Invesco Field

Those who came to Invesco Field on Thursday witnessed something they are unlikely ever to forget. Barack Obama gave an electrifying speech that silences--for the moment at least--doubts in the Democratic party that they have backed the right candidate. He commanded this vast sports stadium with calm authority, there were no false notes, and the attention of his audience never wavered. His listeners were enthralled, and they left believing they will win in November. After this, they were asking, how could the country fail to elect their man president?

The event started slowly, with enormous lines at security, a dreary succession of second-rate speakers, and a clutch of by-the-numbers political videos. Al Gore, Sheryl Crow, and Stevie Wonder raised the standard only a little, with dull renditions of their greatest hits, and the thought that this entire mega-production was going to backfire was impossible to suppress. Who in the world thought that the Greek temple stage-set was right? If the designer's brief had been "low-budget hubris", it worked; by any other standard it was a calamity. With the Republicans calling Mr Obama a vapid celebrity, this was outright self-parody. Yet none of it mattered when Mr Obama started to speak.

He began with a brief but seemingly sincere tribute to Hillary Clinton--who had given a well-received speech earlier in the convention. He wove vignettes of ordinary people's struggles during the past eight years--the human element said to be missing from his campaign of late--into a statement of his own political philosophy. You cannot connect with people in a space of this size, but this was the next best thing. Part of his speech then crisply listed specific policy proposals, addressing the charge that he is too vague. He directly rebutted John McCain's insinuation that he fails to put the country first: "We all put the country first," he said with a touch of anger, to one of the loudest cheers of the night.

He attacked his opponent, but there was nothing vicious or vindictive in his criticisms. He said Mr McCain was for the wrong policies not because he did not care about people, but because he did not understand them and was out of touch. He gently contrasted his own modest upbringing with Mr McCain's wealth. In that way, Mr Obama stayed true to the positive tone of his campaign, yet wounded his adversary as well. He closed by reiterating his earlier theme that this is not red America or blue America but the United States of America--in other words, with a renewed appeal to tolerance, moderation, and patriotism. More deafening cheers.

The costs of the policies he listed do not add up, of course: affordable college, affordable health care for all, subsidies for clean energy and every other good thing, and tax cuts for 95 percent of households. This is not exactly the count-every-dime accounting he claimed. Yet the measured force of Mr Obama in full flight is not to be denied. In modern American politics, he is peerless. How it looked on television will matter most for his campaign, but in the stadium it was a triumph.

More on unions and card check

An article of faith for almost all the Democrats at the Denver convention is that the country's much-diminished trade-union movement needs to be revived. Membership has fallen to less than 10 percent of the private-sector workforce. This decline is a main reason, it is argued, for stagnating middle-class wages. Public policy, say the Democrats, can help.

The rallying-point is the proposed Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA), a measure co-sponsored by Barack Obama and already passed by the house of representatives. Mr Obama promises to sign it into law as president, if the senate moves it forward and it reaches his desk. Politically and on its merits, however, this is an ill-advised piece of legislation.

EFCA's most sought-after provision is a "card-check" rule that would oblige employers to recognise a union and bargain with it if half the workforce signed cards saying that they were in favour. Labour law varies from state to state but the current procedure usually requires a secret ballot, which protects workers from intimidation. John McCain has opposed the change and advocates a Secret Ballot Protection Act instead.

The unions have a point when they complain of intimidation by employers. EFCA would stiffen penalties for firms that bully union sympathisers, which is both desirable and good politics. But the card-check initiative is what the party is emphasising, and otherwise pro-union voters are bound to have mixed feelings about it.

A secret ballot protects workers who want union recognition as well as those who do not. That is why opposing it arouses suspicion. Membership has fallen at least partly because workers themselves doubt that unions best serve their interests, and with reason. Opposition to secret ballots does not reassure them. It is a self-serving demand, and plays badly with the centrists the Democrats need to bring in. It is bad politics, therefore, as well as bad law.

A broader question is whether weak unions are part of what ails the middle-income workforce. Their decline probably explains some of the wage slowdown--although the most striking aspect of the country's growing inequality is the astonishing growth in the very highest incomes, an unrelated issue. The right kind of unionism can raise wages and advance workers' interests while improving a company's competitiveness. The wrong kind, as the UK knows only too well, can cripple industries and indeed whole economies.

The secret of success, arguably, is a culture of accommodation and non-confrontation. Unions can make it easier for firms to work in closer partnership with their employees, to their mutual advantage. But if the relationship is framed as nothing but a contest over rents--a zero-sum game, with no holds barred--the drawbacks seem likely to predominate. What may concern centrist voters is that Democrats are apt to press the unions' case in precisely this spirit of confrontation. Anti-business sentiment is a dominant note at the convention. EFCA's most enthusiastic advocates would like nothing better than to grind the faces of the bosses. You do not have to be a boss to be wary of that.

[This article appeared in the FT yesterday. The last paragraph was cut for space except for its first sentence, which on its own is either mystifying or absurd, according to taste--as emails to me have pointed out. So, with apologies if you have seen the edited piece already, I thought I would post what I filed.]

Bill, Hillary, and Biden

Taken together, the speeches by Bill and Hillary Clinton eventually gave Barack Obama everything he wanted from them. Their support came late, and the delay and equivocation have surely exacted a price: the sagging momentum of Obama's campaign of late owes something to the Clintons' ongoing grievances. Finally, though, they gave him the backing he needed.

Both of the Clintons gave outstanding, memorable speeches, and they formed two parts of a single whole. As I said yesterday, Hillary's attack on the Bush administration and John McCain--underlining what was at stake in this election--carried sustained force and conviction. In the plainest terms, she told her supporters to vote for Obama. Up to then, many were still wavering, and some were determined to abstain or worse. For the first time, she denied them permission to do so. Nonetheless, the case she made rested on what was wrong with Bush and McCain, rather than on what was right about the Democratic nominee. She held something back.

The next night, Bill made good the deficit. People say he is still angry over the way the Obama campaign accused him of exploiting race, impugned his record as president (not as "transformative" as Ronald Reagan), and disrespected his wife (failing even to consult her on the vice-presidential nomination). If those really are his feelings, he disguised them brilliantly. There was no trace of recrimination, and his finely crafted speech dwelt almost exclusively on Obama's fitness for office. In one surprising stroke, he even congratulated Obama on his choice of Joe Biden as running-mate--a consolation prize Hillary seems to have wanted. Obama's first big decision, Bill said, was to nominate his vice-president, "and he hit it out of the park." That was extraordinary.

