The Ideal 2020 Candidate

Ideal candidates are genius at politics (they know how to get elected) and policy (they can make the world better once they are elected) and are focused more on what they can do than what flaws they now have or have had in the past.

 So who am I looking for in 2020? My ideal candidate would 

• Promote disruption in the form of entrepreneurship and social invention and help to mitigate the trauma of disruption in the form of social safety nets. Entrepreneurship should be taught and set up as expectation for a segment of the population in the same way that college education now is and governments and communities should do what they can to make it easier for entrepreneurs to be successful and less painful for individuals impacted by their success.
• Move to change laws so that employees are better able to use corporations as tools for creating wealth, to work towards the popularization of entrepreneurship as a way to transform work.
• Invest record amounts in research in every field.
• Create research funding for major agencies like the Environmental Protection Agency Housing and Urban Development, Department of Energy, Department of Education, Department of Transportation and Justice Department that rivals the research funding for the Department of Defense.
• Create a new cabinet position: the Secretary of Happiness (and the pursuit thereof).
• Will support an independent Fed and Keynesian policy
• Keep us highly engaged in international organizations like NATO, the UN, WTO and even lead initiatives to create new institutions to deal with the myriad realities that spill across borders
• Move towards subsidizing university education the same way we do high school education, leaving students without debt.
• Be a strong advocate for immigration
• Move towards more comprehensive job training and retraining programs that make groups other than knowledge workers more productive. 
• Help promote connection. Not only at the individual level as a route to richer communities (and lower suicide rates) but at an institutional level as a route to making corporations, schools, NGOs, and government agencies more robust.
• Work towards universal healthcare by whatever means is politically practical (see social safety nets). 
• Take climate change seriously,
• Police poor neighborhoods and financial institutions with equal vigor and respect.
• Not be a fan of universal basic income.
• Think it is normal rather than evil for a country to have billionaires and poor people.
• Think it makes sense to tax inheritance more than returns on capital more than income (rather than the reverse as it is now).
• Think that it makes sense to increase the marginal tax rate but never to higher than 50%.
• Ask a little more of everyone in the top 50% and ask everyone in the top 70% to pay taxes to contribute to the quality of our common good.
• Believe that life will be better in 100 years and is choose to act in a way that enhances life in a century rather than ignores it.
• Experiments their way into the future
• And perhaps most importantly, knows that mistakes are inevitable and given that chooses to err on the side of kindness when uncertain about a policy or judgement. People critical of this candidate would alternate between criticizing them for being so wonkish (loving policy and numbers) and being soft-hearted.

I don't expect any one candidate who checks all these boxes to emerge, so I will vote for the candidate who comes closest to this. Perhaps.

There is even one scenario in which I might be persuaded to vote for a candidate who checks only a few of the items on this list. That would be to vote for a candidate who promises me that Donald Trump will die in jail. We have an entire generation who could watch Donald Trump and believe that it is a good idea to lie, cheat, and to approach every encounter as a win-lose engagement. Parents need to be able to tell their sons, "Sure you can choose to be selfish and combative your whole life, ignoring every law and social norm. You can be just like Trump. And you might die in jail."  If we have millions of people believing that Trump's parasitic behavior is a good strategy, our country will become like every other dysfunctional country where bribery and corruption are the norms and people with good hearts and a sense of fair play are considered dupes. Failure to implement my policy ideas would pale in comparison to the damage wrought by Trump becoming a norm for behavior. 

McCain's Mysterious Allure

McCain now leads Clinton and Obama in the polls. This is me scratching my head.

McCain has basically embraced Bush's record. If that is not an indictment of the man, I don't know of one. 81% of the country thinks that we're on the wrong track. 81% makes up everyone but the illiterate, those recovering from traumatic head wounds, and people who still think that all-you-can-eat buffets represent the pinnacle of progress. Another poll (graph to the right) indicates a sharp increase in the percentage of Americans who feel they are worse off than in the past. In fact, this is the sharpest increase in the number, and the highest value it has reached since 1964.

Meanwhile, Bush has ignored the environment and spent billions to create enemies in Iraq. I challenge anyone to find a positive trend that Bush has nursed along rather than de-railed. Having Bush watch over our national affairs has been like having a crack addict watch the kids. Even the frat boy cheerleader may be gradually realizing that he is in over his head. His performance might lead one to believe that there is more to being a good president than staying sober. Sadly, this does not seem to be the case.

We now have McCain, who has largely done what he can to smooth over differences between his policies and George's. And once again I feel utterly baffled. Does no one see a connection between policy and the conditions we live in? Is there a huge swath of the electorate that considers an executive successful as long as he keeps his pants zipped? Do they have no clue? Really?

As I've said before, McCain represents a huge step up for the Republican Party. But his policies are little different, his priorities often the same, as George's. And his level of understanding about Iraq - a country in which he's game to invest 10 trillion ($100 billion X 100 years) - shows the same kind of superficial curiosity that made George such a disaster. (McCain has more than once revealed his confusion of Shiites and Sunnis - a confusion for which casual citizens might be forgiven but is, for policy makers, the equivalent of a doctor confusing the knee and ankle in surgery; it makes a difference. Sure, it is all leg and they are all Muslims, but when it comes down to action, one would like the one performing an operation to be able to distinguish between them.)

