I had to stop myself from shouting “Amen” and “Halleluiah” during this rant by Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-OH):

The $700 billion bailout of American financial institutions is likely to be rubber stamped this week. I can’t say that I’m particularly happy about it, but at least this morning’s television news wasn’t as polluted as usual with bankers crying out for Uncle Sam to rescue them. It’s been reported that matters became so pathetic that US Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson got down on one knee before the Democratic leadership and begged them to pass the bill.

I liked Nancy Pelosi’s response to this grovelling: “I didn’t know you were Catholic.”? I have to admit that I would have found it somewhat difficult to come up with an adequately polite quip for this former “Master of the Universe”? (to use the Tom Wolfe term) reduced to prostrating himself in such a manner.

This incident is perhaps symbolic of an end of an era: we haven’t seen Wall Street this humble in a long time. Ever since Michael Douglas (as Gordon Gekko) said “Greed is good”?, we’ve been living in a world where investment bankers were a privileged minority: the dot com bust, Enron and the death of Savings and Loans couldn’t bring them down. Now they really need to be saved and the shoe is well and truly on the other foot: it may stay there.

I come from a banking family. Both of my parents held high level jobs in the technology departments of large institutions; my Dad in particular had a front row seat to much of the senior-level decision making. We had a chat yesterday about what caused the crisis; it’s partially correct to use words like “avarice”? and “stupidity”?. One word that didn’t instantly spring to my mind is “cowardice”?. After all, high stakes gambling is not an activity for the faint of heart.

However, according to my Dad, the bankers have known for a very long time that the financial incentives for short term gains were potentially destructive. A number of institutions have discussed restructuring investment bankers’ packages so that they would get only part of their bonuses up front. The remainder would be paid later, after it was seen that their bets had paid off. This alteration alone probably would have headed off some of the riskier ventures, and furthermore would likely have created at atmosphere of greater stability and employee loyalty. After all, if you’re not going to get a payoff for a number of years, it’s worth hanging around to get it.

So what stopped them? Apparently, the banks were afraid that if they changed the bonus structure, all their talent would jump ship for an institution which decided to keep present arrangements in place. Under these circumstances, no one was brave enough to fly in the face of the overriding culture; when times were good, this hesitancy bore no consequences.

It’s not the job of leaders, however, to just surf along the waves of prosperity: anyone can do that, and it’s not really exercising leadership if you indulge in a Lacanian outburst of “Enjoy!”? The jouissance of the markets needed to be curbed: real leadership would have taken into account the potential downside, and prepared for turbulence.

I don’t accept that the banks had any natural obstacles to change. I’ve been in a similar business situation in which rival firms hated and mistrusted each other; the only cure was courage, a willingness to talk and extend an open hand. In my case, I worked with others to achieve agreement on the creation of an open standard for data transmission; the firms who created it hadn’t ever spoken collaboratively prior to this venture. Admittedly, my business realm was quite humble. However, this example shows the fundamental simplicity of change: someone in Goldman Sachs or Morgan Stanley or JP Morgan Chase just needed to get on the telephone and say, “Let’s talk”?. It’s highly probable that they would have found they had more in common than previously realised, and would have been able to agree a solution.

Competition sometimes can bring out the best in people; after all, this is an Olympic year and we’ve had ample evidence of this. However being mindlessly competitive is destructive: it’s appalling to think of how many people are going to lose their jobs, how many homes will be repossessed (there are already reports of “tent cities”? of the repossessed springing up in American cities), how many dreams are going to be shattered because the bankers shilly shallyed and said to each other, “You first”? and “No, you”?. Paulson may think that he is being brought to his knees by political intransigence; the truth is, he and his ilk brought themselves down because they were too weak to admit that they should help each other.

