Goodbye, Borders

A few months ago, I had written that it was a bit too early to write the obituary for the bookstore chain Borders. I had hoped the company would continue, but I was wrong. The chain will liquidate its remaining stores. I wrote back in February that in many ways, Borders caused its own demise for not keeping up with the times:

I would agree that the advent of Amazon and e-readers like the Kindle have made bricks and mortar stores obsolete, but I also think the damage done to Borders was just as much the fault of Borders than it was technology. The bookstore chain was slow to getting online and even today, it’s web presence is not that great. Recently, I was looking to purchase a book and wanted to see if I could buy it at the Borders website. The price for that book was twice as much as it was on Amazon. Borders wasn’t even close to being competative with the Amazon. If the chain wants to survive, it’s going to have to make the website on par with Amazon and be ready to play hardball.

Barnes and Noble saw the handwriting on the wall and has been able to keep up with Amazon, not only on the web, but also in the e-reader market with its own machine- the Nook.

Borders in many ways was stuck in its heyday of the mid-to-late 1990s, long before Amazon and anything like a Kindle or the Nook. It never really took the changes in the book market, from brick and mortar to the web, seriously and it has paid for that ignorance dearly.

I don't know what it is with Michigan-based businesses that they get stuck in their halcyon days and don't stay competative. General Motors and Chrysler were saved only because the government came in to get the into shape.

Borders will be a lesson on what not to do when it comes to business and technology.

That said, I will miss the chain. I always liked it more than Barnes and Noble.

Goodbye, Borders.

 

The (Tea) Party's Over

So says, the Economist:

My bet is that Mitt Romney wins the nomination, and at the moment, barring a substantial economic recovery, I'd give him better than even odds of winning the election as well. I suspect that Mr Romney is an empty shell without a soul, but he's a pretty smart empty shell without a soul, and I don't really subscribe to the idea that a candidate needs a deep core of authenticity in order to be a successful political official. Within the category "Republican politicians", the fact that Mr Romney apparently lacks any firm ideological convictions seems to me a blessing rather than a curse. A Romney presidency would be unlikely to feature the spectacle of Congress threatening to destroy America's AAA credit rating in order to score political points, and my guess is that it would make Barack Obama's health-care reforms permanent, with some sort of fig-leaf adjustments that would allow Mr Romney to claim he had undone the hated ObamaCare and replaced it with a Republican alternative that is substantially the same.

I'm left wondering, however, what happens to the tea-party constituency in a scenario in which Mr Romney wins the nomination. As I've said before, I have no instinctive understanding of what tea-party supporters think about anything; their worldview makes no sense to me. But going by what I see on their websites, most of them (though by no means all) seem to be currently convulsed in hatred for the orgy of RINOness that Mr Romney represents. Can they reconcile themselves to voting for him? My guess would be yes, easily. If Mr Romney becomes a serious challenger to Mr Obama, people who today consider themselves irrevocably opposed to both RomneyCare and to Mr Romney's weaselly attempts to distinguish it from the president's reforms will figure out some plausible-to-themselves arguments for supporting him after all. Partisanship is far and away the most powerful force in America politics, trumping all other substantive or ideological concerns.  

I tend to think Romney will ultimately capture the GOP nod as well. I know folks like Texas Governor Rick Perry and Congresswoman Michelle Bachman are getting attention, but if Obama is as vulnerable as some think he is, then I see the party putting forward someone that has a shot at winning, not someone that can make the die-hard conservatives swoon.

Would this be the end of the Tea Party? I wouldn't say as much that this the end of it as much as it becomes marginalized. This is par for the course in American politics. The far left of the Democratic Party is usually contained so as to not cause too much trouble. Let them out enough to get some attention, but don't let them run the whole show. I think that come 2012 the GOP will find a way to co-opt the Tea Party- adopting some of its demands- but find a way to fence them in and nominate a candidate that could actually do something in office.

What 'Tax the Rich' Gets You

Mike at the Big Stick points to a blog post by Iowahawk on the fallacy that taxing only the rich will solve anything. It's pretty tounge-in-cheek but the point is made: raising taxes soley on upper incomes won't solve our fiscal problems. Mike says it best:

The point is that while the rich are a convenient target for the Left it’s a fantasy to believe that raising taxes on them will create financial solvency. What is necessary, in my opinion, is raising taxes on all but the poorest Americans and cutting spending deeply. Anything else is pointless.

Indeed. Much has been said about the conservative fantasy that all fiscal problems can be solved by cutting the budget. But it is equally silly to think that "the rich can pay for it all."

There is saying that Americans want Swedish-style government at Mississippi-style prices. If we want to make sure that government is well funded and sustainable, then both sides will have to give up their fantasies and come up with some mixture of spending cuts and increased taxes accross the board. Anything else is a pipe dream.

In Search of a Grand Bargain

In my most recent post, I got some pushback from one person who really doesn't agree with my viewpoint. In some ways we were talking past each other, with our own views of the other person instead of listening to the other person. As David Brooks reminds me in his latest column on the budget, the current partisan climate doesn't really allow folks to get to know each other and at the very least understand each other. Maybe if they had lunch, things would be better. Here's what Brooks says:

President Obama and Paul Ryan are two of the smartest, most admirable and most genial men in Washington. It is sad, although not strange, that in today’s Washington they have never had a serious private conversation. The president has never invited Ryan over even for lunch.

As a result, both men are misinformed about the other, and both have developed a cold contempt for the other’s position. Obama believes Ryan wants to take America back to what he sees as the savage capitalism of the 1920s (or even the 1760s). Ryan believes Obama wants to turn America into a declining European welfare state.