These excellent performances do somewhat diminish the new team. Biden's speech, following quickly after Bill's, was lame by comparison. The delivery was faltering, and the substance routine. Yes, Biden showed he has the common touch, which many find lacking in Obama--but if the electorate sees Barack as aloof and cerebral, choosing a likeable deputy does not put that right. And the fact that the Clintons so dominated the first three days of the convention, making it their show as much as Obama's, was less than ideal.

Still, unless they swerve again over the coming weeks, the Clintons cannot be accused of letting the party down. This serves their interests, of course: it keeps alive Hillary's hopes of another run at the presidency should Obama lose in November, and it restores Bill's own standing in the party. Whatever their motives, however, and despite the fact that the Clintons are a hard act to follow, Obama must be pleased. They most likely succeeded, after all, in uniting the party around him. Better late than never.

Dave Barry on the convention

Dave Barry is writing a column on the convention for National Journal. It is the most fearlessly truthful reporting I have seen so far. (What a ridiculous profession this is.)

Call me a courageous explorer in the mold of Lewis and Clark if you want, but I did something insanely brave here: I traveled alone, on foot, all the way across the convention floor.

This is actually a lot harder than what Lewis and Clark did. Yes, they had to cross thousands of miles of hostile wilderness surviving on pine needles and squirrel jerky. But that's nothing compared with the obstacles I faced. Spike Lee, for example.

Here's a minute-by-minute account of my ordeal:

7:40 -- I get a temporary media floor pass, which allows me to be on the floor for exactly 30 minutes. If I don't return the pass by 8:10, something bad happens, although they don't tell you exactly what, so you have to assume waterboarding.

7:41 -- I step onto the convention floor and am immediately caught up in a surging mass of humanity consisting of every Democrat who has ever lived. Grover Cleveland is in here somewhere. Yes, he died in 1908, but the crowd is so dense that he is unable to fall down.

7:43 -- Somewhere in the distance is the podium, where an important Democratic dignitary is speaking about Change. He is for it. Down here on the floor, we are wishing that our fellow surgers would change to a stronger deodorant. We are pressed together so tightly that some of us could easily wind up pregnant by as many as eight different people, and I am not ruling out Grover.

7:48 -- Through intense effort I manage to surge maybe eight feet, where the path is blocked by a TV network that has set up a platform on the floor so its reporters can report on the convention by talking to each other with their backs to the actual convention. There is huge excitement in the surge as people catch glimpses of both Anderson Cooper and Wolf Blitzer, who are, in this environment, the Beatles. The surgers all stop, whip out cellphones, and take pictures of the backs of the heads of people who are taking pictures of the backs of the heads of people who might actually be getting direct visual shots of Anderson and Wolf. It is a lifetime convention memory.

Hillary's speech

She was at her best. It was a fine speech, an urgent call for unity, and the delivery was phenomenal: passionate, forceful, and not the least bit false. (There was humor too: the twin-cities joke was great, and will linger in people's minds next week.) From the various personalities she tried on during the campaign, she selected tough, resolute, never-give-up Hillary, and the tone did not deviate. This is much the best and most convincing of the Hillaries: one imagines, in fact, the real thing. If she had stuck with her throughout the primaries, she might have been giving a speech like that on Thursday night instead.

A lot of previously wavering Democrats will be wondering if they have chosen the wrong nominee; even more will be wondering if it was a mistake to deny her the VP slot. But one can hardly blame her for that. The convention wanted a great rousing speech and it got one.

Was it a whole-hearted endorsement of Obama? Having watched an hour or so of instant commentary--which for the most part said yes, it was--I find I disagree. Certainly, there was nothing mean in the speech (though I wondered about the repeated reference to "universal" health care: a coded rebuke, maybe, since her campaign continually stressed that Obama's plan falls short of that). And she certainly told her supporters to vote for him. That was crystal clear. She did not give them tacit permission to stay at home, still less vote for McCain.

So she cannot be accused of sabotaging Barack. If he fails, after this, she will be available in 2012. But there was almost no praise. (Compare Rudy Giuliani and Mitt Romney on John McCain.) She made the case for a Democratic president, but not for Obama. What she said, in a superbly effective way, was that another four years of Bushism made voting for Obama necessary--in so many words, whatever reservations one might have about him.

I'm sure the speech helps Obama. Much as Hillary still wants to be president, she erred in that direction. Maybe she will get her reward in four years. But it was not an entirely selfless speech. I think she could have helped him more, had she chosen to.

Update: I've just read Josh Green's take. Hillary goes out with a whimper? About as much passion as a Wednesday night city council meeting? Good grief, Josh, were we listening to the same speech?

The influence game

I ran into Massie Ritsch of the Center for Responsive Politics--a (truly) nonpartisan outfit that tracks money as it flows through the political system. Buying influence and access is not quite as straightforward as it used to be, he explains. You have to go to a bit more trouble over it. But the people in the skyboxes at this event (as for sure at the Republican convention next week) include many of the usual suspects.

Barack Obama's 500-plus bundlers have raised at least one-fifth of his total cash. Most of the money John McCain has raised has resulted from the efforts of just over 500 bundlers--a plurality of whom are lobbyists. Bundlers, who are now listed for both Obama and McCain in OpenSecrets.org's presidential section, collect checks from others for a single candidate and "bundle" them together. Starting with the conventions, where they're invited to the best parties and given prime seats inside the hall, each bundler stands to be well connected should his or her candidate win the presidency.

Not that they need the boost. Among the bundlers are some of the richest people in the world, including hotel and casino magnate Sheldon Adelson (third richest, according to Forbes magazine), oilman George Kaiser (ranked 26th) and filmmaker David Geffen (ranked 52nd). A decade ago such high rollers would simply write a check to their party of choice, but campaign finance reforms prohibiting that--ironically sponsored by McCain--now curtail party donations at $28,500. To get around that, these socialites are boosting their candidate's bottom line with a little help from their friends.

Lax rules on corporate funding of the conventions also constitute a significant loophole in the campaign-finance rules:

Private money, expected to exceed $112 million for the two conventions combined, will pay for an estimated 80% of their cost. As of August 8, 2008, 173 organizational donors -- overwhelmingly corporations but also several trade unions -- had been identified on convention city "host committee" websites. These organizations have responded to solicitations from partisan elected officials and fundraisers dispatched by the host committees. These solicitors have dangled promises of access to grateful federal elected officials.

Michelle Obama's speech

Michelle Obama did her part and closed a somewhat purposeless first day of the Democratic convention on a positive note. She came over as strong and assured, yet approachable and not at all threatening or angry--those last two were the notes, of course, that the campaign was most anxious to avoid. Her story was touching, and their marriage reflects well on her husband. Yes, one thought, she is a remarkable woman and he did well. Also, she dealt deftly with a couple of awkward issues: of course she loves America; and words can barely do justice to her regard for Hillary Clinton. It was good stuff, well delivered.

