calling us pussy.

How is it that this notion, that we are "soft," is an arrow privileged to bypass all our critical faculties and strike a fatal blow to our self image, even while we can blithely equivocate when charged with seemingly far worse trespasses? The answer is found in a handful of formative historical and cultural factors that make multilateralism and cooperation an unnatural act for us. These demons have been dozing uneasily in our national psyche for decades now, but circumstances are conspiring to fully rouse them. They have not had their coffee yet, and they are in a foul mood.

The first of these demons is the myth that there are only two approaches to conflict resolution: Thunder Dome deathmatch or appeasement, as embodied by the rather drab figure of Neville Chamberlain. Chamberlain, as you probably know, was singlehandedly responsible for giving the word appeasement a pejorative connotation when he let Hitler know that Britain would look the other way if Germany elected to get jiggy with Czechoslovakia. Five years and millions and millions of dead people later, it looked like the wrong call. Fair enough. Chamberlain's misjudgement certainly deserves to be ranked as one of history's more piquant learning moments. But the second world war was the birth agony from which sprung our modern international order, and like any creation story, it exerts an outsize influence on our perspective of contemporary events. So it is that ever after we have been inclined to see diplomacy of any kind as a thinly disguised desire to french kiss Adolf Hitler.

Mirror image to the myth of appeasement--and likewise uncritically granted a significance unsupported by the facts--is the myth that Ronald Reagan toppled the Soviet Union with only the withering power of his steely gaze and several hundred billion dollars of America's lunch money spent on stealth bombers. It is only one of several miracles attributed to the gipper which led to his recent canonization. The others were turning America's frown upside down (1981-1983), and when he addressed the Liberian ambassador by name without prompting in 1987, despite suffering from a well-advanced case of Alzheimer's. But the Soviet Union had been leaking at the seams for 50 years by the time Reagan arrived on the scene, assisted towards an early grave by the prudent pressures of every administration after Roosevelt. Pinching a comatose invalid's respirator tube is something less than slaying a raging dragon.

We are further discouraged from cooperative action by a deep seated belief in the goodness of competition in all matters. If we were to assist other peoples and nations who have so plainly failed to develop sewage systems and useless trinket based economies on their own, what critical lessons about not living in your own filth and coveting expensive, pointless toys would thereby go unlearned? And there is an ironic analog to facets of Darwinian theory involved here as well. For though the more pious among us would not be descended from apes, they are nonetheless at ease with the idea of survival of the fittest, mapping neatly as it does onto the unassailable tenets of free enterprise and the market economy. Strong animals devour the weak, they note, it is nature's plan. Which may be true. But as America transforms from a shining beacon into a bristling fortress, they might pause to consider how seldom successful animals devour those of their own species. Genetically distinct for no more than 100,000 years, humanity is still in a pre-release trial phase, by nature's standards. It's not to late for her to cancel the project altogether.

So let us review. Appeasement is bad. Cooperation with those you should be competing with is appeasement. And who should you be competing with?

Everyone, of course.

In better times, these self-serving urges coexist with the more compassionate and good-hearted aspirations of our citizenry and, by electoral extension, our government. But these are not better times, for now we are in great fear. We are afraid of terrorists. We are afraid of global warming. We are afraid we'll get sick with no health insurance. We are afraid of immigrants. We are afraid of our credit card debt. We are afraid of gas prices. And while we don't much care if the rest of the world hates us, we are deathly afraid that they will laugh at us. France most of all.

Yet our crisis presents a tremendous opportunity. There is ample historical evidence that great leaders can harness the energy latent in our anxiety and channel it in positive directions, revolutionizing our sense of ourselves and our role in the world. Unfortunately, none of that evidence is to be found in the last eight years, and none of those leaders are named Bush. So we strut brashly back and forth on the world stage, our shirt open to the navel, spewing profanity and reeking of booze as we inquire who at the bar--if any have not yet eaten--would like a knuckle sandwich? But let us pick two examples at random from the tome of reasons that we are idiots, and consider them in order of ascending degree of irony.