If they met, would they resolve their differences? No, but they would understand them better.

About a month ago, Newsweek ran an article about the loss of the party culture in Washington where folks of differing political persuasions got together. Decades ago, most legislators and their families lived in DC and did things together. It was the days of martinis and smoke-filled rooms. It was in this environment that things got done because you trusted the other guy. You might not agree with him (and most likely back then it was a "him"), but you thought he was a good guy because you spent time with him.

But Washington isn't like that anymore and neither is the rest of the country. We are increasingly growing apart, and that seperateness breeds distrust. If this were 1965, Paul Ryan and Barack Obama would sit down at the White House, smoke some cigars, have a few drinks and maybe at the end hammer out a deal on the budget. Neither side would get all of what it wanted, but they would learn how to find some kind of consensus, a Grand Bargain.

But since this is 2011 and not 1965, we have Ryan and Obama looking at the other with distrust and a bit of contempt. The same goes for me and the commenter. So we design legislation and ideas that in Brooks' words, pretend that the other political party doesn't exist.

If I can add another thing wrong with Ryan budget is that it was written as if Democrats didn't exist. But the thing is, they do and they won't stand for a plan that they think will hurt the poor and let the rich get off. Conversely, the Obama plan pretends Republicans don't exist. But Republicans do exist and they won't stand for a plan that they don't see tackling entitlements.

In a democracy we have to realize that there are others that don't share our views. The trick of a democratic society is how to reasonably work out a deal between competing interests. In the end, this means compromise. That can't happen if you don't trust the other side.

The plans released by Ryan and Obama could have been starting points to reach a workable budget deal. But what both ideas will become are platforms for the 2012 election season, platforms to beat up the other side.

I want to see some kind of compromise reached. But I also would like to see Democrats and Republicans just meet for lunch sometime, away from the cameras. Maybe if they shared a meal, things could get done.

The Utah Way

The story of Utah's attempt at immigration reform is a story that has not received a lot of attention and it should. As this story from NPR notes, the state is about as Republican as they come and they came up with an approach that was part-enforcement and part-guest worker program. The story notes that Republicans in Utah learned from their conservative brethren in Arizona what NOT to do:

If you were to choose a state that would allow illegal immigrants to work and drive without fear of deportation, you probably wouldn't pick Utah.

"We have to understand, Utah is one of the most conservative states in the country," says Alfonso Aguilar, who runs the Latino Partnership for Conservative Principles. He says that Utah's new law shows that Republicans can find a middle course.

"The governor's Republican; the House and Senate are dominated by Republicans," Aguilar says. "And they saw what happened in Arizona. They passed an enforcement-only law. It has driven away investment, business, workers that the Arizona economy needs."

In Utah, Aguilar says, "they wanted to deal with enforcement — but balance it with measures that are more business-friendly. And that's exactly what they did."

Last Wednesday, Utah's Gov. Gary R. Herbert signed a package of immigration bills. One is an enforcement law, milder than Arizona's, but still opposed by liberal immigration advocates. Another is a guest-worker bill, which is opposed by some conservatives as amnesty.

It's heartening to see conservatives come up with an approach that is realistic and not punitive. Will Washington's conservatives follow suit?

h/t: Solomon Kleinsmith

Can Detroit Be Saved?

While on vacation, I heard the latest bad news to come out of Detroit: the loss of 25 percent of its population from 2000-2010. The new population according to census figures is 713,777; the lowest figure in a century and before the Big Three made the Motor City the fourth largest city in nation in the middle of the 20th century.

During the vacation, a friend commented on how we are seeing the death of an American city. I have to admit that such talk bothered me. Of course, part of the reason it does bother me is because it's so personal to me. I'm not from Detroit, but my hometown of Flint is just 70 miles up the road and I have relatives that live in and around Detroit. So, it's hard not to take such talk of the death of Detroit as a slight against me and my people. I know my friend meant no offense, so I'm not mad at him. Just goes to show that when you hail from Michigan, you tend to feel somewhat embarassed from being from there because of the current state of the economy.

The continued loss of population makes one wonder: can Detroit be saved? It's been the question that we Michiganders have been asking for about 30 years or so. I think Michigan's largest city does have a future, but I think that the state and the city have to find ways to build a future where cars are not king.

Cars are what made Detroit Detroit. Just like Pittsburgh was known for steel, Detroit was known for the horseless carriage. The problem is that the world is changing. When the Big Three were king, they ruled. Future competitors like Toyota weren't a factor since most of Japan was bombed into the last century. But over time, Japan rebuilt and made affordable cars and later cars that were just as good as the Big Three if not better.

Detroit has never been able to really respond to changing tastes and the rise of competitors in Japan and later Korea. The jury is still out as to whether General Motors, Ford and Chrysler have learned their lesson. Ford, I think is getting the idea, but the other two are still doubtful.

For Detroit to rebound, it has to give up it's car addiction. Autos will still have some role in Southeastern Michigan, but let's face it: the days when the Big Three employed tens of thousands of Michiganders is long gone. The Economist links to a Bloomberg article that Detroit is seeing a big growth in tech jobs, but there's just one problem:

Auto industry executives are trying to make Silicon Valley engineers feel at home in Detroit. With a burgeoning number of technology job openings to fill, they’re scouring Internet companies for workers, wining and dining applicants, and seeking promising students at schools such as Stanford University...

Expertise in cloud computing, mobile software applications and energy management are in demand in the Motor City as automakers replace car stereos with Internet radio and gasoline engines with motors powered by lithium-ion batteries. Technology job postings in the Detroit area doubled last year, making it the fastest-expanding region in the country, according to Dice Holdings Inc. (DHX), a job-listing website.