My spirits sagged, and even then only a little, at just two points. It's starting to annoy me that Barack keeps telling us how he turned down Wall Street for a career in "public service". By this he means politics. Just how great a sacrifice is that? The kind of ambition that gets you into the Senate and maybe the White House is not exactly renouncing the world and all its temptations, is it? And now here we have Michelle doing the same thing. She gave up lawyering, she says, and chose "public service"--the kind that leads in due course to a 300k-plus salary. I've no problem with it. I just don't want to keep being asked to admire the sacrifice.

The other dispiriting thing was the stuff with the girls at the end. They are cute, and the traditions of American politics must be observed, no doubt, but it makes me uncomfortable to see children used as political props. One ought to feel much the same way, I suppose, about spouses. At a couple of points in this campaign, when Michelle has come in for criticism, Barack said, "leave her out of this." At those times I remember thinking, he's right: the country is not electing her. Maybe, in fact, it is: in any event, you can't have it both ways.

A little earlier, the ailing Ted Kennedy greatly moved the audience with a most dignified address--a speech that was all about the country and Obama, and not at all about him. And yet, as I say, the first day seemed somewhat drifting and unfocused. With three days still to go, it is too soon to complain of complacency. But the Democratic campaign is in trouble. So far, you would not know it from the mood in Denver.

The end of blogging

Daily Kos, the Alliance for Sustainable Colorado, and ProgressNow have organized a week-long programme in the Big Tent, actually a medium-sized building near the convention centre. One panel including Arianna Huffington and Paul Krugman discussed the challenge of getting people to see what is obvious. "We must be willing to listen to people who disagree with us," suggested Mrs Huffington. A novel and valuable thought.

Next, Anne-Marie Slaughter (describing herself as Mr Krugman's boss at Princeton) asked the eponymous Kos (Markos Moulitsas), Jane Mayer (author of a new book on civil liberties and terrorism), and Van Jones (environmental campaigner) to give President Obama "five to seven minutes of advice". They ignored her, even though she set a good example with a crisply stated agenda of her own: close the prison at Guantanamo; apply the Geneva conventions without exception or equivocation; green the economy; rebuild the international institutions so that they give the emerging powers more voice; and combat nuclear proliferation. Are you listening, Mr President?

The others, also with new books to promote, had interesting things to say about them. My reading list keeps growing. And Mr Moulitsas provided the most surprising statistic of the week. He said the median age of his readers was 45, and that he had more readers aged 65 or over than under 25. Blogging looks to be a dying industry.

Brunch with the stars

The Democrats have an ill-advised fondness for celebrities, and the feeling is mutual. Stars of stage, screen and recording studio are everywhere to be seen in Denver. At a brunch co-hosted by the Service Employees International Union and the Creative Coalition--a "nonpartisan (what?) social and public policy advocacy organization"--Spike Lee, Ellen Burstyn, Matthew Modine, Alan Cumming, Barry Levinson, and a somewhat familiar-looking actress who plays a nurse on television looked on earnestly as Danny Glover called for social justice and enactment of the Employee Free Choice Act.

Barack Obama has promised to back the law. Among other things, it would compel union recognition if more than 50 percent of a company's workforce signed cards affirming their wish to be a member: no secret ballot required. The opportunities for intimidation are obvious. (A recent TV ad opposing the measure shows a Mafioso-type heavy offering a worker a card and a pen, as a bunch of thugs stand by.) Advocates of the law say that union-recognition elections are corrupted by employer intimidation, and the so-called card-check method is therefore necessary. Speaking as a worker, and bearing both kinds of undue pressure in mind, I would rather take my chances with a secret ballot. Other pieces of EFCA are less indefensible, and it is a shame to see them tethered to this plain infringement of civil liberty, but the unions want card-check more than all the rest, and the law's advocates regard the measure as indivisible.

None of this was discussed over brunch, needless to say. The law was not even described: it was posited as self-evidently desirable, and that was that. The only question was how to get it passed. Send for some actors. They draw a crowd, I grant you, but I wonder whether brunch with the stars really advances the cause.

Come to Denver

If your idea of fun is to spend five days standing in line with people who want to talk about nothing but politics, Denver is the place. A disinterested observer contemplating the vast steel cage that lines the convention perimeter might think, "There's a good idea; shove them all in and throw away the key." It's a plan, but the problem is getting people in to start with. There are perimeter credentials and "pre-credentials" (they might be the same thing), plus, obviously, actual credentials, and far too few of the latter to go round. Or so it is rumoured.

Security for the event is certainly daunting. Supposedly 42, or is it 53 or 55, separate agencies are involved in the exercise, run from a "situation room" in a secret location. That is a characteristically American solution: the bigger the problem, the more agencies you apply to it. Even at altitude, these things breed. You need agencies to co-ordinate the agencies, and so on.

Picture the scene: 42 (or 53 or 55) agencies, licensed to inflict limitless inconvenience on anyone in their way, seamlessly pooling their resources and expertise, so that the whole thing runs like clockwork. What could go wrong?

The Biden factor

The selection of Joe Biden, for all his merits, was something of an anticlimax, and the Obama campaign is mostly to blame. It overmanaged the announcement. The ponderous stagecraft of the delay in releasing the decision and all the teasing of the press (a good thing in its own right, by the way: we deserve to be teased) were intended to supply a burst of excitement as the convention began. Also, the promise to let campaign supporters who registered their cellphone numbers get the news first by text message has doubtless done wonders for the Obama database. (Not that most of them did get the news first that way, of course; unless they turned off TV and radio and stayed up into the early hours on Saturday, glued to their phones.) In any event, Biden had been so widely tipped that the fanfare fell flat. Oh, right, fine, Joe Biden.

He is a good choice but an unadventurous one--despite the fact that his verbosity and rapid-response opining can get him into trouble. (The Republicans have put a "Biden gaffe clock" on their website.) His knowledge and experience of foreign affairs fill a perceived gap in the Obama campaign, and his pugilistic style is something else the campaign can use. But it doesn't fix what has been going wrong, which is the apparent failure of Barack Obama to connect with uncommitted voters. Biden does connect: he has that common touch. But if Obama cannot do that for himself, having a partner who can will not be good enough.

Thank you, Theodore Dalrymple

Sometimes I wonder where I would be without Theodore Dalrymple, the retired prison doctor and pseudonymous essayist with a particular genius for dyspeptic commentary on the state of Britain. He most often appears in the excellent City Journal. I regard him as a public service. I can outsource (he would put that word in inverted commas) what would otherwise be an occasional outburst of dismay at the country's cultural decay, knowing that nobody could do it better. Oddly enough, I find him very soothing, but the main thing is that I think he allows me to stave off becoming an angry old man a little longer.