One can only hope that McCain's surge in popularity traces back to the fact that he can look presidential - no longer forced to sling mud back and forth with Mitt, Mike, and Fred. This is the campaign that keeps on giving - I'm sure it has yet to reveal its last twist.

For me, the job interview for president ought to start with one simple question: do you think that George Bush has done a good job? If a candidate answers with anything other than a decisive "No!" he ought to be dismissed. Why 81% of Americans can't agree with that is beyond me.

The Importance of Obama's Middle Name

In the spring of 92, I asked Sandi, "Ross Perot for President bumper stickers. Do you think those will be like pet rocks by October?"

My 5 year old daughter Jordan pipes up from her car seat, "Ross Perot. He wants to be president. I don't know, though. He doesn't sound like a president." And then from nowhere, she puts on this oddly convincing drawl, "Howdy, Howdy. I am Ross Perot and I want to be president." she says. And then she concluded, quite authoritatively, "His name does not sound like a president's.” [Note to young parents everywhere - that child in the car seat is not always ignoring NPR.]

"And who do you think should be president?" I asked.

"I don't know, maybe George Washington or George Bush. That sounds more like a president’s name."

Apparently, names matter to some of the polity. I've heard more than a few folks express shock at the fact that Barack Obama's middle name is Hussein. "Just like Saddam's last name!" they exclaim.

And that matters. Almost as much as it matters that once we had gained our independence from King George we turned around and elected George Washington.

Yet Another Republican President?

Surprisingly, McCain has broken out of the pack (with Romney nipping at his heels). I'd argue that McCain, of all the Republicans, has the best chance of winning the general election.

If you look at McCain's positions on the major issues - the Economy and Energy, Health Care, and Immigration - you can see that his positions are not so far off from the Democrats. He has voted against drilling in Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and wants to reinvest oil profits into nuclear and alternative energy sources, for instance. (A position very different from Romney's.) His immigration policy is less xenophobic and more pragmatic than even Clinton's.

McCain is most notably distinct from the Democrats in his position on the Iraq War. Yet if the surge continues to lower the level of violence, his initial advocacy for it will, at a minimum, become less of an issue to a nation that has already swung from broad support to broad opposition and may swing yet again.

I love the fact that pundits keep talking about shifts in momentum, like first-week physics students trying to describe the movement of a pinball. The difficulty of campaigning on Super Tuesday without broad support has made casualties out of Edwards and Giuliani. Next week, it is quite possible that McCain will have emerged as the front-runner. I can think of no other candidate that the Democrats should fear more.

Feeling oddly bold about 15 months ago, I predicted the presidency through 2020. Right now, my prediction of McCain for the next four years seems more probable than it has in months.

Huckleberry Fiend: This Year, We're Offering Voters a Traditional Theocracy in Addition to Our Normal Line of Nut Jobs

Thomas has a post pointing to this stunner:

"I have opponents in this race who do not want to change the Constitution," Huckabee told a Michigan audience on Monday. "But I believe it's a lot easier to change the Constitution than it would be to change the word of the living god. And that's what we need to do -- to amend the Constitution so it's in God's standards rather than try to change God's standards so it lines up with some contemporary view."

This, for me, is proof that Huckabee would be terrible at foreign policy. My logic? He actually thinks that in this matter of beliefs, there is only one view. It would be hard to display more ignorance in a single paragraph. Religion is more popular than ever - and more diverse than ever. In his new book, Microtrends, Mark Penn reports that "there are nearly 10,000 distinct and separate religions in the world - with two or three new ones being created every day."

Huckabee's naive notion that he can conform the Constitution to God's word shows such profound ignorance about the vast differences of opinion about God's word as to render normal people speechless. Not only would he leave hordes of Americans aghast at what he knows to be the word of God, but once he tried to communicate with foreigners, his utter conviction about the veracity and inerrancy of his world view would make it impossible for him to act any way but unilaterally. It is this confusion between certainty and proof that, of course, helped to make George W. the worst American president ever (and yes, I'm including all ASB and bridge club presidents since 1900).

I have a suggestion for a campaign slogan. Huckabee for President: Because Life is Just Too Short to Think Things Through. Personally, I don't mind a theocracy; it's dragging more than one person into it that disturbs me. If Mike wants an infallible constitution, surely there's a remote island somewhere in the Pacific where he can be alone.

Why George Is So Dangerous (Or, the gap between politics and policy)

There is a gap between politics and policy. Good politics will get you elected. Good policy will improve quality of life. Good politics focuses on getting power over. Good policy focuses on giving power to.

If you were campaigning for the votes of medieval serfs, you'd probably win votes by speaking out against witches who curse crops and babies and generally make life miserable. Your promise to crack down on witches might even get you elected. By contrast, the policies you'd want to pursue to actually make life less miserable - policies like turning the commons into private property so as to encourage investment, weakening the grip of the church on communities, and encouraging free thinking - would be met with, at best, tepid support and advocating such policies might not just cost you votes but could, indeed, cost you your life. Because every era has its superstitions and cultural momentum, there has always been a gap between what makes for good politics and what makes for good policy.