First, every step we are taking to insure our continued dominance is serving only to hasten our downfall. The economics of our strategy are disastrous. Soldiers cost a lot more than diplomats, and having them running around the middle east shooting people is making the locals nervous. That, in turn, drives up the price of oil, which drains what little cash we have and sends it right to those nice men with the framed picture of Osama Bin Laden on their wall. And when the President implores us to continue spending this Christmas, next Christmas, and every day in between, that only increases our consumer debt, already at Alice-in-Wonderland levels. All our guns aren't going to be much use when we can't afford any bullets.

Another facet of our "strength" is manifested in a disdain for multilateralism. Far from widening the power gap between us and other nations, our go-it-alone mentality is only accelerating the creation of new international combinations that don't look to the U.S. as a center of gravity, if they even include as at all. The economy of the EU may soon rival ours in size. Much of the world is pursuing climate action without American participation. If we thought to discipline the world by threatening to uninvite them to our party, we're finding instead that we've simply given them the push they needed to learn how to throw a party of their own. And in their minds, the best thing about their party is that a certain colossal asshole will not be in attendance.


There is a positive feedback loop that occurs here (note--"positive" in this instance is not the same as "good"). As each ill-conceived attempt to control the world blows up in our face, our anxiety level ramps up, eliciting ever more irrational and heavy handed reactions on our part. In short, it is suicidal, and in the end we will press our face into a pile of cocaine, shout "Say hello to my little friend!" and be cut in two by a shotgun blast from behind. Be sure to bring popcorn.

But the greatest irony about our policy of strength is that it is, like most indications of bravado, actually cowardice. We are what we most fear and despise--utter pussies. Confronted with the prospect of change, we cannot summon the courage to manage the process so as to mitigate the downside and conduct ourselves with the humanity and honor which are the only things of value in this life. Small wonder. The last generation to experience national hardship in this country is at this moment waiting for a nurse's aid to roll them over and change their diapers. The rest of us equate our second cars and second homes with vital organs of our body; we could no more do without our wine chiller than our pancreas.

But rather than trying to horde our power, or beat other nations over the head with it, what if we actually invested it? What if we supported genuine freedom and democracy in Pakistan? In the short run we would lose some leverage against Islamic extremism there, and yes, some unreliable characters would get their fingers on the nuclear button. But Musharraf has delivered little of value to us, and arguably our support for him only enhances the Taliban's power base in that country. In the long run, a significant change of course in our policy there would take the wind out of the fundamentalists' sails.

And what if we engaged with Iran and at least kept them talking until their geriatric leadership croaks? The young people that make up a huge proportion of their population have western predilections, and will soon take over the country and be a friend to us. Unless we do something stupid. Like what we're thinking of doing now.

What if we looked for a multilateral solution in Iraq? What if we made a genuine effort to address the question of Israel and the Palestinians? What if we actually packed up our forces in the middle east and left? These thoughts are Dick Cheney's nightmares--which is reason enough to give them serious consideration--but such tactics would have universally positive effects. The threat of terrorism would wane considerably. We would save enough money to give health care to every American and still be able to take the whole country out for ice cream.

Change is coming, whatever we do. Why not display a little less strength. And a lot more courage.

Our Presidential Nightmare is Over!

At Only Sayin' we are sensitive—and vulnerable—to the charge of negativity. So today, let us place our bitterness to soak in a warm glass of bile on our bedtable, and declare the good news.

While the liberal whiners whine, and the America-hating, naysaying surrender monkeys say nay and throw in their 50%-post-consumer waste/50% hemp fiber towels, our nation stands on the threshold of a monumental victory.

As I'm sure you are aware, we have been suffering under the oppressive yoke of a President hell-bent on destroying all that is good and decent in this great land. A president determined to irredeemably corrupt our national soul. To set our government and society on a course for disaster from which we can never hope to recover.