As an American (as well as British) taxpayer, I’m not looking forward to getting the bill for decades of others’ spinelessness. I probably should have realised that I’d be picking up part of this tab some time back: a very long time ago, in what almost feels like a different life, I worked as a lowly intern in the technology department of my Dad’s Wall Street bank. I vividly recall a summer’s day, with 32 degree Celsius heat, on which I had to push a cart with a heavy UNIX workstation down to another office on Broadway. In my way was a photo shoot, featuring several male models dressed as bankers. I had difficulty, but I manoeuvred my cart around the scene: I noted that the models were uniformly tan, smiling, and hadn’t broken a sweat even though the air was so hot and oppressive that I couldn’t help but feel grimy just by breathing it in. I recall resenting them because of their air of arrogance and presumption. They embodied the spirit of the Street, as it stood astride the world. We will be better off if the bankers finally accept that it’s time for them to step out of the way; after all, their skins are going to be saved by the people pushing the carts.

As sent to me by Robin Yassin-Kassab:

Now here’s a bail out plan that works! I’m against the $85,000,000,000.00 bailout of AIG. Instead, I’m in favor of giving $85,000,000,000 to America in a “We Deserve It Dividend”.

To make the math simple, let’s assume there are 200,000,000 bonafide U.S. Citizens 18+. Our population is about 301,000,000 ± counting every man, woman and child. So 200,000,000 might be a fair stab at adults 18 and up.

Divide 200 million adults + into $85 billon; that equals $425,000. My plan is to give $425,000 to every U.S. citizen age 18+ as a “We Deserve It Dividend”.

Of course, it would NOT be tax free. So let’s assume a tax rate of 30%. Every individual 18+ has to pay $127,500 in taxes. That sends $25,500,000,000 right back to Uncle Sam. But it means that every American adult has $297,500.00 in his /her pocket. A husband and wife have $595,000.

What would you do with $297,500 – $595,000 in your family?

• Pay off your mortgage – housing crisis solved.
• Repay college loans – what a great boost to new grads.
• Put away money for college – it’ll be there.
• Save in a bank – create money to loan to entrepreneurs.
• Buy a new, fuel efficient car – create jobs & reduce emissions.
• Invest in the market – capital drives growth.
• Pay for your parent’s medical insurance – health care improves.

Remember this is for every adult U S Citizen 18+ including the folks who lost their jobs at Lehman Brothers and every other company that is cutting back.

And of course, for those serving in our Armed Forces. If we’re going to re-distribute wealth let’s really do it … instead of trickling out a puny $1000 (“vote buy”) economic incentive that is being proposed by one of our candidates for President.

If we’re going to do an $85 billion bailout, let’s bail out every adult American! As for AIG – liquidate it. Sell off its parts. Let American General go back to being American General. Sell off the real estate. Let the private sector bargain hunters cut it up and clean it up. Here’s my rationale. We deserve it and AIG doesn’t. Sure it’s a crazy idea that can “never work.” But can you imagine the Coast-To-Coast Block Party! How do you spell Economic Boom? I trust my fellow adult Americans to know how to use the $85 Billion “We Deserve It Dividend” more than I do the geniuses on Wall Street or in Washington DC. And remember, this plan only really costs $59.5 Billion because $25.5 Billion is returned instantly in taxes to Uncle Sam.

You don’t want to even hear what I think about the stupid mortgage companies that loaned out billions of dollars to people who they knew had no way of paying back the loans, with both sides of the equation interested in one thing … fast money. But it didn’t work, and now we’re supposed to bail out those idiots too???

Kindest personal regards,
Bill

I am not sure I see the point in giving billions away only to have part of it returned to the government in taxes: just give out the after-tax amount, I think. However, the basic principle is sound: rather than bail out financial institutions who invested in bad mortgages, how about giving homeowners a boost so the “bad” mortgages are no longer “bad”?

It’s nice to see the people at Obama HQ are having fun:

Two days ago, I was walking home from the train station when I heard a loud noise explode from behind me. The dreadful cacophony sounded like a goose was being strangled in 3-D surround sound. I turned, and saw that a group of teenagers had appropriated a traffic cone: one of them was using it as a megaphone. The lad was rather skinny, diminutive, but with the bright orange cone, at least he was able to say “hello” in the most disruptive, annoying manner possible.