Britain is the worst country in the Western world in which to be a child, according to a recent UNICEF report. Ordinarily, I would not set much store by such a report; but in this case, I think it must be right--not because I know so much about childhood in all the other 20 countries examined but because the childhood that many British parents give to their offspring is so awful that it is hard to conceive of worse, at least on a mass scale. The two poles of contemporary British child rearing are neglect and overindulgence.

Consider one British parent, Fiona MacKeown, who in November 2007 went on a six-month vacation to Goa, India, with her boyfriend and eight of her nine children by five different fathers, none of whom ever contributed financially for long to the children's upkeep. (The child left behind--her eldest, at 19--was a drug addict.) She received $50,000 in welfare benefits a year, and doubtless decided--quite rationally, under the circumstances--that the money would go further, and that life would thus be more agreeable, in Goa than in her native Devon.

Reaching Goa, MacKeown soon decided to travel with seven of her children to Kerala, leaving behind one of them, 15-year-old Scarlett Keeling, to live with a tour guide ten years her elder, whom the mother had known for only a short time. Scarlett reportedly claimed to have had sex with this man only because she needed a roof over her head. According to a witness, she was constantly on drugs; and one night, she went to a bar where she drank a lot and took several different illicit drugs, including LSD, cocaine, and pot. She was seen leaving the bar late, almost certainly intoxicated.

The next morning, her body turned up on a beach. At first, the local police maintained that she had drowned while high, but further examination proved that someone had raped and then forcibly drowned her. So far, three people have been arrested in the investigation, which is continuing.

About a month later, Scarlett's mother, interviewed by the liberal Sunday newspaper the Observer, expressed surprise at the level of public vituperation aimed at her and her lifestyle in the aftermath of the murder. She agreed that she and her children lived on welfare, but "not by conscious choice," and she couldn't see anything wrong with her actions in India apart from a certain naivety in trusting the man in whose care she had left her daughter. Scarlett was always an independent girl, and if she, the mother, could turn the clock back, she would behave exactly the same way again.

It is not surprising that someone in Fiona MacKeown's position would deny negligence; to acknowledge it would be too painful. But--and this is what is truly disturbing--when the newspaper asked four supposed child-rearing experts for their opinions, only one saw anything wrong with the mother's behavior, and even she offered only muted criticism. It was always difficult to know how much independence to grant an adolescent, the expert said; but in her view, the mother had granted too much too quickly to Scarlett.

Even that seemed excessively harsh to the Observer's Barbara Ellen...

Incidentally, here is a good column on almost the same subject by George Will.

Paternalism is the restriction of freedom for the good of the person restricted. AIPCS [American Indian Public Charter School] acts in loco parentis because Chavis, who is cool toward parental involvement, wants an enveloping school culture that combats the culture of poverty and the streets.

He and other practitioners of the new paternalism -- once upon a time, schooling was understood as democracy's permissible, indeed obligatory, paternalism -- are proving that cultural pessimists are mistaken: We know how to close the achievement gap that often separates minorities from whites before kindergarten and widens through high school. A growing cohort of people possess the pedagogic skills to make "no excuses" schools flourish.

Unfortunately, powerful factions fiercely oppose the flourishing. Among them are education schools with their romantic progressivism -- teachers should be mere "enablers" of group learning; self-esteem is a prerequisite for accomplishment, not a consequence thereof. Other opponents are the teachers unions and their handmaiden, the Democratic Party. Today's liberals favor paternalism -- you cannot eat trans fats; you must buy health insurance -- for everyone except children. Odd.

Friedman and Ignatius on Georgia

Valuable columns by Tom Friedman and David Ignatius. Friedman concentrates on the error of Nato expansion, and the consequent humiliation of Russia, which has now come back to bite us.

[S]ince we had finally brought down Soviet communism and seen the birth of democracy in Russia the most important thing to do was to help Russian democracy take root and integrate Russia into Europe. Wasn't that why we fought the cold war -- to give young Russians the same chance at freedom and integration with the West as young Czechs, Georgians and Poles? Wasn't consolidating a democratic Russia more important than bringing the Czech Navy into NATO?...

No, said the Clinton foreign policy team, we're going to cram NATO expansion down the Russians' throats, because Moscow is weak and, by the way, they'll get used to it. Message to Russians: We expect you to behave like Western democrats, but we're going to treat you like you're still the Soviet Union. The cold war is over for you, but not for us.

I don't think we fought the cold war to give young Russians freedom, actually, but put that aside.

Continue reading "Friedman and Ignatius on Georgia" »

How much do the conventions matter?

The conventions matter either a lot or not much, and it is difficult to say which, not just before the event but also after. Thank you to Larry Sabato for clearing that up. (Seriously, it's an interesting article: indispensable pre-convention prep.)

Recent history suggests that there is a better than even chance we'll be misled by the post-convention bounces in 2008. Yet forests will be lost to produce the newsprint for the stories about the overarching significance of 2008's post-convention bounces. And the "tubes" that comprise the internet (in the immortal description of now-indicted Alaska U.S. Sen. Ted Stevens) will be clogged with breathless analysis of the same numbers.

Well of course. That's why we're here.

Church and state

An interesting piece by Kathleen Parker, who was deeply offended by the Saddleback "interrogation". (Thanks to Loretta, a recovering Catholic of this parish, for prodding me to blog about this.)

At the risk of heresy, let it be said that setting up the two presidential candidates for religious interrogation by an evangelical minister -- no matter how beloved -- is supremely wrong. It is also un-American.

For the past several days, since mega-pastor Rick Warren interviewed Barack Obama and John McCain at his Saddleback Church, most political debate has focused on who won...

The winner, of course, was Warren, who has managed to position himself as political arbiter in a nation founded on the separation of church and state. The loser was America.

It's a fair point. Speaking as an atheist--but one who feels no desire to convert others to my lack of faith--I was indeed struck by the anomaly of my finding the event both interesting and informative, much more so than the other TV debates, even though the religious trappings ought to have made me uneasy. Parker continues:

His format and questions were interesting and the answers more revealing than what the usual debate menu provides. But does it not seem just a little bit odd to have McCain and Obama chatting individually with a preacher in a public forum about their positions on evil and their relationship with Jesus Christ?

What is the right answer, after all? What happens to the one who gets evil wrong? What's a proper relationship with Jesus? What's next? Interrogations by rabbis, priests and imams? What candidate would dare decline on the basis of mere principle?

Both Obama and McCain gave "good" answers, but that's not the point. They shouldn't have been asked. Is the American electorate now better prepared to cast votes knowing that Obama believes that "Jesus Christ died for my sins and I am redeemed through him," or that McCain feels that he is "saved and forgiven"?