Some claim that his intentions are pure, though his methods be flawed. But we who are vigilant have always known better. We have seen his henchmen and counselors masquerading as pillars of society while relentlessly cultivating our destruction. We have watched as he furtively gathered the reins of power in his insatiable embrace. And we have seen his plan ripen and grow heavy on the bough.

But rejoice, dear reader. For though you thought the harvest of that bitter fruit inevitable and were resigned to shatter your body upon the barricades in futile glory, or fall honorably upon your own blade, or worse still, to move to Canada—I tell you we have snatched victory from the ravenous jaws of defeat. The president's conspiracy has been thwarted and we will soon consign his nefarious plot to history's overflowing dustbin, along with 8-track tapes and most of the world's glaciers.

For those of you who do not follow the thread of politics, I am speaking, of course, about President James Madison.

'Twould be a bitter blow to the man known as "Jemmy,"—an inoffensive moniker that belied his infernal proclivities and craven lust for power—to know that his intrigues have failed. As he prepared to leave office in 1816, so confident was he that his machinations had matured beyond any chance of countering, that he dropped all pretense and brashly taunted our nation in his final address to congress, declaring to have established...

A government pursuing the public good as its sole object, and regulating its means by the great principles consecrated in its charter, and by those moral principles to which they are so well allied; a government which watches over the purity of elections, the freedom of speech, and the press, trial by jury, and the equal interdict against encroachments and compacts between religion and the state; which maintains inviolably the maxims of public faith, the security of persons and property, and encourages in every authorized mode the general diffusion of knowledge which guarantees to public liberty its permanency and to those who possess the blessing the true enjoyment of it; a Government which avoids intrusions on the internal repose of other nations, and repels them from its own...a government, in a word, whose conduct within and without may bespeak the most noble of all ambitions—that of promoting peace on earth and good will to men.

If you have ever stopped short at a cross-street with your children in the back seat, you know how the imagination proceeds into the intersection alone to envision the skid, the impact that almost was, the shattering of glass and bone. So in the case of Madison's devilish scheming must we taste the horror of a tragedy averted and tremble for our country were his perverse vision fulfilled.

But this nightmare is truly over. As the rising sun peeks in our window, its rays strike and destroy each bête noir conjured by that most petite of founders.

No longer are we susceptible to the allure of such weak and effeminate distractions as the pursuit of "the public good." Goodness is by its very nature dissipative, absorbed to no apparent impact among the millions. It is greatness we desire. Will future generations swell with pride to know that Meals on Wheels delivered extra helpings of canned green beans this week? Twaddle! The energy of such samaritanism were better redirected to hoist high the celebrities and magnates who will wallow in surplus on our magazine covers and society pages, and who may eat and keep warm as proxies for the rest of us.

"Pure" elections? Perhaps no other facet of Madison's invidious agenda has been so hotly contested. As people of color found means to circumvent the best intentions of Jim Crow, and the advent of womens' suffrage rendered the once-steadfast guidepost of federal policy no more than a weather vane gyrating wildly in response to the cyclical lunar ravings of that delicate sex, preserving the integrity of the franchise has required a Herculean commitment. Thankfully, the courts have been able to leverage the saving power of voter suppression and republicans have delimited our electoral districts to ensure balance. And when all appeared lost nonetheless, electronic voting arrived and enabled us to dispense with time-consuming vote tallying, and eliminate all possibility of error by starting from the correct result and calculating the precinct totals in reverse.


With a single brilliant stroke, the noble defenders of right have also triumphed over those pestilential twins, freedom of speech and freedom of the press. Yes, it has proven impossible to stop individuals from trying to turn our country from good to bad by criticizing our policies. But the consolidation of media outlets engendered by deregulation combined with the symbiotic teat-sucking that pervades the relationship of giant corporations and the government ensures that the overwhelming majority of citizens are spared the discomfort of ever being exposed to anti-American thinking. By which we mean the kind of thinking distinguished by the degree to which it diverges from the thoughts thunk by our leaders. And in the event subversive ideas find voice in the media—for example, the morale-busting assertion that Saddam Hussein did not personally pilot all four of the 9-11 aircraft—there are a handful of heroic souls who, with the battle-cry "Iraq-nine-eleven!" will hurl themselves into the trajectory of such insidious notions. Thus do they selflessly "take the bullet" of treasonous, faith-sapping lies otherwise destined to lodge in doe-eyed America's gut.