Do you see the problem here? Yes, there are tech jobs to be had in Detroit, but they are coming from the auto industry. I don't have a problem with these jobs per se, after all, as cars get more technical the auto industry has to become more high tech. The problem here is that this seems to be the same song with a different verse. Michigan is again hitching its star to an industry that could bring some great highs and some really low lows.

Here's what the Economist has to say about these tech jobs:

I think it's a little disconcerting that so much of the hiring seems to be driven by carmakers. As a kernel around which to build an initial concentration of talent, that's fine, but ultimately Detroit's success will hinge on whether it becomes a hub for new firm growth. There's just a limit to the extent to which the carmakers can scale up tech employment. For the city to rebound as a tech centre, skilled workers need to be able to strike out on their own and start new enterprises that then employ many more people.

This is one place where Detroit is at a significant disadvantage thanks to the condition of its broader economy. A tech worker in Silicon Valley who tries to start a new firm and fails will probably be able to find new tech employment fairly easily. A tech worker in Austin who starts a new firm and fails may not immediately find another tech job, but can almost certainly find some work. This safety net of employment reduces the risk of entrepreneurship and encourages new firm formation. In Detroit, could a worker who sets out on his own and fails expect to be re-employed within a few months?

Detroit has a lot of things that could make it a Silicon Valley of the north, but as the blog notes there are also a lot of knocks against it.

For Detroit to survive, it has to create a sustainable base of jobs. That's why southern cities like Raleigh and Austin are doing so well. The problem is that Detroit has never created a base of sustainable jobs; it never had to. After the wrenching changes to the auto industry that started in the 70s, Detroit never really seriously tried to move beyond cars. In Detroit and in most of Southeastern Michigan, there has always been hope that something would come and make things like they were circa 1962. We have always hoped the auto industry would come bouncing back and things would be okay. The articles I've linked to shows we still cling to that hope.

What Detroit should be doing is trying to bring the Dells and Apples to the area in ways that Raleigh and Austin did. It should also help foster new industries to develop that are not so tied to the Big Three. The first step to rebuilding the city ( to make it sustainable, NOT make it what it once was) is to admit we have a problem with an addiction to autos. Once we can be free of that habit then maybe Detroit and the rest of Michigan can grow.

So is anyone up for an intervention?

Photo by Shakil Mustafa.

Here or There?

I've blogged here for about nearly five years. I started blogging there less when I was asked by Travis Johnson to help him run what was then Progressive Republicans and then Republicans United. Republicans United has morphed into Big Tent Revue and I had hoped it would become an active group blog. That hasn't happened. I'm not a good a salesman when it comes to plugging a blog, much less asking folks to join as co-bloggers.

So, I'm wondering if I should just make Big Tent Revue my primary blog or it down and go back to regular blogging at NeoMugwump. I'd love to get your opinion on this. Let me know.

The Myth of John McCain

There was a time in my life when I loved John McCain.

I saw him as the bulwark against the rise of the far right in the Republican Party. I cheered his every move. His stand against the Bush Tax Cuts. His participation in the so called "Gang of 14." His strong environmental record. He seemingly strong stand on gay rights.

And then, little by little, I started falling out of love with McCain. As 2008 drew near, he started changing his positions on issues. By 2008 he started to look like someone that had sold out for the GOP nomination.

I don't really know how many times, I've heard people talk about how John McCain has changed and how they have grown to hate the Senator from Arizona. The media, which really fell hard for McCain in 2000, has turned against him and can't wait for a moment to report the latest infraction. In the eyes of many, John McCain sold his soul and many of his former followers are saying "good riddance."

But did we really know who John McCain was? Did we see a few actions and imagined that he had to be "just like us" only find out that he wasn't? Did John McCain really change?

I'm offering a counter-argument to the one posed by many liberals and moderates (like myself). I think in a way what many people who claimed love of McCain were really in love with a myth, maybe partly stoked by McCain himself. I think we saw what we wanted to see in McCain. Like how many saw President Obama when he campaigned for the presidency in 2008, we made the John McCain into something bigger than life and were shocked when at the end of the day he was a politician.

We tend to forget that politicians are people-pleasers. They try hard to appeal to the electorate. Sarah Palin took advantage of the growing Tea Party movement and fashioned herself as its leader. Barack Obama spoke at times as a post-partisan moderate and at others an old-fashioned liberal during the 2008 campaign. They do what they can to win.

But in our modern political environment, where we view politics as a religion, we tend to view mere pols as gods that can do no wrong.

Writing in 2008 Edward McClelland notes that McCain was and is a politician that wants to win. He isn't God, or Ghandi or Martin Luther King, but a candidate that wanted to win. McClelland writes:

McCain has run for the presidency twice, as two completely different candidates. His campaigns and his image have been shaped by the nasty partisanship of the late 20th and early 21st century, an era that may be remembered as the Late Culture Wars. McCain has never seemed comfortable with that style of politics. Despite his identification as a conservative, he's been willing to reach across the aisle to work with Democrats who shared his concept of reform. In 2000, McCain tried to be a liberal's conservative, holding stream-of-consciousness press conferences on his bus, bashing right-wing preachers as "agents of intolerance" and opposing repeal of Roe v. Wade. Republicans were unimpressed, so when McCain finally won their nomination, he picked as his running mate a woman who had less than two years' experience as a governor -- a woman young enough to be his daughter, or his third wife, even -- but who belongs to a Pentecostal church, baits the Washington media and wouldn't allow any woman to have an abortion...