I had hoped that they would stop after a few paces; after all, it was unlikely that the cone was something the group carried with them wherever they went. But for about half of my journey home, they were right behind me, continuing to use the megaphone en route. Both I and about half of my town got to hear the speaker’s honest opinion of several of the girls in the group: I’m fairly certain that the audience was as un-edified by the experience as I was. Fortunately, a divide in the road meant I went down one track, and they went down another, their voices continuing to rage against the dying of the early autumn sunlight.

Alone at last, I began to think about George W. Bush. I realise this thought is not linear given what I’d just experienced, but the idea of a stolen megaphone giving a loud voice to a diminutive individual is something of a metaphor for his reign. If he had not been President, and the power of his thoughts had not had any amplification, how much better off would we have been?

I must admit that my thoughts were given some additional potency given his recent statement about the $700 billion bailout of American financial institutions. In some respects, it was amusing: after being told for years about the evils of socialism, here we were, being told it was necessary to support the largest, rottenest and most bloated features of the capitalist landscape. In other respects, it was maddening: I don’t accept that this money has to be spent in the way they describe. Rather than use it to bail out the banks, why not use it to help those who are disadvantaged by the banks failing? A simple question, but I see few asking it.

The bailout, as Bush wants, is likely to happen, and the office of the Presidency combined with George W. Bush’s will are enough to create sufficient public and political paranoia to make it so. We’ve seen this same dynamic at work in determining whether or not to invade Iraq. Without the megaphone, this intellectually incurious man would have been one voice drowned out, perhaps solitary in his opinion.

I try not to think about what we’ve lost in the past eight years. While the world of 2000 was by no means a perfect place, it was in much better shape than it is now. Yes, challenges remained in former Yugoslavia, and Palestine was still a source of conflict and strife, but at least there were a lot more Iraqis who were among the living. At least America was not broke. At least the world was not painted in quite as dark hues, coming from a palette of blood, environmental degredation and violence.

I have no doubt that the World Trade Centre would have been attacked, regardless of who was President. I believe Osama bin Laden was and is trying to provoke a war between the Muslim and Western world as part of his personal political programme; I reject the idea that he is particularly Islamic in any proper sense of the word. However, the correct response was not to instantly take up arms, though rounding up bin Laden and his gang for trial in the Hague is absolutely the right move. What 9/11 did was open doors that had previously been closed; the French summarised the mood quite well. Le Monde, a paper not traditionally favourably disposed to America, said “today, we are all Americans”. Regimes that had hitherto been hostile, even Iran, were dismayed by the act. That should have been a cue for a larger summit on how to resolve the conflicts in the Middle East, with the United States as an honest broker. However, because the wrong man had the megaphone, an opportunity for peace turned into war. A chance to elevate the discussion was cast aside, and the world was plunged into bitterness, rancor, torture and death.

Economically, there was an opportunity as well. After fits and starts in the Nineties, the American budget was moving in the right direction: debt was being paid off. Some of the benefits of growth were reaching those at the bottom of the ladder. All that needed to be done was to keep going, and to add an element of environmental responsibility. This too was thrown away, burned up in the midst of a series of irresponsible tax cuts. Furthermore, nothing was done to restrain the unrelenting greed of bankers on Wall Street: their focus on delivering ever bigger short term returns cannot be dismissed as a contributing factor in creating the false boom and all too real bust. The cleanup of the credit crunch, the unpaid-for tax cuts, and the mounting costs of the war means that the total debt of the United States government is now approaching $10 trillion. To give an idea of how much a trillion is: a trillion seconds ago, reading and writing had yet to be invented.

There were opportunities to improve the environment. In the fight against climate change, time is the most precious commodity; wasting it is more than a pity, it’s a crime. Yet, the Bush era should have as its hood ornament a giant, polished SUV. Perhaps the most appropriate kind is one I saw in New York: it was a long, white stretch limousine that was made out of a Hummer. I was glad there was no opportunity to pull the driver over and ask him how much fuel it consumed; the answer would likely have been as obnoxious as teenagers armed with traffic cones. Yet, I am sure I was in a minority by being outraged by its existence.