Trial by jury. It is hard for us, living as we do in this golden age, to believe that there was a time when jurors could actually have been expected to doubt the good intentions and competence of those charged with law enforcement. But indeed, it was a stroke of diabolical genius by which Madison required criminal justice professionals to grapple for the approval of drunk, illiterate, and possibly even Irish buffoons to consummate the pure formality of converting indictments into convictions. In his arrogance, he failed to anticipate that those buffoons would evolve and develop the uncanny ability to recognize the guilty as whoever is sitting in the accused's chair when a prosecutor describes frightening things that might happen somewhere, someday.

But just in case--no more habeus corpus. Because you can't be too careful.

Regarding Madison's celebrated "interdict against compacts between religion and state," much work remains before we can openly acknowledge the obvious: the United States is a Christian nation. Yet who can fail to detect the hand of the lamb of god in the beneficent workings of our government? Think of the millions of starving, homeless African families whose sole joy is found in the clammy, listless embrace of the children who would never have been born had aid agencies been permitted to include birth control among their family planning options. Or consider how empty would be the naves of our nation's churches were the destitute and downtrodden able to obtain shelter and sustenance via the sterile auspices of our civic bureaucracy. And what licentiousness would be too abhorrent for the ranks of the civil service were they not ably policed by god's anointed bureaucrats?

Madison also aimed to obstruct the well-meaning interactions of constituents and representatives in the name of preserving the "public faith." He hoped thereby to make government ineffectual. But let Madison roll in his grave, for his cynical attempt to mark as corrupt the proper and vigorous assistance the elected provide to their deserving supporters, and to make it impossible for the beneficiaries of such services to show their just gratitude has come to naught.

What about "the security of persons and property" and the permanency of "public liberty?" Of course, Madison hoped that prohibitions against the government monitoring the actions and intentions of its citizens would enable enemies of the state to plot without hindrance and eventually destroy the nation from within. But after numerous close calls, no longer do we cower and wonder where our foes are going, who they are conspiring with, or what may be secreted in the sinister recesses of their corporal cavities.


Eager to strangle our national spirit at home, Madison was equally loathe to share our blessings abroad. But was he avoiding "intrusions on the internal repose of other nations," or was he such a stranger to compassion that he could deny inferior cultures the fruits of our generosity and the opportunity to play some part—however insignificant—in our national epic? On this score we may a long last sleep peacefully. For never has all the love, generosity, kindness, and protection that America can offer been displayed more ubiquitously to thankful nations around the globe.

"Peace on earth and good will to men," said Madison in closing. Did he suppress the callow laughter rising in his throat as he twisted the long knife of this lie in the heart of his homeland? Did he feel a tinge of regret for inflicting the tragedy whose fulfillment he believed sealed? Was there even a shred of humanity left in his withered soul upon which the fragile seedling of remorse could find purchase? Only Madison himself could say, and from the regions of the damned where his shade surely dwells, no wayfarer can return with report. But here on earth, in this new, budding paradise, we can rejoice that his monstrous intent has been foiled, and the true meaning of his final words salvaged at last.

How to Frighten a Lawyer

Horror.

That is what every American lawyer feels, or will soon feel, or certainly should feel as they regard the unhinging of the justice system whose constancy is as fundamental to their intellectual grounding as the vestibular mechanics of the inner ear are to their ability to chase after speeding ambulances.