For my nickel, no one has better illustrated the gap between effective politics and effective policy than George Bush and Karl Rove. The most obvious example of policy that made for good politics and bad policy was, of course, the invasion and occupation of Iraq. George and Karl were masters of politics and the two stooges of policy, a frightening reminder that voters can be easier to seduce than reality. And there is nothing more dangerous than a politician who understands politics but has little interest in policy. Such a politician can do even more damage than someone with evil intentions.

For me there is a key to distinguish between policy and politics lies in the difference between power over and power to. Good policy not only improves lives, it gives people power to do things that they couldn't otherwise. Policy that provides education to children whose parents can't afford it, that is policy that gives people power to. Educated women have more power to choose whether to have families and how many children to have. Education is a classic example of policy that gives power to. By contrast, policy that only lets certain kinds of people own property or vote or choose whether to control one’s own reproduction is policy that exercises power over. This power over might make for popular politics (the distaste of the masses for minorities like gays, blacks, and rich), but it rarely makes for good policy that actually improves quality of life.

As you listen to the candidates, listen for what they are proposing and the kind of power that seems to enthrall them. Do they want to limit what people can do in bedrooms and boardrooms or do they want to enable people, including the poor or the minorities in privileges the mainstream take for granted? The former often makes for good politics - the latter usually makes for good policy. The more we’re aware of this, the smaller the gap between the two. After all, the success of a democracy ultimately rests on a confluence between successful politics and successful policy. What we don't need next year is to embark on another 8 year learning experience.

Analysis of Republican Debate

Jackie Broyles and Dunlap analyze the most recent Republican debate.

What's Wrong with Fred Thompson

I do not understand the many Americans who seem to get so excited about candidates. I follow politics. I think that the stakes in politics are extremely high. I get excited about policy and elections, but I just don’t think that candidates are people much different than the rest of us. (Well, I will allow that they have an incredible capacity to absorb inordinate amounts of praise and criticism – levels that would leave the rest of us with psychological whiplash.)

But some people were incredibly excited about Fred Thompson’s entry into the race. Curious about that, I watched George Stephanopoulos's interview with Fred Thompson available here.

I was not impressed. Thompson seemed to show little regard for the implications of his policy or even the rationale for them. To me, he showed that he didn't understand the war on terror, which wasn't that surprising – he didn’t even seem to understand the interview. His tone suggested that he was genuinely offended that Stephenopolous would "challenge" him to describe policies and seemed amazingly uninterested in thinking through the implications of anything he suggested. Here are a few things that stood out to me.

Speaking to supporters about Radical Fundamentalism, Thompson says that this threatens “nothing less than the demise of Western Civilization." I still don’t understand this claim.

A couple of weeks ago, Newsweek had an article about the increase in the number of kids with food allergies. One theory is that children growing up in clean environments don't encounter serious threats to health, so their immune systems overreact to otherwise innocuous substances, like milk or peanuts. It's not that milk or peanuts will kill a child - but their immune system's overreaction to them can.

Radical fundamentalism can't destroy our civilization, but our reaction to it can. In their best shot to date, terrorists killed 3,000 Americans. By this measure, guns, cars, wrongly prescribed medicines, and depression all pose a much graver threat to our civilization, each taking the lives of tens of thousands of Americans every year. But deaths don’t threaten civilization. Thompson knows that. If they did, Thompson would be anti-war.

We can overreact to threats to life. We can ban driving, foreign travel, exposure to dangerous ideas, and privacy. This might save lives. It would threaten our way of life, our civilization. It’s not the threats to life that will destroy our civilization. Like the anaphylactic shock that kills an allergy victim, it is the reaction to the threat that kills, not the threat itself. To be an American is to realize that freedom comes with the cost of life.

Thompson goes on to tell Stephanopoulos that this threat has to be defeated primarily militarily. Most interestingly, when Stephanopoulos points out that there is no conventional army or nation-state behind this threat to attack, Thompson says, "What's the alternative?" When Stephanopoulos counters with, "You tell me, you're running for president," Thompson shows a gift for non sequiturs that would warm the heart of any Bush supporter by saying, "That's exactly right. You make my point." Thompson shows no indication of having questioned whether our invasion and occupation of Iraq might have worked against us in the fight against extremism, offering platitudes that sound like the kinds of things that someone might have said at the beginning of the Iraqi invasion.

Although he's eager for war, Thompson can't imagine anyone pulling the plug on a loved one. He seemed genuinely heartfelt sharing his conviction on this matter, based in part on losing his own daughter. But Thompson again shows a gift for thoughtlessness when pressed by Stephanopoulos to explain the consequences of his stance on state laws. It's not just that he seems to be offended that Stephanopoulos would challenge him, but he says that he doesn't have a legal position, he's just sharing his opinion. In this response he seems to show a lack of awareness of two things - one, as president his opinion could easily become the basis for law and legal positions, and two, in a democracy any candidate has to explain himself fully to the voters.

To his credit, Thompson did use a word rarely heard by any candidates - "sustainability." He uses it in regards to social security, seemingly less impressed with Medicare's dire condition (a problem Life Hiker has pointed to). It seems to me that sustainability could become the unifying theme of a good campaign - from the need for sustainability in federal spending and entitlements to the need for sustainability in economic and environmental practices.