McCain and his journalistic entourage also had a common enemy: the Republican Establishment, personified by George W. Bush. It felt ennobling to travel with a candidate who whaled on Jerry Falwell, and whose underfunded campaign checked in every night at the Marriott. A lot has changed in eight years: By 2008, McCain had given a speech at Jerry Falwell's Liberty University, had promised not to repeal Bush's tax cuts, had declared his opposition to Roe v. Wade, and was staunchly defending the war in Iraq. The anti-politician had learned that stiffing the Republican base was no way to win the party's nomination.

In his first run, McCain campaigned as a reformer who could win over independents. That was before anyone had heard the terms "red state" and "blue state." In 2008, there is no middle ground. There is a liberal America and a conservative America, each unable to acknowledge that the other side is intelligent, honorable or possessed of a reasonable opinion. To win his party's nomination, McCain had to campaign under the team colors. The man who had sworn he would never compromise his principles to win an election, had become ... a politician. That transformation helped McCain with Republican voters, but not reporters. Wait a minute, they seemed to say, we thought you were one of us. But you're nothing more than a, a ... conservative!

The thing is, McCain was and always has been a conservative. Yes, he strayed from the path from time to time, but he has been pretty consistently conservative. Don't believe me? Well, in a 2008 blog post, Jim Geraghty notes that McCain's lifetime rating from the American Conservative Union was... 82.1. That might not be perfect, but it's still pretty good to be considered on the right side of the political spectrum.

But what about all his flip-flopping on things like immigration reform or Don't Ask, Don't Tell?

McClelland notes that the electorate had changed mightily in the eight years between McCain's presidential runs. In 2000, he could fashion himself as a moderate because there still seemed to be a middle ground. That middle ground was eroded over the Bush years, and by 2008 McCain realized that to win the Republican nomination, he had to run as a loyal Republican. This meant changing his stance on immigration, somewhat slightly in 2008 and even moreso in his 2010 primary run.

I know there are some who think that McCain should have "stood his principles" and been willing to lose rather than sell out. But again, we forget these are politicians who have sacrificed a lot to win office. They are not going to give all up just for the good of the nation or what have you.

Which leads to another point. McCain's support from 2000 was a mile wide and an inch deep. Yes, there were a lot of people who said they liked him, but you never really heard these people going out and knocking doors for McCain. He said things we liked to hear, but we weren't going to much other nod our heads in agreement.

McCain, who wanted to win, knew he needed to get conservatives on board. They were the ones that were organized and would support him even if they really didn't think he was a "true conservative."

I'm not saying all this because I like what John McCain has done recently. I don't. But that said, I do understand why McCain does what he does. And I now see that McCain was and is a politician, not some kind of Moses leading us all to the promiseland.

There is a lesson for moderates and even liberals here. We need to stop falling in love with politicians and see them as they are: our represenatives that can work with us, or not. But that means getting away from our computers and getting organized in ways not unlike the Tea Party has.

In the end, I'm not mad with John McCain. He never was in love with me in the first place.

Israel, the TSA and "Touching My Junk"

In light of all the chat about the new TSA policies, I've been thinking about my parents.

Next week, they are going to get on a plane in Michigan and fly to Minneapolis. I have this uneasy feeling that they are going have to get searched rather agressively by some TSA person. The thought of some guy trying to do a full-body pat-down of my elderly parents make me feel uncomfortable.

The other side of that is that last year, the so-called Christmas bomber was trying to detonate a bomb on a plane as it readied to land in Detroit. Metro Airport is only about an hour north by car to where my parents live in Flint, so I tend to wonder if planes make a big circle over Flint as the prepare to land at Metro, and if so, what would have happened had this plane actually blew up raining fragments down at people below.

In this day and age we live with twin fears: one of terrorists who might seize a plane, again and use it as a weapon, and the second fear is that in light of fear number one the government might over-reach in trying to protect people. Most people either support side one wholly or side two wholly; few are concerned with how we balance both concerns.

I tend to fall in the middle here. I really, really don't want the government feeling me up, even if it is in the name of safety. And yet, even though it might not be a great possibility, I want to make sure that airplane can be secure from terrorism. My frustration at times is that some are so concerned about terror that they think anything goes, and there are some so concerned about civil liberties that they tend to not care about security.

The problem here is that we really have not thought about how to best meet both objectives and frankly very few seem to care about meeting those objectives.

Kevin Drum shares what Israel does when it comes to airport security and I think it could be done here with some modifications. It's better than relying on invasive technology or touching my nether regions.

We can talk about government crossing the line when it comes to civil liberties, but we can't do nothing or pretend the problem doesn't exist. We have to find ways to make sure that terrorists don't use plane as weapons and make sure we uphold our rights as a democratic society. That requires some actual thinking on the issue, not just snarky blog posts.

Minnesota, the Outlier

After living here for nearly 15 years, I have concluded that Minnesota is truly an odd state.

In this "red tide" tonight we have seen several states in the Midwest elect Republican governors tonight. Minnesota is a different story. After 8 years of a Republican governor in Tim Pawlenty, it looks very likely that Democrat Mark Dayton will win, running on an old-time "tax the rich" strategy. Republican Tom Emmer ran on a very hard right agenda, that scared away moderates (who broke for Tom Horner of the Independence Party).

The lesson I can see in all of this is that if the GOP wants to have a lasting majority nationally, they have to run campaigns that are more welcoming to moderates and independents. If they choose to run to the hard right, they will find themselves in the same spots Democrats are facing tonight.

Update: I spoke way too soon.