In the end, I think Parker has chosen the wrong target. If presidential candidates profess faith, and promise to be guided by it in office, then their faith is a legitimate and indeed necessary area of inquiry. And I think Warren is to be congratulated on his courteous and informative probing. It is an error, in my view, to say this violates the principle of separation of church and state. The aim of that principle is not to stifle faith (or lack of it) but to assure that no one faith (or lack of it) is granted an official licence to stamp out the competition. This is a very frequent confusion. Nothing in the Saddleback event threatens anybody's religous freedom.

The proper target for Parker's displeasure, it seems to me, is the great American public, which insists that its leaders be God-fearing types (or at least say they are). That is certainly a species of intolerance; but the remedy is not to shroud candidates' faith in silence. Parker says:

And while, yes, everybody has some kind of worldview, it shouldn't be necessary in a pluralistic nation of secular laws to publicly define that view in Christian code.

Perhaps not, but it certainly is necessary that they define it in plain English--and if that worldview includes the belief that Christ died for our sins, then I for one want to know that, and to understand what (if anything) it implies about the candidate's likely conduct.

Obama, McCain, and Rick Warren

Otherwise detained when it was first broadcast, I only got around to watching the Saddleback Church encounter (video; transcript) last night.

Warren did a very nice job. I hope the network moderators were taking notes. No self-aggrandizement, no moronic gimmicks, no ceaseless quest for the gotcha moment. He asked good, searching questions in a spirit of urgent reflection, curiosity and goodwill. So it can be done.

I agree with the take of most commentators: Obama came across as thoughtful--but to a fault. His answers were too long and inconclusive. He came over as smart, interesting and admirable, but indecisive. McCain was just the opposite: direct, peremptory, energetic, impatient to take charge.

If this event were all I knew of the two candidates, I would prefer Obama, though with reservations. McCain crossed the line between concise and simplistic (not to say bombastic) too many times. Obama's answer to the question, "At what point does a baby have human rights?"--"That's above my pay grade"--was an evasion. (What would I have said, I wondered? Words to the same effect. Luckily I'm not running for president.) Then it got worse, as he talked about "theological perspective", "scientific perspective" and (eek) "specificity". Oh dear. McCain's immediate answer, "At the moment of conception," was as crisp and clear as you could wish. Problem is, that answer has implications which I am certain that McCain, consistent though his record may be on abortion, is not willing to confront. If it's a choice between (a) handwringing over specificity and (b) dogmatic certainty on an issue that (in my view) does not support it, I'll reluctantly take (a).

As for the politics, surely McCain won. Much to my surprise, given some of his recent outings, he seemed much more presidential. So I agree with David Gergen:

Heading into the candidates' appearances on Saturday night at Saddleback Church, the conventional wisdom in politics was Barack Obama should have a clear upper hand in any joint appearance with John McCain -- one the young, eloquent, cool, charismatic dude who can charm birds from the trees, the other the meandering, sometimes bumbling, old fellow who can barely distinguish Sunnis from Shiias.

Well, kiss that myth goodbye.

McCain came roaring out of the gate from the first question and was a commanding figure throughout the night as he spoke directly and often movingly about his past and the country's future. By contrast, Obama was often searching for words and while far more thoughtful, was also less emotionally connective with his audience.

Also see this piece by Dick Polman at the Philadelphia Inquirer:

The same stylistic gap - cerebral versus visceral - was evident at several other points in the forum, again to Obama's potential disadvantage. Such as the exchanges about the nature of evil.

Warren asked Obama: "Does evil exist, and if it does, do we ignore it, do we negotiate with it, do we contain it, or do we defeat it?"

Obama's response: "Evil does exist. I mean, we see evil all the time. We see evil in Darfur. We see evil in parents have viciously abused their children and I think it has to be confronted. It has to be confronted squarely and one of the things that I strongly believe is that, you know, we are not going to, as individuals, be able to erase evil from the world...Now, the one thing that I think is very important for us is to have humility in how we approach the issue of confronting evil, but, you know, a lot of evil has been perpetrated based on the claim that we were trying to confront evil...And I think one thing that's very important is having some humility in recognizing that, you know, just because we think our intentions are good doesn't always mean that we're going to be doing good..."

One hour later, Warren asked McCain the same question about evil and what we should do about it. McCain's response began this way:

"Defeat it."

Jim Fallows, though, makes a very good point. This was a pair of interviews, not a debate. Who knows where the discussion of human rights and abortion would have gone if the candidates had been able to challenge each other--if Obama had been able to test McCain on the implications of his certainties, and say, "Is it really so simple?". Perhaps that would have made things even worse for Obama, or perhaps not. We shall see. The approaching presidential debates will be even more important that I had supposed. Shame they will be back in the hands of the TV professionals.

Column: Washington remains hobbled by Iraq

Here is my column for Monday's FT:

So far, reaction in the US to Russia's invasion of Georgia has been all Vladimir Putin could have wished. Exhausted in every way by its experience in Iraq (a failure not much mitigated by recent progress there), its authority and sense of purpose quite depleted, the US looked slower and less decisive than Europe in its initial response, and that is saying something.

It took repeated prodding from presidential contender John McCain to draw President George W. Bush's attention from the Beijing Olympics to the fact that Russian forces were overrunning the territory of a US ally. Then, as the White House slowly geared up its rhetoric, dispatched the secretary of state to Tbilisi, and began talking vaguely of repercussions, both the administration and the goading Mr McCain were accused of war-mongering hysteria by liberal commentators and even by some conservatives.

It is easy to account for this lassitude and lack of self-confidence. The US feels anything but strong these days. Iraq has strained its armed forces to such a point that it cannot commit adequate resources even to its struggle to stabilise Afghanistan, which would otherwise be an immediate and high priority. Aside from the human cost of the Iraq mission, Americans are also preoccupied with its enormous fiscal burden. Just last week, Barack Obama's campaign again underlined how much it is counting on savings from a withdrawal from Iraq to pay for expanded domestic spending. The country has a new set of priorities.

Even more telling, though, is the erosion of its moral assurance and sense of purpose in the world. The instant reaction of many of the administration's critics was to say: "We invaded Iraq without justification. We have no standing to object if Russia does the same to Georgia." Andrew Sullivan, a prominent conservative blogger and a one-time supporter of the Iraq war, wrote: "Maybe we should start complaining when as many Georgians have perished as Iraqis - and when Putin throws thousands of innocent Georgians into torture chambers."