The answer in which he seemed to me most obviously lost was Thompson's attempt to refute Stephanopoulos's claim that Giuliani and Romney have a decided advantage in management experience. That is, they have lots and Thompson has none. He gives a meandering answer in which he challenges the importance of managing crime and roads, suggests that he actually does have management experience in government and then promptly says that government hasn't managed anything well in a generation (seeming to negate whatever management experience he'd just claimed credit for). Finally, he says that managers are people hired by leaders, suggesting that he doesn’t really need management experience. This conclusion seems to me a dismissal of the importance of management that only someone without experience in management could express.

Thompson is running second among Republicans in national polls and Republicans have a way of winning presidential elections. Fred Thompson as president. It’s a scary thought but, if you're like Thompson, it's not one you have given much consideration.

How Many Foreigners Would You Kill to Save an American?

I'm proud to be American, kind of. I'm proud to be a Davison, kind of. I'm proud to be a Californian, kind of. But my being an American or a Davison doesn't make me feel like my own life is automatically worth more than an Armenian or a Gonzalez or Lee. I don't think that we ought to casually kill Pennsylvanians in order to ensure the life and property of Californians. I've no illusions about Americans or Californians or Davisons being superior to non-Americans, non-Californians, or non-Davisons.


All that to say that I'm convinced that one of the thing that separates the neocons like Cheney and Norman Poderhertz from us normal people is their willingness to use a "foreigner discount rate" equal to nearly 1. Cheney has talked about a 1% doctrine. Simply stated, if there is even a 1% chance that a country poses a threat to the US, we have the right to use preemptive force to stop them. This kind of patriotism seems to me more of a pathological condition than a noble sentiment. It seems more like a sign of mental illness than a sound basis for foreign policy. The foreigner discount rate of nearly 1 suggests that a foreigner's life is worth some fraction of an American's.


You might say that I'm biased. I am, afterall, married to a Canadian. But I've met a variety of people from other countries and have yet to be able to make generalities about them any more than I can about Americans. Some are fat, some are thin, some are generous, some are selfish, some are violent, some are passive ... people are people no matter where the international sperm lottery has placed them.


There is a chance that Iran will gain a nuclear weapon within the next three to five years. There is an even smaller chance that once they have this, they will use it against another country. And there is an even smaller chance yet that this country will be us. How many Iranians does that justify killing today? Cheney and Poderhertz would likely say, all of them. I just don't buy it.


I don't like the idea of killing, but I'd be glad to pull the trigger to stop one foreigner from killing 100 innocent Americans. I wouldn't even be very squeamish about sanctioning the murder of one foreigner to save the life of one American. But once you get to the point of killing 10 foreigners for one American, or 1,000 foreigners for one American - at that point the mathematics of morality seems to make patriotism seem like an excuse for discounting the lives of others rather than a healthy affinity for one's own.


This is one of the questions I would love to hear asked at these seemingly weekly candidate debates. How many foreigners would you sanction killing in order to save the lives of 100 Americans? At this point, we'd learn whether these politicians are more in touch with their patriotism or their humanity. It seems to me like a fairly important question.

Presidential Candidates' Issues

Fascinating little widget. Click through on a candidate's name and see what kind of issues they're most associated with in news reports.

As a side note, how sad is it that education is consistently under-reported, compared to the other issues? Obama seems to be most associated with education and even his indicates - at the time of this posting - a 10 to 1 ratio of Iraq War vs. Education. Our national policy has truly been hijacked by this war.

Primary Elections Accelerated - the inevitable conclusion

Report from the future - Hawaii, November, 2019

“Noah is a beautiful child, compassionate, persuasive, and patient,” said Mary Kepler, head of the Democratic National Committee. “I’m not surprised that he’s won the 2056 primary election.”

It was a confluence of events that led to this odd and unprecedented event – the election of 8 year-old Noah Rodriguez to represent the Democratic Party in the 2056 election, a general election still 37 year away at the time of Hawaii's primary election.

It began in 2005 – the year that Americans made presidential politics their one outlet for an interest in politics. That year, the contest to determine who would be sworn in as president in 2009 began shortly after George Bush's re-election. Oddly, the twists and turns of the campaign kept American’s attention right up to November of 2008.

Cable news networks learned an important lesson from this: presidential politics means ratings. There simply isn’t a national audience for local politics. Presidential politics proved the perfect match for cable news’ drive for share ratings. So, the stations that made news a 24-hour-a-day affair decided to transform an election that previously went on every four years into a contest that went on for an entire four years. Historians noted that Bush’s re-election had far less to do with the success of his policies than Karl Rove’s success at turning the presidency itself into a political campaign. Policy was overshadowed by politics and America began the age of perpetual political campaigns.

Meanwhile, states began to aggressively compete to matter in this process. Iowa and New Hampshire had for decades exercised influence over national politics that was disproportionate to traditional metrics like population or the GDP. Resenting this advantage, other states moved up the dates for their own primaries. First Florida and then Michigan moved up their dates in defiance of the political parties. Once started, there was no way to check this drive to “be number 1.” Nevada, in keeping with the spirit that made it the first state to legalize gambling, was the first state to truly cross the line: they scheduled their primary election to determine the candidates for 2012 in 2008 – one entire election cycle ahead of the national election. They were the first but not the last. States continued to compete to be first.

