Tag Archives: Election

Tuesday, February 19, 2008

This blog is about words.  It’s about using words to express my ideas, to encourage other people to think about them, and share their own points of view.

A lot of what I write about is political and, nowadays, often critical of this or that candidate.  I comment, based on my life experience, whatever that’s worth, but I make no pretense that I have ever run for office, which I have not, or that, if I did and won, I would be good at it.  I’m in the bleachers, far from the field of play.  My words, however eloquent, clever or moving – which is not to say they are any of those things – do not, simply by virtue of my having written them, make me what I describe.  I may be a writer, and critic.  My ideas may have merit and may be worth pursuing, but I have, at best, accomplished nothing more than the immediate impact of my saying them.

Senator Obama has recently been accused of having copped a speech which was made by Deval Patrick, now Governor of Massachusetts.  Whether or not he plagiarized Mr. Patrick isn’t the point.  What troubles me is what he said in that speech, and at other times, when he has responded to Senator Clinton’s comment that talk is cheap – or, in the parlance of the upcoming Texas primary, “big hat, no cattle.”

Instead of responding to her criticism by describing his accomplishments, he chooses instead to talk about the power of words, evoking the memories of no less than Thomas Jefferson, Franklin Roosevelt and Martin Luther King.  These are people whose extraordinary accomplishments, over years of public service, have, in retrospect, made their words so impressive, so memorable.  It is not the other way around.  Their words were expressions of who they were, and important tools in accomplishing their objectives, but little more than condiments to the substance of their many achievements.

“We the People” is not equivalent to “Yes we can,” nor does saying those words make you on a par with any of our founding fathers, Jefferson among them.  Senator Obama may have a dream or two, but it doesn’t make him Reverend King, nor is the reference relevant given that Dr. King wasn’t running for President, wasn’t claiming that he could more effectively manage our federal government bureaucracy than his opponents.

I favor the candidacy of Hillary Clinton, but I have some advice for Senator Obama lest he win now, only to lose to Senator McCain in the Fall.  And this is a topic I know more than a little something about.  It is the temptation and cardinal sin of all great salesmen that, at some point, they begin to believe their own hype.  Sooner or later, the people will catch on, if not before the primaries, certainly by November when the other half of the people who will be voting in the general election get up and go to the polls.

Thursday, February 7, 2008

The Maryland primary is coming up next week, and I’m looking forward to voting for Barack Obama – eight years from now, maybe.  For now, I consider him a prototype, a Beta Test Candidate complete with all the newest bells and whistles, but very much a work in progress.  So cool, to be sure, but am I willing to risk the consequences of the inevitable glitches of his inexperience and naiveté?  No.  Senator Clinton isn’t the perfect candidate either, but her professional maturity and practical experience make her Presidency the better bet.

For precisely the same reasons, I believe she has a greater chance of beating McCain.  Oratory, no matter how inspirational, gets old quickly.  It won’t be enough to win, and certainly isn’t enough to govern.  Senator Clinton, because she is the more substantive, albeit less eloquent of the two, will be more effective against the advantage of McCain’s seniority.  Remember, all those people cheering at the Obama rallies aren’t the only ones who’ll be voting.

Saturday, January 19, 2008

For those of you who may not already know, “mincemeat” doesn’t have any beef, pork or other animal products in it.  (It’s sort of like “Grape Nuts.”  No grapes.  No nuts.  What’s up with that?)  Mincemeat is a pie filling made from fruit.  My mother used to make me a mincemeat pie now and then when I was a kid, but I can’t remember what it tasted like, and now I’m not supposed to eat desserts.  To tell you the truth, the few times I’m going to eat dessert despite my doctor’s advice, I’m not going to waste them on mincemeat.

“Mincemeat” is also a condition.  It’s what really good players or teams in any sport or profession make out of their less capable and less well prepared opponents.

I haven’t decided who I’m supporting for President.  Not yet, but one of the Democratic candidates likes to talk about how he’s going to change the way our government operates through a process which involves a great deal of compromise.  He’s apparently a very sensitive person, unquestionably very bright and a really excellent speaker, who is confident, perhaps to a fault, in his ability to bring divergent views together.  He believes in the power of compromise, and in his effectiveness as an instrument and center of convergence.  Admirable, and interesting, but I’m worried.

I’ve been compromising with my wife for a few decades now, and have more or less perfected the art.  What I’ve learned is that compromise usually means one of two things.  Either one or the other party gets his or her way, period.  The other person gets nothing, except maybe credit toward the outcome of a future decision of lesser importance to the other party.  Or, a choice is made which neither of us is really crazy about – which is why we don’t do that anymore.

In business, my experience has been only slightly different.  Sometimes, for example, you have a dispute over, let’s say, the number of a given item to order.  One of you wants to order more, the other less, and you agree on some amount that you both find acceptable.  Unfortunately, that’s not how it works when it comes to something really important.  In government, I’m talking about the kind of decision that affects people’s lives.