Differences between the two cases - Georgia is a democracy not a totalitarian tyranny, and is a state in good standing with the world not a proven aggressor and serial violator of United Nations resolutions - received little attention. The fact that Georgia is also a US ally was also overlooked. It was all the same thing. In fact, when you thought about it, Russia's case for acting as it did was stronger than the US rationale for attacking Iraq: Mikheil Saakashvili, Georgia's leader, is erratic and sort of asked for it, and his country is right on Russia's doorstep, inside its legitimate sphere of influence.

Certainly, if the US is to recover its ability to make moral distinctions and rational calculations of self-interest, it will need to shed this administration. That is part of what it will take to get over Iraq - but will it be enough? It was disappointing, though unsurprising, that the McCain and Obama campaigns both saw Georgia through the prism of electoral politics, rather than seeking to unite on the issue. Mr McCain was agitated and militant - alarmingly so, it must be said. Mr Obama was circumspect, called for restraint on both sides and consultation with allies, and in effect said nothing. Mr McCain's campaign underlined his toughness and experience; Mr Obama's emphasised their candidate's calmness and refusal to shoot from the hip.

An approach that combines these stereotypical attitudes is needed. If it is in Mr Putin's mind to use force and intimidation to reconstitute the Soviet Union in the form of a new Russian empire - as it might be - then the US and its friends must overcome post-Iraq equivocation and recognise this as both morally outrageous and as a serious challenge to their interests. Mr Putin would need to be firmly resisted, not with empty overheated threats, but with measured concrete steps.

Since coming to power, Mr Putin has sought and in large measure been granted partnership with the west. Europe and the US have worked on the assumption that Russia wanted to become a normal country. That was questionable even before Georgia. At the moment it looks absurd. Russia wants it both ways. It wants the benefits of international partnership - in the World Trade Organisation, the Group of Eight and other forums - while being free to reassert itself over the former Soviet Union. Mr Putin needs to be told that he cannot have it both ways. If Russia keeps forces in Georgia proper, at a minimum that should veto WTO membership and future invitations to G7 conclaves. The message to Mr Putin should be that he is sincerely wanted as a partner because the benefits assuredly flow in both directions, but not at any price.

Aside from underlining the extent to which Iraq has weakened the US, spiritually and materially, the invasion of Georgia drove home something else as well: the fact that there is still no substitute for American leadership. Europe's diplomatic mission was commendably prompt, but completely ineffective. The European Union is deeply divided over Russia. Its newer members from the former Soviet empire are intent on resisting any renewed Russian ambitions to intimidate them. Germany and others are fearful of offending Mr Putin - for instance, by speeding the accession of Ukraine and other ex-Soviet states into Nato and the EU. The US has to set the course in dealing with Russia. Europe ought to, but cannot and will not.

Exercising such leadership means getting over Iraq. Sadly for citizens of the former Soviet republics and their neighbours in central Europe, that is going to take a while.

Obama's tax plan: what could be clearer?

I am not devoting myself full-time to following the iterations of the candidates' tax plans--as you will soon see, that way lies insanity--but I was interested to see the article by Jason Furman and Austan Goolsbee, Obama's top economists, in today's WSJ. It says, among other things, that "the top capital-gains rate for families making more than $250,000 would return to 20%" and that "the tax rate on dividends would also be 20% for families making more than $250,000." (Both rates are currently 15%.)

Good to have that confirmed. Three weeks ago, the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center (which produces the most authoritative independent appraisals of the campaigns' fiscal proposals) used new rates of 25%, not 20%, to calculate the numbers most of us have been using lately. It had inferred those tax rates from the Obama campaign's statements and revenue projections.

The thrust of the Furman/Goolsbee article is that Obama would cut taxes overall relative to current policy, while shifting the burden from people on middle and lower incomes to the rich. Cling to that: it might be true. Unfortunately, although the piece is full of numbers, I don't see an estimate of that net tax change, a figure of some interest. And the campaign still isn't saying how much, or even whether, the payroll tax for families on more than $250,000 a year will rise. The campaign says it is considering options in the 2-4% range, worker and employer combined. I don't know if the effects of that change should be included in the estimate they forget to give of the net tax change. Presumably not, because the article says this bold effort to shore up Social Security would not be activated for a decade or more.  That makes two interesting announcements. (Does it also imply a third term for President Obama?)

The article doesn't say much about spending--except to promise that Obama would cut it, to pay for his net tax cut. Do Democrats realize that Obama is promising to cut public spending overall? This was news to me. The big-ticket item on the spending side, of course, is health care. Obama's website explains how the costs of his health reform, estimated at a surprisingly modest $50 billion-65 billion a year, will be met: "The Obama plan will realize tremendous savings within the health care system to help finance the plan. The additional revenue needed to fund the up-front investments in technology and to help people who cannot afford health insurance is more than covered by allowing the Bush tax cuts to expire for people making more than $250,000 per year, as they are scheduled to do." Ah, there you've lost me. The tax plan promises a net tax cut. The revenues from taxing the rich more heavily will be more than spent on cutting everybody else's taxes. There's no surplus left over to set against the cost of health care reform. There's a shortfall.

The article also says: "Overall, in an Obama administration, the top 1% of households -- people with an average income of $1.6 million per year -- would see their average federal income and payroll tax rate increase from 21% today to 24%, less than the 25% these households would have paid under the tax laws of the late 1990s." I need to find the footnotes for that one. The Tax Policy Center, in tables refreshed today, says that the average federal tax rate on the top 1% of tax units (including business income and the estate tax) would rise by 7.2 percentage points to 35.6% by 2012, fully phased in. That is a hefty rise.

The TPC's July 23rd document described Obama's then-proposed tax increases on upper-income earners as "enormous". But obviously that assessment will need to be updated.

If only they had chosen Clinton...

I don't think so. Read this piece by Josh Green and the accompanying haul of documents from inside the Clinton campaign. This is the candidate who ran on management expertise--on "actions speak louder than words", on the ability to get things done. Hillary, it appears, is a pitiful manager.

Clinton ran on the basis of managerial competence--on her capacity, as she liked to put it, to "do the job from Day One." In fact, she never behaved like a chief executive, and her own staff proved to be her Achilles' heel. What is clear from the internal documents is that Clinton's loss derived not from any specific decision she made but rather from the preponderance of the many she did not make. Her hesitancy and habit of avoiding hard choices exacted a price that eventually sank her chances at the presidency.

Georgia (and Ukraine)

Joe Klein accuses Robert Kagan of warmongering.

When a column starts off like this:

The details of who did what to precipitate Russia's war against Georgia are not very important. Do you recall the precise details of the Sudeten Crisis that led to Nazi Germany's invasion of Czechoslovakia? Of course not, because that morally ambiguous dispute is rightly remembered as a minor part of a much bigger drama.