Finally, by 2019, Hawaii, resentful of the fact that it didn’t even merit a visit in a typical election year, became the first to proclaim that “Our Children Are the Future Leaders.” They held an election contest that included candidates still decades away from being qualified to hold national office. The youngest was a 7 year-old whose mother swore that he’d never once thrown a tantrum, and the oldest was a 19 year-old whose chin whiskers made voters nervous, evidence as they were of hormones and the complications brought on by a libido.

“We’re looking for someone innocent, without a past to explain,” said Alberta Misou, expressing a common voter sentiment when questioned about the surprising popularity of these “vote for the future” campaigns.

Innocence, though, does come with a price. One of the more embarrassing moments of Hawaii’s 2019 campaign came when 9 year-old Thomas Peterman actually peed himself in response to a particularly hostile audience question during one debate.

Yet for all its flaws, this election for the future remained popular. 14 year-old political analyst Chloe Bennington explained, “If you haven’t created a name for yourself on the national stage by the time you’re 13, you can pretty much forget about ever holding a national office.”

As it turns out, she is right. She already has her own show on CCN.com and contract through 2035.

I Don't See Any Vision

“I don’t see any vision,” Bernard said over the top of his newspaper.
“What?” I asked.
“No vision,” Bernard repeated obstinately. “I can’t see it.”
“Bernard,” I sighed, “you’re not making any sense. Eat your bagel. It'll raise your blood sugar.”
“These candidates,” Bernard says, thrusting his bony finger at the paper. “These presidential candidates don’t offer me a vision of anything. They’re all auditioning to be repairmen.”
“They have visions,” I told him. “The Republicans want a world with only reasonable and peaceful Muslims.”
“Ha!” exploded Bernard. “They think that they’re the only people on this planet entitled to violence? The only ones who can thumb their nose at science? Those Republicans!” he snorted. “They’re all monopolists at heart.”
“But it’s a vision,” I persisted.
“It’s not a vision. It’s a fix. They want the world the way they thought it was in the 70’s or 80’s, back when they had hair. They’re reactionary, not visionary.”
“What about the Democrats?” I said. “They want out of Iraq and they want universal healthcare.”
“Out of Iraq,” he said contemptuously. “That’s not a vision. They’re just fixing something that's broken. It’s a repair job.”
“Okay,” I said, now completely distracted from my scone, “but you have to admit that universal health care is visionary.”
“It’s not a vision if you tell your wife she should look more like your neighbor. That’s just imitation. They’re looking at every other developed nation and saying, ‘Why can’t we be like that?’ They’re not creating anything. They’re just trying to fix things, add what's missing.”
“So do you think that Bush has a vision?”
“Sure,” said Bernard as he sipped his coffee. “Bush’s vision for Iraq is that it’ll someday be a democracy, like Switzerland but without skiing.”
“What?”
“Don’t be a schmuck! Bush has hallucinations – not vision,” Bernard said. “Vision is painting a picture of a new possibility. Who’s doing that?”
“Like what?”
“Like an education system that creates human beings and not test takers! Like an economy that works with our environment like mulch works with your garden. Like every government selling off its defense equipment and consolidating the bombs and tanks into a central, global rental facility. Like a government that is its own profit center – a government that is financed without taxing income or investments. Like me dancing with this bad hip.”
“That would be a vision alright,” I said, returning to my scone, trying to find my place on the comics page.

Bush Heir-Heads

I watched the second debate between the Republican presidential hopefuls. What most shocked and amazed me? Other than Ron Paul, no one seemed to distance themselves from Bush's approach to Iraq. McCain called it mismanaged, but he's as eager to stay as anyone.

The problem? The Republicans have wed themselves to this war. Ron Paul points out that this isn't necessary: the Republicans were brought into power to get us out of the Vietnam War. True conservatives are more skeptical of the power of the state to create a society - whether it be LBJ's Great Society here or GWB's Light in the Arab World over there. Yet nearly all of the Republican candidates have decided to stand behind Bush even as voters are abandoning him in record numbers. They all pledge allegiance to Reagan but show no distinction from Bush. With Bush's approval ratings run below 30%, it is hard to imagine that this strategy will win.

There are three possible explanations for this. One, the Republicans are banking on Americans being more biased against women and minorities than people in Muslim countries (who have elected women presidents and prime ministers). Two, Karl Rove has pictures of these guys. Three, the Republican candidates are savvy enough to realize that cleaning up after Bush is quite possibly going to lead to the most thankless presidency in the history of country and they are doing everything they can to avoid winning.

On a lighter note, the truly interesting debate would be between Republican Ron Paul and Democrat Dennis Kucinich.

The Most Important Question Never Asked About Illegal Immigration: What's it gonna cost you?

We have a problem. Illegal behavior is killing about 12,000 Americans each year, and costs us about $40 billion. Yet this illegal behavior is generally tolerated in all but the most extreme cases, and is generally winked at. Millions of us enjoy a measure of benefit from this behavior – freeing up our time for leisure.

The above paragraph doesn't refer to illegal immigration. Rather, it refers to speeding.