I don’t envy Barack Obama, assuming that he wins. It’s a tradition for Presidents to leave behind on the Oval Office desk a letter for their successor, usually providing some advice or just well wishes. I suggested to my work colleagues the other day, half in jest, that should Barack win, there would be a note written in crayon waiting for him saying “ha ha ha”. Obama has to somehow rewind all the damage; fortunately, there is enough goodwill still left for America that he will have plenty of nations cheering him on, and helping where they can. But thanks to the Era of Missed Opportunities, he will no doubt have moments where he will wonder what he could have done if he had the legacy of 2000 to work with, rather than the legacy of 2008. Hopefully these periods of reflection will be momentary: the full extent of regret should be left to historians. I just hope the man meets the measure of the mess.

[AMAZONPRODUCT=0786720123]

Ask anyone of a progressive bent who features in their pantheon of political heroes, most of the answers you’ll get will be fairly modern: usually icons of the Sixties, like Noam Chomsky or Robert Kennedy, get many mentions. Sometimes you’ll get Herbert Marcuse. The most historically minded tend to go for Franklin Roosevelt.

It may be a slight stretch, but it is perhaps fair to say that John Quincy Adams, sixth President of the United States and lion of the House of Representatives, rarely or never gets a mention. However, he should, as this new volume by Joseph Wheelan illustrates.

Adams seems an unlikely source for progressive political thought: after all, he was part of the Revolutionary generation, one that accepted a constitutional settlement which suggested a slave was three-fifths of a person in terms of reckoning the electorate. His balding, stern visage as seen in his portraits seems an embodiment of Purtianical white male hegemony.

However, lost in the mists of time is a different notion of Puritanism, the kind that stressed striving towards personal righteousness and personal self-improvement, the kind that meant sacrificing oneself for principle, rather than herding others towards the same goal. Adams was an embodiment of this earlier form of thinking, and this led him in surprisingly modern directions.

Wheelan’s discussion of Adams’ early career as a diplomat and Secretary of State echoes earlier accounts; by all indications, the young Adams was a “wunderkind” of American diplomacy, multilingual and quick to absorb national nuances. In the first years of the American Republic, Secretaries of State often were expected to run for President, which Adams did in 1824. No clear winner emerged from that election as there were four candidates; it was only through Henry Clay, one of the contestants, agreeing to throw his support to Adams that his office was guaranteed.

Once in office Adams refused to behave like a politician: he didn’t sack the existing staff, so long as they were competent at the jobs they were hired to do. This infuriated Adams’ allies, who thought they deserved a share of the spoils. This also gave Adams’ enemies a powerbase to undermine his Presidency. His obstinacy about doing things in a manner that would be described as “typical”, meant that he was unable to get much of his ambitious agenda for public works through, a programme summarised with the slogan, “Liberty Through Power”.

Adams also was constantly at loggerheads with his Vice President, John Calhoun of South Carolina; here began Adams’ vocal antipathy for slavery. With all these factors going against him, and the fact that he found “spin” somewhat bizarre, he was heavily defeated in his bid for re-election in 1828 by Andrew Jackson.

Had Adams stopped there, this account would have been quite short, and that of a failed, if quirky President. However, Adams ran for a Congressional seat in 1831, and then came into his own.

Being a Congressman enabled Adams to take on opponents in debate, something which he was skilled at, rather than having to go through the labourious business of herding legislation through Congress. Once there, he became quickly known as “Old Man Eloquent”, and proceeded to infuriate every reactionary member of the House of Representatives.

It’s tempting to think that “Yes” is the most powerful word in politics, however Adams career, as Wheelan demonstrates, shows the strength of “No”. When President Jackson wanted to clear Native Americans off their lands, Adams said “no”, saying it violated the Indians’ rights and the existing treaties signed with them. Adams was consistently against the annexation of Texas, and as he had negotiated the treaty which had defined the boundaries of the Louisiana Purchase, he was able to puncture Jackson’s claim that Texas was part of it. When Congress started talking about abridging the rights of women, Adams said “no”, and publicly and loudly said that women had political rights. When Congress tried to skip paying a set of workmen, Adams managed to trick Congress into paying them. This had the unexpected effect of making Adams something of a hero, who received that rarest of all political tributes: fan mail. His defence of women in particular led to many admiring tributes, and apparently more woolen knitwear than he knew what to do with.