Evidence that we are living in the eye of a perfect legal storm is all around us. A supreme court stacked with ideologues who disdain precedent. An executive that has abducted our body of law and is intent upon tearing the ligaments whose flexibility has ever determined the range of permissibility. Habeus corpus thrown in a pit and murdered, unmourned and unmissed. The prohibition against unreasonable search and seizure surveilled, shanghaied, stripped, garnished, and extraordinarily rendered--all on a warrantless and politically motivated whim. A justice department demoted to little more than a branch of the Republican party campaign call center. A paper tiger legislature whose laws are disparaged as mere suggestions and whose subpoenas are disregarded.

In better times, any one of these trespasses would have precipitated a crisis. In concert, they represent a hazard of millennial proportions.

As yet, not all lawyers have grasped the gravity of the situation. You will be shocked to learn, dear reader, that lawyers exhibit many of the same foibles and weaknesses that bedevil those of us with souls. Some lawyers are highly specialized technicians, perhaps focusing their clinical attentions upon the arcane minutia of corporate law. The legal equivalent of a medical specialist who studies only the transfer of a single hormone between kidney cells, they may show up at work for years blithely unaware that the patient has cancer. Eventually however, those kidney cells will begin to smell a little ripe.

Other attorneys--I must shock again--care for the principles of law only to the extent that doing so helps them line their own pockets. The lion's share of time in law school is not dedicated to constitutional law and its quaint fixation on individual rights and the balance of powers. Instead, predictably, prospective attorneys labor endlessly to master the law as it relates to a concept even more central to our national character than liberty. I am referring, of course, to money, and how to get it, how it's taxed, how to leave it to your cats when you die, how long to lock up a white man that steals it, and how much longer than that to lock up a black man that does the same.

Attorneys that absorb these lessons are rewarded with great wealth and enjoy a patrician existence. But seated in the cloistered recesses of their clubrooms after dinner, even the most staid and successful of this breed may espy a faint disturbance roiling the once-placid surface of their Armagnac. For with such subtlety do the seismic tremors that unsettle our legal bedrock announce themselves. He raises one puzzled eyebrow as he regards the snifter. How serious, he wonders, is the reckoning portended by those delicate ripples?

How serious? Imagine how physicists would react if dropped objects ceased to reliably fall. Much as cooks found themselves holding guns at the battle of the bulge, scientists would have an all-hands-on-deck moment. Surely the search for dark matter would seem a lot less urgent than it had only a day before. That is the scale of dislocation that our present course heralds in the legal arena.

You see, like physics, the law is a towering structure painstakingly articulated upon a mere handful of core principles. From its roots in ancient holy texts, through English common law and American legal history, it largely transcends political and social revolution. Even apparent sea changes, like the emphasis on individual rights codified in constitutions inspired by secular humanism, are not entirely radical. Six thousand years after Cain served Abel, our number one law enforcement challenge is still people hitting other people over the head with sticks. So much for progress.

And just as a chess game is less a series of positions than it is a set of rules for change, so the process for amending and enforcing laws is more important to the continuing viability of our society than the specifics of the laws themselves. Confidence in the stability of law enables us to plan for the future. Why would you pay into the Social Security fund if your money was going to be frittered away to compensate for the revenue lost via corporate tax breaks? Why would you join the military if your tour could be extended indefinitely by federal fiat? Why indeed?

The law commands reverence on grounds of its ancient lineage alone. With the presidency hanging in the balance, Al Gore declined to contradict the verdict of the supreme court regarding the 2000 Florida ballot recount rather than cast doubt on the legitimacy of that decision. In 1974, that most politically pugilistic commander-in-chief, Richard Nixon, resigned rather than drag the country into a constitutional crisis over impeachment. Maybe these apparent acts of integrity are motivated less by a sense of fair play than by a primeval terror. We are imprinted with an archetypal memory of a time when The Law was spelled with capital letters and the only Miranda Right you had was the choice of thumb screws or hot pokers. Commanded to enter the tent that housed the holy ark and conduct devotions, Aaron's brother made a trivial ceremonial error and instantly burst into flame. Perhaps Nixon saw the capitol custodians recharging fire extinguishers and was inspired to decline further confrontation.