For some reason, illegal immigration has become one of the hot issues, a source of near hysteria, in this year’s presidential campaign – particularly for the Republicans. This baffles me. There are dozens of other issues - like speeding - that also involve illegal behavior and that are, nonetheless accepted as part of the status quo.

There are activists who take to the street to protest illegal immigration and then activists who protest the protestors. The topic has generated noise and emotion, and I guess that’s what counts for getting media coverage.

But for those of us neither inclined to see illegal entry into this country as a right nor see it as a serious threat, the issue has to make it on its merits. That is, someone has to convince us that the cost of reducing illegal immigration is less than the benefit.

We already spend about $11 billion a year protecting our borders from illegal immigration. The US reports that this money stops or finds about 750,000 illegal immigrants a year. Others estimate that the population of illegal immigrants still increases by 500,000 a year. So, for $11 billion we stop about 60% of those trying to enter illegally.

This raises a number of questions. 1, how does this expenditure already compare with other budget items? 2, how much more would we spend to stop how many more? 3, how much does it cost us to have illegal immigrants here?

1. At $11 billion a year, it is already double the amount spent on either the National Science Foundation or the Army Corp of Engineers (the agency that did not have enough money to shore up New Orleans levies) and more than the $7.5 billion we spend on the Environmental Protection Agency.

2. Marginal cost goes up as the task gets harder. You might stop the first 750,000 immigrants for about $15,000 each, but the next 500,000 will be harder to catch. This is obvious. If they were not harder to catch, we’d already be catching them. So, what are we willing to spend to catch the next 100,000? $25,000 each? And the 100,000 after that? $50,000 each? At some point, the additional $2.5 billion or $7.5 billion begins to look like real money. And at no point does the flow of illegal immigrants ever stop. The only way to even approach zero would be to halt all foreign trade and tourists – actions that would cripple the American economy.

3. What does it already cost us to have illegal immigrants? Well, given that they typically come here to work, most estimates of their economic impact are positive. Let’s instead assume that the impact is negative. Let’s assume that out of every 10 illegal immigrants, 1 has an upaid medical bill of $120,000 and two are here for free K-12 education, at $6,000 a year. This works out to be less than $15,000 a year that they cost us. This is a very pessimistic estimate but one roughly equal to the cost of stopping illegal immigration.

If you don’t get all misty eyed about the rights of poor people to enter this country or about the erosion of our sense of national identity, this issue breaks down into simple economics. Someone is going to get rich if we spend more money to stop more immigrants. If you are an average taxpayer, that someone is not going to be you. It might cost us $15,000 per illegal immigrant. It will cost us more than $15,000 for each additional illegal immigrant stopped.

Better instead to insist that the proponents of the move to spend more on illegal immigration make explicit the costs and benefits of their program. Nobody is proposing that we scrap the current program and simply allow illegal immigrants to rush in at will. The proposals before the American people are proposals to spend even more money. The question that deserves to be asked is, how will this benefit us? So far, I’ve never heard that question answered.

Dysfunctional Cultures & The Leader Nerd

Too often, we trust only members of our own culture. This is particularly problematic when we're stuck in a dysfunctional culture in need of change. At such times we might do better to follow someone outside of the culture, even someone who seems like a nerd.

One well-deserved reason that corporations have become the dominant institution is their approach to culture. Within the world of political speeches, culture is revered as something to preserve. Within the world of business speeches, it is more often criticized as something to change.

To me, the most important element of culture is the “cult” portion. Often, a particular culture is defined by a shared notion of the world, shared rituals, shared values. These notions and values don’t need to help the group succeed in the world. In fact, the dismal failure resulting from adherence to such cultures may actually lead to a bonding as the group discusses the ways in which the world is unfair or unreasonable in its demands.

What intrigues me about candidates like Ron Paul, Dennis Kucinich and, most notably, Ralph Nader is that they have the potential to be real leaders. They aren’t pandering to the culture, telling people things like “You deserve your big SUV” or “You deserve to be a single parent.” Typically less savvy about the power of popular culture than the demands of reality, such candidates are interesting because they point to the inherent flaws in our culture.

Too often, we confuse leadership with popularity. Leadership suggests two things: you’re taking a group somewhere they’ve not yet been and people are following. Most often, candidates pledge allegiance to our cultish practices, whether it is burning witches or burning carbon-based fuels. Less often do candidates show potential for leadership by actually going somewhere new, by challenging our cultish practices. Too often we don’t really want leaders who stretch us to move to new places. Rather, we’re looking for someone cool to hangout with at the local diner.

Sadly, too few candidates have the courage to speak out against dysfunctional cultures like the inner-city black culture, the culture of consumption as entertainment, or the culture of entitlement. Of course, to do so would be to be critical of, and therefore alienate, the poor, the rich, and the middle-class. I guess in that sense, politics is just like high school: it’s never cool to point out that what the rest of the gang thinks of as cool isn’t actually all that cool. In fact, I think that they call the people who do that nerds, a group groups generally avoid.

But nerds have made marvelous leaders in other domains, like science and technology. Perhaps once politics is taken more seriously, when people begin to realize that the consequences of good or bad policy are actually a matter of life or death, nerds will get the audience they deserve. Until then, we'll be stuck here in the diner, hanging out with the cool kids who pretend to be leaders as we spin on our bar stool, confusing motion with progress.