The Real Tea Party

John Judis and Timothy Dalrymple have some of the best takes on the Tea Party movement that I've seen so far, in this case on the left and right respectively.

The Loneliness of a Minority Conservative

D.R. Tucker has a fascinating blog post about Glen Loury, a black conservative who left the conservative movement a decade ago over the movement's lack of interest in Urban America. What was telling in the blog post was learning of Loury's isolationism from African Americans and conservatives. Tucker shares a story:

A 1995 New Yorker profile of Loury noted that in 1988, “…while Loury was in New York for a Public Interest board meeting, he had a revelation. Touring the Metropolitan Museum with Lisa Schiffren (who later wrote Dan Quayle's ‘Murphy Brown’ speech), he lamented the fact that, despite his prominence, he was completely isolated from his colleagues-that, in short, he had no friends. ‘But, Glenn, we're your friends,” she reassured him. ‘You're a member of a historically liberal ethnic minority, who through your own intellectual evolution have come to dissent from its convictions pretty much down the line. You voted for Reagan, you're pro-life, for family values--you're one of us.’’

Evidently, Schriffen failed to grasp the extent to which Loury felt isolated because he was a member of a “historically liberal ethnic minority.” Loury was, in short, an outcast among his own kind—and in his mind, the right wasn’t doing enough to alleviate his isolation.

Tucker gets at the heart of the matter: that conservatives of historically liberal groups, be it African American or gay, tend to feel isolated. They are viewed as suspect by their own kind, as well as by conservatives. It leads to minority conservatives to have to choose between their community and their ideology. After a while the strain is way too great and they are more likely to go with their community.

It's not that white conservatives , contrary to liberal beliefs, are inherently racist, but it's that they don't feel the need to be hospitable to minority groups. When I say, hospitable, I mean that they don't try to come up with ideas that will attract and retain African Americans.

Part of that lack of interest in trying to attract those voters lies in modern conservative belief. The way that liberals have attracted those groups is through government programs and government jobs or through laws like Civil Rights and those regarding hate crimes. Conservatives offer...what? Because of a belief in not rely on government, conservatives don't have much to offer African Americans.

That's why idea of volunteerism as a conservative program won't work. This is not a knock against those efforts, but the fact is, most inner city folk see these kind of programs already and alone they won't do much.

Which is why conservatives have to work on ideas concerning Urban America. There has to ways to use government to help spur growth and entrepeneurship instead of just giving folks a check.

When conservatives actually start thinking and bringing ideas to the table, then maybe black conservatives won't feel so isolated.

The NPR Brand

What is the word that comes to mind when one thinks of National Public Radio?

One word: liberal.

Now, I don't think that's a bad thing; it just is. No journalistic outfit is free of bias. They are made up of humans who have certain viewpoints and that means that news organizations tend to have a certain view of the world.

In what could be the best piece of writing on the NPR/Juan Williams affair, Conor Freidersdorf calls a New York Times reporter, and by extension, NPR for not admiting that they have a certain view of the world:

NPR and Fox News are actually similar in some of the ways that Mr. Stetler says they’re different. Both media organizations broadcast a mix of coverage, some of which is labeled news and other coverage it labels opinion. At both places, the line between these two styles of broadcast are a lot muddier than management likes to acknowledge. The business models of both organizations depend on catering to the sensibilities of people with a certain world view. And I am not just talking about ideology when I say that.

Despite identifying as a right-leaning independent with conservative and libertarian sympathies, NPR is much more my style than is Fox News. Sometimes when I listen to the radio network, I’m attune to the ideologically liberal assumptions that inform its coverage. But more than a political ideology, I’d say NPR’s sensibility is informed by a sort of urban cosmopolitanism and a commitment to airing a diversity of viewpoints — a commitment that is certainly executed imperfectly at times, but that is nevertheless noticeable in the coverage that is presented. I also think there are people doing reporting at NPR who try their best to give facts without bias, and believe that’s what their superiors want them to do. There are times when I think NPR coverage doesn’t do justice to conservative insights, but there are other times when I think they’ve done their best to present strong arguments with which a majority of their audience will disagree.

Like Conor, I tend to have some conservative and libertarian leanings, so there are times I notice that NPR doesn't do justice to a story about conservatives. That said, I think they try. But for me, it's pretty obvious that there is NPR has a certain cosmopolitian liberal view of the world. Now, being someone who lives in a cosmo city like Minneapolis, I'm okay with it. I don't always agree, but I'm probably not their general audience.

But one of the reasons that I like NPR is that even though they want to pretend that they have no opinion on matters, they do strive to be inclusive as best they can. That has gotten the network in trouble, with liberal listeners getting steamed, as they did a year ago, when NPR did a story on a speech given by former Vice President Dick Cheney criticizing the President.

On the other side, Fox News doesn't pretend that it's above the fray. They cater to Red America with what many consider an alternative to the "liberal media." In some ways, I like that Fox doesn't try to live in the fantasy land of objectivity, but because it is trying to placate conservatives with red meat, it doesn't do a good job at all at presenting the other side. Liberals are carictures, not real people. Fox basically acts like a very partisan blog that affirms one's views.

At the end of the day, NPR is as much a brand as it is a new source. It has a specific audience that it caters to as much as Fox caters to a specific audience.

What happened this week is that NPR had to own up to its brand after trying to pretend it didn't exist.

Answering a 21st Century Question with a 20th Century Answer

Walter Russell Mead doesn't buy that the Democrats are going to lose in the midterms because of the economy or just because its the midterms:

Forget the excuses: bad economy, midterm blahs. Franklin Roosevelt inherited a bad economy from his GOP predecessor. And the Depression wasn’t over by the 1934 midterms. Far from it. Unemployment still stood at 21.7%. The Depression still had six years to run...