The events of the past week will be remembered that way, too.

..the author has got to be a neoconservative pushing for the next war. In this case, it's Robert Kagan, girding for a new twilight struggle with the Sovi...uh, sorry: that was a couple of twilight struggles ago...Russia.

I don't follow. Kagan's main point is simply that Russia remains a dangerous and assertive rival to the West.

Historians will come to view Aug. 8, 2008, as a turning point no less significant than Nov. 9, 1989, when the Berlin Wall fell. Russia's attack on sovereign Georgian territory marked the official return of history, indeed to an almost 19th-century style of great-power competition, complete with virulent nationalisms, battles for resources, struggles over spheres of influence and territory, and even -- though it shocks our 21st-century sensibilities -- the use of military power to obtain geopolitical objectives. Yes, we will continue to have globalization, economic interdependence, the European Union and other efforts to build a more perfect international order. But these will compete with and at times be overwhelmed by the harsh realities of international life that have endured since time immemorial. The next president had better be ready.

If I wanted to criticise that view I think I'd say it was too much a statement of the obvious, rather than attacking it as insanely militant. As Klein himself acknowledges,

To be sure, Russia's assault on Georgia is an outrage.

And yet, he continues

But it is important, yet again, to call out the endless neoconservative search for new enemies.

I cannot see that underlining the significance of an outrageous (in Klein's own view) Russian assault on a US ally (Georgian soldiers serve in Iraq) constitutes a desperate search for new enemies. What a strange reaction to these events.

Continue reading "Georgia (and Ukraine)" »

Column: Whispers of a Watergate

The response in the US to startling new allegations that the White House directed the forgery of evidence to support its case for the war in Iraq has been surprisingly muted so far. The charges may be false, of course, but if they are seriously examined and turn out to be true, this is - or ought to be - a Watergate-sized scandal.

Ron Suskind is a heavyweight: a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, and the author of a well-regarded book on the administration's security policies, The One Per Cent Doctrine. His new book, The Way of the World: A Story of Truth and Hope in an Age of Extremism, which was published last week, contains the extraordinary new charge. It says that late in 2003 the White House ordered the Central Intelligence Agency to forge a memo dated July 2001 from Tahir Jalil Habbush, Saddam Hussein's intelligence chief, to Saddam himself, affirming that Mohammed Atta, the September 11 2001 bomber, had contacts with the regime and that Iraq had an ongoing weapons of mass destruction programme.

This document has long been known about. It was splashed in the British press in December 2003, when The Sunday Telegraph reported on it. That story briefly entertained the possibility that the memo was phoney but insisted it was well vouched for by Iraqi sources. Reports in the US subsequently cast further doubt on it and the memo came to be seen as a fake. But up to now there has been no supported allegation from a reputable author that the White House and the CIA were behind it. That is what Mr Suskind alleges.

You can read the rest of my Monday column for the Financial Times here.

The Edwards confession

Having ignored the story for months, the press descends with barely contained glee on the John Edwards confession. Far be it from me to moralise (let him without sin...) but the episode surely takes a prominent place in the annals of male insanity. It's not the affair; it's not even the fact that his wife was ill. These aspects are unremarkable. It's the fact that he was running for president and his marriage was the larger part of his campaign. His rock-solid decades-long partnership with Elizabeth was the essential antidote to his boyish good looks and aw-shucks southern charm. And didn't he know it. He kept his marriage in voters' faces all through his fight for the nomination. Now this. Incredible.

I will be interested to see how the hypocrisy angle plays out. You remember the exultation over the downfall of Larry "Wide Stance" Craig. "It's not what he did," said column after column, "it's the hypocrisy." In early coverage of the Edwards case, the regretful "it's an inexplicable tragedy" motif seems to be far outdistancing the "what an outrageous hypocrite" line--with a particular affectation of sympathy for Elizabeth. Maybe that's right. Maybe it would have been right in the Larry Craig case too. (He has a wife.) Some kinds of hypocrisy, it seems, are easier to put up with than others.

Adam Smith on CSR

I've mentioned the Bill Gates/Mike Kinsley/Conor Clarke creative capitalism project before. A new highlight on the site is a piece by my esteemed colleague Martin Wolf. (This is what Martin does on his holidays.) I'm not entirely sure what Martin's note has to do with "creative capitalism"--the idea is mentioned and dismissed in the last paragraph--but he has written the best short essay on the political preconditions for capitalism I have ever read.

Consider a society in which everybody was a profit-maximizer. What would it be like? It would be one in which rulers, soldiers, judges, bureaucrats would take whatever they could. It would be one in which bribery and corruption were the norms. It would be one in which market capitalism of the kind Professor Landsburg (and I) extol would be impossible. It would be one in which almost everybody would be poor. And because it would be one in which almost everybody was very poor, it would also be one in which the only way to obtain wealth would be to join in the race for political power. This would be all too natural. It would also be a negative-sum society, in which life tended to be nasty brutish and short.

Profit-maximization is not a generalizable norm for a successful capitalist society. Indeed, it is not an ethical principle at all, for it violates Kant's categorical imperative -- that one should "act only according to that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law." Profit-maximization is a situational ethic, applicable only to economic activity -- that is, activity carried out under competitive conditions. Monopoly providers of public goods -- security, justice and so forth -- must not act under profit maximization.

We do not even want people engaged in private business to be profit-maximizers tout court. Let us suppose, for example, that a business knows of an undetectable way of dumping poisonous waste, thereby saving itself vast sums of money. Do we believe that it 'ought' to do this? I certainly do not. Do we believe businesses ought to create cartels? No, again. Do we regard it as right for business leaders to manipulate their pay -- by back-dating stock options, for example -- in order to steal as much as possible from their shareholders? No, yet again. Yet all these people are doing is maximizing their personal profits, as individuals in the market economy supposedly should

...

So the big problem with competitive capitalism is not that it is uncreative. It is certainly highly creative. The problem is that it is unnatural. There have to be rules, ethical norms and institutional constraints governing profit-maximizing behavior, to ensure that the maximization operates for the social good. Of course, pure libertarians would deny this. They believe that a society could be constructed on the basis of voluntary exchange, with no coercion. I think that would last until the first well-organized gang came over the hill, as Thomas Hobbes argued. We need the Leviathan. The question is how we tame it.

Reluctant as I am to follow that performance, it so happens I have posted a new contribution too. Mike and Conor asked me earlier for some thoughts on what Adam Smith would make of creative capitalism. If you're interested, and with all due diffidence, I'll post what I sent them after the jump.

Continue reading "Adam Smith on CSR" »

An immigration story

A friend sends me this, which I urge you to read in full (the point of the story is in the details).