When Values Have No Value

From Harper's April 2007 index:

• Percentage of American adults held in either prison or mental institutions in 1953 and today, respectively: 0.67, 0.68
• Percentage of these adults in 1953 who were in mental institutions: 75
• Percentage today who are in prisons: 97

Lots of men love alcohol and love their families. The men who love alcohol more than their family have very different lives from the ones who love their family more than they love alcohol.
A list of values is of little value for decisions unless it is prioritized. For instance, an institution may value both innovation and tradition. If the institution is a computer chip manufacturer, they may do well to value innovation more than tradition. If the institution is a church, they may do well to reverse that, valuing tradition more than innovation.

Some choices in life and politics are between bad and bad. Politicians like to pretend that they will institute a system that will provide for the needy, but only the needy. Well, this promise is nonsense. A welfare system will have a margin of error. It will either do the bad thing of abandoning genuinely helpless people who need help - the orphans, the mentally incompetent, the unfortunate - or it will do the bad thing of subsidizing the lifestyle of the lazy, the leeches, the societal parasites who exploit assistance. The question is not whether you'd like a perfect system. Everyone would. The question is whether you would prefer a system that ensures that the weak and helpless were cared for at the risk of including those who ought not to get help or a system that makes sure no cheaters get helped at the risk of abandoning those who genuinely need help.

Will a politician accept a system likely to encroach on individual rights or likely to result in abuse of the crowd? Give the individual the rights to own guns even when you know that this will mean more tragic deaths? Give the individual the right to privacy, to free assembly, to criticize the government even though you know that this will result in more chaos, more protests, more disruption of daily life and, yes, even more deaths? We like to think that such choices have to do with the common good. It may be more honest to think about these choices as the choices between bad and bad. Do we limit individual rights or accept more tragedy?

In this sense, the game of politics is rather like the children's game of "Would you rather ... be sat on by an elephant or eaten by a tiger?" Wouldn't it be fun to force candidates to play this game? Would you rather take away freedoms of everyone or allow the tragic death of some? Leave unfortunates homeless and ill or subsidize the slothful? Alllow tyranny to persist or launch an invasion and occupation? Chase investment capital out of the country or abuse workers? Bankrupt farmers or subsidize the cost of food and increase the incidence of obesity? Destroy the environment or trigger an economic depression? Subsidize a person in a mental institution or in a prison, treat him like a person with a mental health problem or a criminal?

Politicians tend to sound alike when talking about the ideals they espouse and would pursue. The compassionate conservative might sound just like the pragmatic liberal. But how different they might sound if instead of talking about the ideal they'd pursue, they spoke instead about the lesser of evils, of how they might choose between two bads. Now that would be fascinating to hear and would, I think, tell us much more about who they really are. It is the choice made between two goods or two bads that defines us.

The Green House

I've been contacted by three of the major presidential campaign headquarters (he lied, glibly, keeping the reference deliberately vague in order to build some modicum of credibility as he made this bold-faced lie), eager as they are to hear my next idea for a campaign promise they might make in order to win my vote. Here it is.

I'd find it charming if at least one candidate for president were to promise that, if elected, he or she would promptly begin construction of a replacement to the White House: the Green House. How exemplary would it be if our head of state lived in a home that was a model of energy efficiency and smart architecture? It could be a showcase for best practices and technology.

What happens to the White House? It is handed over to the people, turned into an open museum documenting the lives of our presidents. Perhaps nights in the Lincoln bedroom could be given away, lottery fashion, to folks filing 1040 forms each year, 365 lucky winners each year able to "sleep over" in the people's house.

Where is the Singer Songwriter Presidential Candidate?

For my nickel, the singer pales in comparison to the singer songwriter. Oh, there are some amazing voices (folks like Frank Sinatra or Judy Collins or George Strait) able to interpret a song in ways that make you think it's theirs. But musicians like Springsteen or Lennon & McCartney are the folks who define music.

Why mention this in the same breath as politics?

It occurs to me that the current crop of presidential candidates is making the same play as American Idol contestants. They are competing on voice, personality, and their ability to interpret familiar standards like "rely on markets," "support our military," and "improve health care." They're singers, competing against one another on performance and song selection.

What seems missing is the politician who is actually a singer songwriter. Nobody would say that Johnny Cash or Bob Dylan had the kinds of voices that would win on American Idol, but they became icons because of the songs they wrote. Who in the current crop of politicians is promoting new policy in the way that an FDR once did? Who among the current crop might show more genius for policy formulation and philosophy than speeches? I suspect that there is so much voter ambivalence in part because voters have heard most of these songs before.

I'm ready for someone who transcends trade-offs and talks instead about how the confluence of events we find in this unique point of history has made possible something that the average voter hadn't previously thought of.

Leadership suggests at least two things. One, the person has followers. Two, the person is going somewhere those followers are not. Leadership is different from popularity. I'm ready for someone who talks about the art of possibility and doesn't just sing the same tired songs. Enough of choosing between great voices: I'm ready for new songs.

Giuliani & McCain - Is Dignity as a Victim Enough to Make a Great Leader?