In 1934 Democrats gained 13 seats in the House and an impressive 9 in the Senate. Today, they are heading for what George W. Bush would call a ‘thumpin.’

Why? Basically, because voters believed that the Democrats had the answers to the country’s problems. Deficit spending, government intervention, support for the labor movement, heavy infrastructure investment: people believed that the only way forward was to have more of these things.

Mead notes that when the Democrats came back into total power in 2009, the tended to think that the answer was simply a repeat of what they did some 70 years earlier: lots of deficit spending. But this time, instead of helping the Democrats, it has lead to their undoing:

What is killing the Democrats this fall isn’t the midterm blues. It isn’t the bad economy. It is something much deeper, and I don’t see it changing anytime soon. The national economy is changing in ways that make traditional Democratic solutions less useful even as change makes traditional Democratic concerns more important. Yes, inequality is rising. Yes, the standard of living of many Americans is no longer rising. Yes, access to vital services — especially, but not only, health care and higher education — is increasingly difficult for many Americans to secure. Yes, the financial system went haywire in the last twenty years, generating enormous amounts of wealth for some without creating lasting value for society as a whole.

All this is very real, and for many Democrats and die-hard liberals it makes the call of the New Deal impossible to resist. That the history of the 1930s was repeating itself was the core conviction of many Democrats as President Obama took the oath of office. The economic crisis was a liberal opportunity not to be missed. Just as the Depression allowed FDR to transform American society and grow the government, so the Great Recession would allow President Obama to reconfigure the role of government in America today.

What Mead is talking about is the "Blue Social Model" something he discussed earlier this year. The Democrats thought that the advent of Obama meant the advent of a new liberal age...which would look like the old liberal age.

But the thing is, the Blue Social Model has been unraveling since the 70s. What once worked, is not working so well now.

Mead thinks that the way forward is a kind of governing libertarianism ( my words); a government that would free the economy to encourage small businesses to flourish, using the marketplace to provide social services like health care and providing an affordable plan to rebuild America's infrastructure.

The problem is that most of these suggestions are an anathema to Democrats because it would mean going against vested interests.

One would think that the Republicans would be the ones that could step into this breach and create a new social model (the Red Social Model?) that would be the blueprint for the 21st century. The problem is at this point the GOP is not interested in coming up with new ideas. Like the Democrats, they are stuck in a past history- in this case the 1980s- thinking that tax cuts all the time should be the answer to all our nation's ills.

While the GOP is on the path to winning back Congress, they will do so without a viable idea on how to tackle our economy. If the public rejected the Dems for wanting a 1930s style solution, they will oust the GOP for their 1980s-style solution. It's time both parties look to the present and come up with ideas for the present, not some glorious past.

Liberaltarians, Safety Nets and the GOP

While E.D. Kain and I no longer share the same ideological family (though I still think he is one of the best thinkers out there and will continue to read him), we do agree on one thing: the necessity of social safety nets.

I can already hear a few people screaming that this somehow disqualifies me as a true conservative. After all, humans were born to live free away from the grabby hands of government.

Snicker all you want, I do think we need to have a less dominating government, but I also see the importance of safety nets, like Medicaid or unemployment benefits.

I don't say these things because I'm so lover of all things government. I say this because I've experienced times when I've needed these programs. In 1996, I caught the flu which then went to pnuemonia and then to a bad bacterial infection. At the time, I didn't have health care; couldn't afford the insurance offered at the coffee chain I worked for. I ended up in the hospital and because of the efforts of a savvy nurse practitioner, Medicaid was able to pay most of the bill.

In 2005, I was let go from a job. I applied for unemployment insurance. It wasn't a lot, but it sure helped in the weeks I looked for work.

No doubt there are a lot of folks who are conservatives who see these programs as wasteful. And sometimes, they are correct that these programs can be run rather inefficiently. But that said, I've usually called for reform, not for their abolishment.

Which gets me to liberaltarianism. While I have some big problems with it, I do think it at least wants cares about "the least of these" and how best to take care of them. But like I said, I have my doubts about liberaltarianism. Maybe it's still nascent, but it's hard to see where it contrasts with American liberalism. I'm not that interested in making the return trip to liberalism.

That said, I am interested in a more generous conservatism, and I think that can be found in the old tradition of liberal conservatism.

The problem with modern conservatism (and modern libertarianism as well) is this love of a laizze faire past, a place and time free of government meddling. In a recent post, Dave Hart has this to say about that past and about safety nets :

Quite simply, that period's approach to laissez faire capitalism was unsustainable. It was precisely this model that millions of people revolted against, turning to communism or fascism as an escape. Modern day capitalism is softer (although the degree to which it is softer varies across Europe, North America, and Asia). By offsetting the harsh realities of capitalism with a stronger safety net and progressive redistribution, contemporary capitalism has succeeded in neutering many of the harshest criticisms against it.

To a certain extent, bigger governments are the product of greater wealth. Rich societies inevitably demand greater government involvement since, as wealth increases, so do expectations regarding standards of living. For examples, one need only look to capitalist Hong Kong, where welfare benefits far surpass those in communist mainland China. There is absolutely no good reason why wealthy countries should tolerate the levels of depravity suffered by those living in the glory days of laissez-faire.

But this is not a one-sided dynamic. The success of the social safety net is itself contingent upon the success of the capitalist model. It is not possible to continue to raise living standards without economic growth, and economic growth requires a free market. If government growth outpaces the economy, a painful re-adjustment will inevitably follow (viz. modern day United Kingdom).