Every acknowledgment of the sanctity of the legal process strengthens our society, whether it is you showing up for a court date for unpaid parking tickets or FDR scotching New Deal programs declared unconstitutional by the supreme court. It would be difficult to overstate the economic and social advantages that accrue from our legal stability. Where would American prosperity be today absent the alchemical interplay of our business-friendly legal structure catalyzed by the egalitarian ethos that unleashes so much of our human potential? If you are inclined to take that progress for granted, look around. There are plenty of countries where wealth is still measured in goats and chickens and no public service is too trivial to require a bribe. What's more, our legal quietude is by no means in a state of self-sustaining equilibrium. Quite the opposite. Like a second-place sports team with overly-optimistic hopes for next season, we humans are always far closer to reverting to brutishness than to realizing a utopia. Every new crack in our constitutional foundation will swiftly be exploited by opportunists who seek to enshrine aberrant notions of the balance of powers, further erode the suddenly ambiguous promise of habeus corpus, or wiretap the phones of their political enemies.

So what are the President and his sage counselors trying to accomplish? All of them understand how the law works, either because they have been to law school or have had the personal pleasure of being indicted. So clearly they must have a plan. Most logically, we might assume they are trying to stretch the sinews of our legal structure to extremes in order to alter our frame of reference. Like yoga for the law (but without the serenity) they hope to make the system so limber that what would once have seemed beyond its range of motion will suddenly be within easy reach. If we once deny the right of habeus corpus to accused criminals, then offering them some niggardly trappings of due process will seem positively munificent by comparison. If we can turn the Department of Justice into a branch office of the Republican party, then an Attorney General who demonstrates something less than utter subservience to the Executive can be accounted democracy's zealous steward.

But if these were the administration's motives, legal professionals would be unruffled. Such Machiavellian cynicism is the air they breathe, the perfumed water in which they bathe, the brier patch in which they are at peace. It takes considerably more than that to horrify a lawyer.

No, what they have seen is something that turns the stomachs of all but the most irredeemably jaded of their profession. Not the body of the law engaged in a salubrious if rigorous routine of calisthenics, but one dragged into the Vice President's office to be beaten with baseball bats. They've watched Dick Cheney deliver blow upon frenzied blow, droplets of sweat spraying from his swollen apoplectic face as the shock of each blast echos through his limbs. Though the law does not resist, the ferocity of the assault escalates. Alberto Gonzalez presses the unsigned authorization for the euphemistically-named terrorist surveillance program into the limp hand of the heavily-sedated John Ashcroft. The vice president's office refuses to turn documents over to Congress, denying its kinship with the executive branch. The Justice Department circulates secret memos approving specific methods of torture explicitly prohibited by laws passed by the congress and signed by the president. The President signs bills into law and then issues signing statements excepting himself from their execution. U.S. Attorneys are dismissed for declining to fabricate grounds for indicting Democrats, or to short-circuit ongoing prosecutions of Republicans. GSA chief Lurita Doan mobilizes her non-partisan agency in the service of the Republican party.

Blow after blow. Until the law is no more than a disarticulated bag of gristle and meat, wrists limp on arms, arms limp on shoulders. Cheney, Addington and Gonzalez drop their clubs and stagger to collapse in chairs, panting from the exertion, sweat soaking their suit jackets.

Professional detachment deserts the lawyers who observe. Most look dazed and baffled. Some are physically ill. There is one frozen in the act of taking a bite of a pretzel.

They wait, expectant. Surely, the congress or the courts will rush to the rescue? But the congress is neutered and the courts are stacked. What about the media or the populace? They are disinterested, uncomprehending, or simply frightened into submissiveness. Perhaps God himself will take note, and law's murderers will be consumed in a sudden flash of immolating fire?

But nothing happens. Galileo drops his ball, but it just hangs in the air.

What now?