Giuliani and McCain are the two front-runners for the Republican nomination for president. They curiously share something more profound than multiple wives. They are honorable victims.

John McCain is a different kind of war hero. He didn't orchestrate the invasion of Europe and defeat of Hitler, as did Eisenhower. He didn't defeat the British, as did Washington or Jackson. McCain's distinction did not come from victory but came instead from his bravery as a prisoner of war. I'm not about to denigrate something as profound as his courage in the face of torture and years of captivity. In fact, I think that such an experience would give him unique qualities that would be valuable in a president. But it is worth noting that his distinction was not that of a traditional war hero. John McCain was a POW in a war that America either lost or withdrew from - depending on how you keep score.

Rudy Giuliani, too, is a different kind of political leader. Before 9-11, Giuliani's political career was largely over. His choice to date another woman while still married had compounded other problems he had with the public. Before he won approval for his handling of the crisis of 9-11, Giuliani's political career was largely over. It is worth noting that Giuliani, a former prosecutor, did not break a case that revealed the plan to attack the twin towers. He did not heroically stop the slaughter in the 11th hour. Rather, Giuliani distinguished himself by tirelessly attending funerals, rallying rescue workers, and helping the city to recover emotionally from a devastating blow. Again, as with McCain, this experience likely imbued him with certain qualities that would be favorable in a president. But note, once again, that Giuliani is a different kind of hero. He, too, was more victim than conqueror.

So, what does this say about our national psyche? We have two Republican front-runners who have distinguished themselves as honorable victims, not as heroes who defeated the bad guys. Have we reached a point when the American public is so defeatist about issues like terrorism, climate change, the erosion of civil rights, occupations from which we can’t extricate ourselves, and competition from outsourcing that we've lost our optimism and are now desperate to recover our honor, even if it is tainted with defeat?

If so, it makes sense to me for the first time why the junior senator from Illinois, a man with so little experience that he can't be judged, might have such widespread appeal. The audacity of hope indeed.

American President - The Game Show

I have a fantasy about a game show for political nerds.

Matthew Mosk predicts that the 2008 presidential campaign will be our first $1 billion political campaign. Personally, I don't think that is such a great deal to spend to decide on the leader of a country with a $12 trillion economy. That is about a tenth of what we spend each year on Halloween candy. But it does raise an important question - if we're going to spend a billion on the media of politics, is this the best way to spend it? Might there be a better way to simultaneously educate voters, raise important issues, and help us to choose the best candidate?

I'd propose instead that we have a game show, something like a cross between Jeopardy and American Idol. Start with lots and lots of people and run them through a series of contests, challenges, and experiences.

The candidate hopefuls would be given tests. Some of the tests would reveal knowledge of the constitution and legal arguments, some an understanding of economics and foreign policy, both theory and current events. Some of the tests would involve simulations - measuring real time reactions to terrorist attacks or financial crisis or managing a deficit.

Other tests would fall into the category of charisma. Candidates would be put before a variety of groups, from small business people to idealistic teenagers, from tree-hugging feminists to flag-waving rednecks. They'd debate one another, handle questions from the audience, and deliver speeches that lasted 2 to 20 minutes.

Perhaps the most interesting segments would involve hidden camera meetings with lobbyists or congress people from the other party. Mothers Against Drunk Drivers and Big Oil and everyone else would meet with our candidates and make their case for support. Republican or Democratic Senators would have to be won over to support the candidate's legislation. We could measure, among other things, how well a candidate responded to the pleas of these constituents or the threats of opposing parties.

The entire process would be transparent. Each round, candidates would be ousted from the process, resulting in a smaller and smaller group. At its conclusion, this process might even result in our getting a candidate who hits on all cylinders - charismatic, attractive, energetic, smart, and gifted with both people and policy smarts.

Once this process had concluded, the candidate would be put onto the ballot of every state. When voters stepped into the booth in November of 2008, along with the choices from the Libertarian, Green, Democratic and Republican Parties would be this new candidate - the viewer's choice. The beauty of this is that it would only be taken as seriously as it is taken. That is, the winner of the game show would only end up on ballots - voters could then decide whether that candidate were a better choice than Ron Paul or Jeb Bush or whoever else the parties had chosen as their representatives.

It's easy to conclude that such a show would commercialize politics, but I doubt it. Political campaigns are already shows - just shows that are too scripted to reveal much.

I, for one, would love to see a candidate think on his or her feet - facing a simulated catastrophe or situation. It would even be fascinating to see who they used for their "life line," what adviser they turned to help craft a solution to the problem of a coup in Mexico or a collapse of the US dollar. I think that a contest that tested candidates on something other than their ability to deliver rehearsed phrases could only be healthy.

In this great country of 300 million people, I refuse to believe that we could not have found better candidates than George Bush and John Kerry. It is time to consider a new process. As Buckminster Fuller said, "Use forces, don't fight them." The American people are fascinated by contests, personalities, and TV. Why not harness this force?
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After getting this little idea, I decided that it was unlikely that such an idea hadn't been previously been expressed. It turns out that it has been - at least once. Alan Abbott expressed this idea back in May of 2006. Innovation is dead - google repeatedly proves that there is nothing new under the sun.