I think that many of my side of the fence forget that the reason that communism became such a potent force around the world was because of laizze faire. We also forget that the lack of government intervention made life worse for people, not better.

Is this all a suggestion that we should all go and support the president's plan for more and more government? Or that we should leave Social Security alone? No. I think "Obamacare" should be look at again and not made so cumbersome. I think we need to consider some benefit cuts to Social Secruity. But I don't think getting rid of such programs will allow us to enter a libertarian paradise. If we didn't have Social Security, we would have a lot of old people without any resources dying miserable deaths. No food stamps, and we would see a lot of hunger issues. It's one thing to argue for womb to tomb are ala many European societies. It's another to say that we should get rid of basic programs that protect people from the ravages of poverty.

What saddens me these days is that the GOP has lost the drive to support a liberal conservatism that backs reform of government programs, not their abolition. Yes, there are people who still believe in this in the GOP, but their voices are barely heard above the dim of the Tea Party movement.

What is needed is an American version of liberal conservatism, something akin to David Cameron's Conservative party. As Niall Ferguson said in a 2006 article, it's time for the GOP to follow it's brothers and sisters accross the Atlantic towards a more pragmatic ideology.

From Two to Four?

Via Solomon Kleinsmith, the Washington Post's Charles Lane thinks that there is going to be a crack-up within both major parties between their activist and pragmatic wings:

Insurgent Republicans keep winning: Rick Scott defeated Bill McCollum yesterday in the Florida gubernatorial primary, James Lankford came out on top in Oklahoma's congressional runoff, and Joe Miller is edging out Sen. Lisa Murkowski in Alaska. Clearly, the Tea Party is as much a revolt against the allegedly insufficiently conservative Republican establishment as it is a revolt against Obama.

If the GOP takes the Senate -- admittedly still a big if, but increasingly thinkable -- I wonder how Mitch McConnell plans to control the likes of Miller, Rand Paul, Sharron Angle, Marco Rubio and Pat Toomey. Wouldn't be at all surprised if they fuel a run for majority leader by Jim DeMint.

As the split between right and center-right accelerates within the Republicans, I expect an internal Democratic bloodletting if that party loses Congress, between the left and the center-left. How much longer can these two aging party structures contain the contradictory forces within them?

This post builds off an earlier post where Lane says there has always been four parties patterened after our forebearers from the British Isles:

You might even say that the four parties I'm talking about correspond roughly to the four political cultures first identified by historian David Hackett Fischer in his classic book Albion's Seed. That book traced the main currents in American political ideology to the folkways and notions of liberty imported from four British regions that provided the population of early America.

East Anglia gave us the Puritans of New England, with their emphasis -- "liberal," in today's terms -- on community virtue. The Quakers who settled the Delaware Valley established a society and politics built on problem-solving and compromise. Southern England gave us the Virginia cavaliers, founders of a conservative, aristocratic tradition. And the Scotch-Irish who settled the Appalachian backcountry produced a populist, anti-government, "don't tread on me" mentality.

Now, however, under the Internet-intensified pressure of recession, terrorism and global uncertainty, the four parties are breaking out of the two-party mold that had previously contained them. On the Democratic side, President Obama finds himself torn between progressives demanding an ideologically pure health-care program, among other agenda items, and a pragmatic wing desperately attempting to hold together 60 Senate votes by whatever means necessary. On the Republican side, it's unclear whether the party's right wing is angrier at Obama or at its own leadership. Certainly the fury of the Tea Party and similar groups threatens here and there to overwhelm more conventional conservatives (just ask Charlie Crist in Florida).

So is there going to be a crack up? On the one hand, I'm a little wary of a so-called "centrist caucus" forming, partly because...well, most talk of all things centrist tends to be just that...talk.

But I also think that in this age of the internet, where we tend to associate around like causes and beliefs, mass groups like our two large parties may no longer be relevant in today's world. I think one of the reasons people are looking at the GOP again after booting them out of power in 2006 and 2008 is that the Dems went a bit too far to the left in regards to the stimulus and health care reform. If the GOP makes big gains or even takes Congress in this fall, expect that they will feel the wrath of voters if they focus on investigations of the Obama Adminstration instead of the economy.

I think there is a big group of people in the middle that would like to see things done. Where I tend to disagree with the "centrist caucus" folks is that the center doesn't agree on everything or even how to get things done. While both parties have pragmatists, they are still tied to some ideology.

That said, it would be nice to see both the Dems and the GOP split up. That way we could have a more pragmatic conservative party ala the Conservatives in the UK and a pragmatic liberal party maybe more like the Liberal Democrats in the UK or the Free Democrats in Germany.

I'm all for more competition in the American political spehere.

Introducing Big Tent Revue

I forget to tell folks that I've started a new group blog called Big Tent Revue. It kinda rises from the ashes of Republicans United, and the goal is not as much to try to change the center-right as much as present an alternative vision and start a discussion on ways the center-right can be reformed.

Notice, I didn't say this was a Republican blog. This is a center-right blog because I want to open up the conversation to folks who might want to be conservative but are put off by the current movement. I also hope to interview some folks and basically have fun blogging.

I will still be blogging here, but please check out BTR to see some other viewpoints. Also if you are interested in co-blogging, please let me know.

Enjoy!