You work hard to figure out what you believe to be the best way to do something, to provide universal health care, for example, to solve the problem of illegal immigration, diminish the threat of terrorism, or resolve some urgent international crisis.  There are so many things, large and small, local, national and foreign that we need to accomplish.  Other people who count disagree with you, and then one two things is going to happen.  Either you agree to a true comprise, a middle ground that produces an inferior program, or you make deals to get your way now at the expense of giving someone else his way later – even if it’s not in the best interests of the people.  Usually it’s both.  Comprise tends to have two effects:  on the people who make the compromise, and then separately on the people who are supposed to benefit from the program, the quality and power of which has been compromised by the first group.  You modify the program and make special arrangements, concessions you regretted when you made them.  In no time at all you’ve made so many deals you need staff to keep track of who owes who what.  Is this the politics of change?  What it is, is the traditional, business as usual way to accomplish what passes for progress in our nation’s and state capitals.

If an executive, or anyone for that matter, has a really good idea, something that’s been carefully crafted for all the right reasons, he or she either needs to sell it, meaning convince others to support it, or make it happen by virtue of his or her authority.  Compromise may be part of that process, but it can’t be allowed to erode the effectiveness or correctness of our programs.

An inexperienced President, particularly one who goes into the job believing in the power of compromise, is going to be up against some serious, highly skilled players, and desperate to get things done, to live up to all those campaign promises and his own self-image as doer and master of change.  I smell mincemeat pie baking in the oven, and suspect that the professional politicians, business interests, and foreign governments will be having more than their fair shares of dessert, at our expense.

Friday, January 4, 2008

Times change, more so in some aspects of our lives than others.

In the few decades I’ve been around, the pace of technological advance has been nothing short of phenomenal.  It’s been bold and profound, exciting and sometimes scary, all at once, each breakthrough building upon the one before it at an accelerating pace, one discovery in one field leading to another in another with a remarkable synergy among traditional and emerging disciplines.  Very cool, and what a rush.

Most days, I wear jeans and a long sleeve t-shirt to work in my office.  My father wore a suit.  (Actually, I’m not sure, but I think he may have slept in one, and my mother in her house dress.)  There you go.  Is this a great country, or what?

Social change, by comparison, takes time, and usually seems faster in retrospect than during the times when it was actually occurring.  Unquestionably, we’ve come a long, long way in just a couple of hundred years, and in my lifetime for that matter, changing our behavior and attitudes in profound and enduring ways while we struggle to keep up with the accelerating pace of our lives.  The progress we’ve made is impressive.  It’s not easy preserving the best of what we are while living up to our potential as individuals and as a people, without fully understanding what’s happening to us along the way.

The motto of the college I attended was “Ever changing, yet eternally the same.”  It was a good college, and a great time to be a student high on the excitement of political and social events which would affect forever how I think about myself and our country.  There was an unpopular war, and a political movement of historic proportions and impact which grew out of the fears, frustration and exuberance of my generation.  And I met my wife on that campus, without question the best single thing that’s ever happened to me.  It was a time, and I was of an age, when the prospect of change was a sure thing.

This piece isn’t an endorsement of any particular candidate.  It’s a commentary on the abuse of a word.  They can talk about it all they want, but no one, however well meaning or determined, is going to bring about any fundamental change in the way our government works during the time he or she is in office.   I don’t want change, I want progress.  I want a smart, efficient universal health care program, for example.  Maybe you do, maybe you don’t, but that’s not the point.  I want to get it done, or not, and to stop talking about it.  I want to get over the feeling that what we’re paying for our government amounts to tipping a waiter for just being there.  I want to feel like I’m getting my money’s worth for the taxes I’m paying.  The more our candidates promise change, the less I think they understand the meaning of the term.  More to the point, it’s not even what I want.  It’s off point, and I’m tired of their rhetoric.

I seldom go out to the movies any more.  My wife and I are busy, and there’s plenty to watch on TV while we do stuff around the house.  When I do go, I want it to count.  A few months ago, I’m sitting in the back of the theater while my wife reads the credits like she’s related to the caterer and can’t wait to see his name on the big screen.  Two rows in front of me, another man sitting next to his wife rises to his feet, looks down at her and says exactly what I’m thinking.  “Well, that’s two hours of my life I’ll never get back.”  That’s pretty much how I feel about Presidential campaigns.

Could the candidates please stop promising change, set a limited number of objectives for their Presidency that they might actually be able to accomplish, and explain precisely how and over what period of time they’re going to do it?  I don’t want change from my government.  We, the people, will take care of that.  He or she isn’t going to be the “Leader of the Free World.”  We are – provided, of course, that we prove worthy of the title.  The President is our employee.  I don’t want a President who changes anything.  I want results from an intelligent, savvy, professional manager, through a realistic agenda within the context of the current bureaucracy.  If only there was someone like Michael Bloomberg running for office.  (Did I say that out loud?)