Ex-UI researcher faces deportation

Katarzyna Dziewanowska grew up in the "gray communist life" of Poland. But it was in America where she found a truly nightmarish experience with a bureaucracy. After nearly 14 years as a researcher at the University of Idaho, Dziewanowska has been denied permanent residency by U.S. immigration officials, who say she worked without authorization for eight months. She did that, she and her attorneys say, on the advice of the UI, and she quit working for a time when the university advised her to do so.

But her appeals have fallen on deaf ears with immigration officials. She'd like to take the case before an immigration judge, but that could take months or years. In the meantime, she can't work and has no legal residency status. Because it is a family application, her husband - a UI researcher studying a promising treatment of retroviruses - can no longer receive grants. Her son can't apply for a free-tuition program through his employer.

"She has no legal status," said Michael Cherasia, her former attorney. "She's not able to legally work. Certainly she can't continue to do her research. (Agents) could come to her door any morning, arrest her, detain her and ship her out of the country."

As I say, read the whole thing. Look at what she was researching. Look at her standing in her field. Look at why she now faces deportation.

One thing to say, no doubt, is that Dziewanowska broke the rules. By their lights, the authorities did nothing improper. Also, it seems odd to me that she and more particularly her employer did not see fit to hire a lawyer until it was too late. This is America. You do nothing without a lawyer. But this does not subtract much from the insane disproportion of the outcome--from her point of view, from her family's, and not least from that of the US. What made me groan out loud was the meaningless glitch that ordained it: an application was rejected twice because a photo was not up to specification, in the second case because of glare on a lens of her glasses. From this, the rest followed. Two "rejections", no appeal, life squashed. You have a problem with that?

Column: Getting serious about energy policy

I refuse to give up on a carbon tax. In a new column for National Journal (the link expires at the end of next week), I explain why, and criticize the approaches of both Obama and McCain to energy policy.

Much the most important part of [their] programs is the seemingly brave commitment both have made to a long-term cap-and-trade regime for control of carbon. This could indeed be, to use Al Gore's favorite word, a "transformative" undertaking. Obama sets a goal to reduce carbon emissions to 80 percent below 1990 levels by 2050. McCain's goal is a bit less ambitious--a cut to 60 percent below the 1990 benchmark by 2050. Both are promising, in effect, a wholesale restructuring of the U.S. economy around the goal of carbon abatement.

Let us assume this is desirable. Do they mean it? Do they understand what these commitments entail? (If they do, they certainly aren't spelling it out to voters.) Is there any chance that either goal will be met?

You have to wonder. The country's mood on global warming has changed--most people now seem to take the danger seriously--but public opinion on energy policy has two contradictory strands. People are worried about rising temperatures and changing climate; but they are also worried about expensive gas. If you are serious about reducing carbon emissions, expensive gas is not a problem; it is an unavoidable part of the solution.

Politicians of both parties take it for granted that the American voter cannot tolerate an explicit tax on carbon, which would be the best way to curb greenhouse gases. This supposedly immovable resistance is why the presidential candidates advocate a system of tradable emission permits instead. But if cap-and-trade binds tightly enough to make a difference, it will necessarily make carbon-releasing fuels more expensive. The system cannot work any other way: It can succeed only by attaching an implicit tax to carbon.

Do Obama and McCain think voters are too stupid to see this? When fuel gets more expensive, won't voters object just as strenuously as they would have if a carbon tax had been imposed in the first place? You cannot hope to transform the economy and have nobody notice--can you?

And another thing: In setting their bold targets for 2050, Obama and McCain know they will not be held accountable for failing to meet them. Any such failure is 42 years away and somebody else's problem. Politically, their best bet may be to take credit for seeming to confront the problem while deferring real action and its unpopular consequences another four or eight years.

Europe's politicians have already worked out their own way of seeming bold on climate change while actually doing nothing: It is called the Kyoto Protocol. America's promised cap-and-trade system could easily go the same way. Willingness to advocate an explicit carbon tax--or at any rate, to spell out the equivalent consequences of a binding cap-and-trade system--is the real test of whether either candidate is ready to confront this issue. So far, both are failing that test.

Education and science

On the question of America's diminishing skills (see my earlier column, blog post), here is a reading by Peter Wood (via Arts and Letters) on why students are turning away from science.

The precipitous drop in American science students has been visible for years. In 1998 the House released a national science-policy report, "Unlocking Our Future," that fussily described "a serious incongruity between the perceived utility of a degree in science and engineering by potential students and the present and future need for those with training."

Let me offer a different explanation. Students respond more profoundly to cultural imperatives than to market forces. In the United States, students are insulated from the commercial market's demand for their knowledge and skills. That market lies a long way off -- often too far to see. But they are not insulated one bit from the worldview promoted by their teachers, textbooks, and entertainment. From those sources, students pick up attitudes, motivations, and a lively sense of what life is about. School has always been as much about learning the ropes as it is about learning the rotes. We do, however, have some new ropes, and they aren't very science-friendly. Rather, they lead students who look upon the difficulties of pursuing science to ask, "Why bother?"

Success in the sciences unquestionably takes a lot of hard work, sustained over many years. Students usually have to catch the science bug in grade school and stick with it to develop the competencies in math and the mastery of complex theories they need to progress up the ladder. Those who succeed at the level where they can eventually pursue graduate degrees must have not only abundant intellectual talent but also a powerful interest in sticking to a long course of cumulative study. A century ago, Max Weber wrote of "Science as a Vocation," and, indeed, students need to feel something like a calling for science to surmount the numerous obstacles on the way to an advanced degree.

At least on the emotional level, contemporary American education sides with the obstacles. It begins by treating children as psychologically fragile beings who will fail to learn -- and worse, fail to develop as "whole persons" -- if not constantly praised. The self-esteem movement may have its merits, but preparing students for arduous intellectual ascents aren't among them. What the movement most commonly yields is a surfeit of college freshmen who "feel good" about themselves for no discernible reason and who grossly overrate their meager attainments.

Later in the article, by the way, Wood refers in passing to Larry Summers' exit as president of Harvard--"pushed out ... for speculating (in league with a great deal of neurological evidence) that innate difference might have something to do with the disparity in numbers of men and women at the highest levels of [the sciences]". This reminds me to link belatedly to a recent post by Alex Tabarrok: "Summers Vindicated (Again)". A new study of the mathematical ability of boys and girls has been widely reported as finding no difference between boys' ability and girls'. I remember thinking, as I skimmed some of those reports, that Larry would have to revise his opinion. Obviously I should have smelled a rat. Alex explains that the reports were wrong, and the study in question (despite its title, and the evidently successful efforts of the authors to downplay the fact) actually bears out what Larry said. A revealing episode in more ways than one.