Missing (and Proving) the Point

David Brooks column today is a good one, but it has already stirred a bit of ire from some libertarians who in some way prove his point. The column is about how we are not as hardy thinkers as we used to be, not allowing for any thought that just might upset our mental applecarts. Here's a taste

The ensuing mental flabbiness is most evident in politics. Many conservatives declare that Barack Obama is a Muslim because it feels so good to say so. Many liberals would never ask themselves why they were so wrong about the surge in Iraq while George Bush was so right. The question is too uncomfortable.

There’s a seller’s market in ideologies that gives people a chance to feel victimized. There’s a rigidity to political debate. Issues like tax cuts and the size of government, which should be shaped by circumstances (often it’s good to cut taxes; sometimes it’s necessary to raise them), are now treated as inflexible tests of tribal purity.

It's a worthwhile read because what Brooks is getting at is that we are less willing these days to really use our brains and think about the beliefs we hold in a critical light. Instead, we want our beliefs to be confrimed, we want to have the feeling that we are always right and that we never have to change a thing.

As if on cue, Matt Welch replies with a snarky post calling Brooks a lover of big government. He takes Brooks quote on the issue of taxes and the size of government, and makes it sound like Brooks is saying that any talk about free markets is bad and any talk of government (as well as higher spending and higher taxes) is good:

So after a decade of hysterical growth of government at all levels, which has left us with a crappy and unimproving economy, unprecedented debt and deficits, and a long-term fiscal outlook too horrifying to contemplate, it is a demonstration of confirmation bias, herd thinking, and inflexible tribal purity to question the continued growth of the state. I sure do hope that David Brooks is good enough to let us know when it's okay to come outside and criticize big government again. Though judging by his track record–whether 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2002, 2004, 2005, 2008, or 2010–it may be a long time coming.

I think this is a rather unfair assessment.  Brooks isn't saying that we should never question government spending.  Anyone that has read Brooks over the years know that he tends to favor smaller government.  But he is saying to both those that favor smaller government and those that favor larger government that they need to step out of their ideological cocoons sometime.

And that is the problem with our political discourse these days.  On the conservative-libertarian side, there seems to be only one answer for everything: Government is always too big, it needs to be smaller.  Okay, I get that and tend to favor that.  But the problem is that it becomes the answer to things people aren't asking.  When it comes to things like the economy or housing or economic development, sometimes saying "let the market handle it" is not always sufficient.  So how can the government have a role that doesn't make it expand greatly or raise taxes?  Now that would mean using your grey matter.  But too many people don't actually want to think, lest they be branded as a traitor by their compatriots.

The same goes for liberals who think the government can solve everything and should regulate everything.  As E.D. Kain noted a while back, regulation can at times, lead to oligarchies that keep out smaller businesses.  Because of government regulation, niche breweries were shut out of the American market for years until President Carter deregulated the industry in the late 70s.  But again, we don't want to think outside of the box at times; we don't want to be accused being capitalists.

What Brooks has long advocated, and what I have agreed with, is that government has to be both small and active.  It has to be willing to provide some leadership to society issues, even if it is not the one that provides the answer.  Small government is great, but it is of no use if it is inefficient and not able to help when people do need it. 

It doesn't take much a brain to advocate for ever bigger government or to whack all government programs.  It does take thought in how to provide the government services needed and not expand government.

When America is able to get out its ideological cul-de-sacs, the we will become a more functional society again.

Great American Melting Pot

I'm a child of the 70s.

One of my faves from that time was watching "Schoolhouse Rock" on Saturday mornings. Maybe the one I like the best was the following one about immigrants. It's strange how important this little video is nearly 40 years later.

Yes, Virginia There Are Muslim Republicans

..and they are taking their fellow Republicans to task for their opposition to the building of the Cordoba House project also known as the so-called Ground Zero mosque.

Hip-Hop Republican shares a note from a number of Islamic Republicans speaking out against the opposition to the building near Ground Zero. Here is a snippet:

While some in our party have recently conceded the constitutional argument, they are now arguing that it is insensitive, intolerant and unacceptable to locate the center at the present location: “Just because they have the right to do so - does not make it the right thing to do” they say. Many of these individuals are objecting to the location as being too close to the Ground Zero site and voicing the understandable pain and anguish of the 9-11 families who lost loved ones in this horrible tragedy. In expressing compassion and understanding for these families, we are asking ourselves the following: if two blocks is too close, is four blocks acceptable? or six blocks? or eight blocks? Does our party believe that one can only practice his/her religion in certain places within defined boundaries and away from the disapproving glances of some citizens? Should our party not be standing up and taking a leadership role- just like President Bush did after 9-11 - by making a clear distinction between Islam, one of the great three monotheistic faiths along with Judaism and Christianity, versus the terrorists who committed the atrocities on 9-11 and who are not only the true enemies of America but of Islam as well? President Bush struck the right balance in expressing sympathy for the families of the 9-11 victims while making it absolutely clear that the acts committed on 9-11 were not in the name of Islam. We are hoping that our party leaders can do the same now - especially at a time when it is greatly needed.

Republican Muhammed Ali Hasan, the founder of Muslims for Bush, is even more to the point, calling those against the project bigots:

I am deeply proud to be an American, with a proud, personal history of denouncing terrorism, including my founding of Muslims For Bush. However, what truly reeks within this debate is not the shadow of bigotry, but rather, the cloak of dishonesty. In the Rocky Mountains of Colorado, where I was born and raised, it is believed that your word -- your honesty -- is everything that makes you a man.

My fellow conservative leaders, please quit lying. If you are against the mosque, then call yourself a bigot and give us the gift of an honest dialogue, the kind we carry on so proudly here in America.

Yes, you will be a bigot -- but at least you will be a man.

Read both articles.