That said, according to Wheelan, the loudest and longest battle Adams faced was against slavery, and indeed, the resistance to any discussion of the topic. Not long after he arrived, a regulationknown as the “Gag Rule” was put in place, blocking any debate. Adams constantly provoked the Southern members of Congress, using oratory, parliamentary procedure and even a bit of grandstanding to get his way; eventually the Gag Rule was repealed, with the assistance of his allies.

Adams assault against slavery reached as far as the Supreme Court; thanks to modern cinema, the Amistad case is well known, as is Adams’ representation of the Africans who were under threat of being sent into Spanish slavery. What is less well known is how this man, in his seventies, stood up and presented a case for four hours to the Supreme Court, and then did an equally long summation. Justice Joseph Story was impressed and riveted, as Wheelan notes.

Adams’ later years were consumed by the war against slavery. In perhaps the most astonishingly perceptive and progressive outburst of all, he said that if it needed the blood of millions of white men to scrub the nation clean of the curse of slavery, “let it come”. It was not a sentiment held by most at the time.

Adams had robust health right up until the last two years of his life; he collapsed on the House of Representatives after voting, again saying “No”, and died two days later in an ante-room in Congress.

Wheelan’s narrative of this rollercoaster ride of a career never lets the reader’s interest waver for a moment; despite the cold unloveability of Adams’ external demeanour, Wheelan makes it clear it was due to not dissatisfaction with people in general, but a result of a man who was constantly striving to be better and do better, and who could never take a break from the exertion. I ended up liking Adams very much and now consider him foremost among my heroes; it’s difficult to see how anyone could peruse Wheelan’s account and not feel the same.

My blockade of cold call sales people took yet another unexpected turn; the Project Manager in my team, who hitherto has kept her name out of the the bullseye of these firms, is now starting to receive much of the same email traffic that I receive. The first paragraphs in their latest email is revealing:

Dear (Project Manager)

Growth in the market in August indicated that competition amongst organisations for rare talent is still intense and we are still seeing an acute shortage of candidates with high demand skills.

The general demand for IT skills is likely to remain reasonably buoyant and there is a general expectation that there will be a rise in staffing costs over the next year. Based on current placements and candidates registered, average permanent salaries have increased and average Contractor pay has leveled off.

As someone in the IT industry, I know this simply isn’t true. Furthermore, this “state of the market” report is contradicted by their behaviour: they are pushing so hard because the market is indeed contracting. As mentioned in my previous posting, unemployment is on the rise. Yesterday it was stated that Britain is sliding into a recession. There is no empirical data to support the assertions made in this mail. Rather, the cold caller is trying impose their version of reality on the customer in order to stimulate demand.

This is definitely an act of desperation; denial is not just a river in Egypt. I spoke to a contractor earlier in the day (not for the purposes of hiring, mind you), who said he believes that the recruitment industry as a whole will improve after there has been a big cull.

Amen.

The absurdity of cold call selling has reached new depths at my workplace; my voicemail is full of messages from recruitment agents who are desperate to get in touch with me.  Still, I’ve kept the barriers up. So, they’ve gravitated towards my Development Manager. He too has put them off. So finally, they found out the name of my lead developer, and yesterday they started calling him and asking if he wanted contractors.

This is just ridiculous; if they keep going down the company structure, the cleaning people are going to be assaulted by recruitment consultants in the parking lot at knifepoint and asked if they want C# / .NET contractors.  

There is some logic behind the madness, albeit, it’s tenuous.  According to today’s Guardian:

Britain’s jobs market is suffering from the slowdown in the economy as a new report out today shows the number of permanent jobs available has plunged to its lowest level since 2001.

And:

The Recruitment & Employment Confederation’s latest survey today says permanent placements contracted for the fifth consecutive month in August while temporary jobs fell for the first time since May 2003.

This includes, I assume, IT contractors. Anyone involved in this business is bound to be particularly jumpy. There hasn’t been a recession for fifteen years and they didn’t plan for the possibility.

Just a hint to any recruitment consultants reading this blog: if you don’t stop harassing potential customers and don’t provide innovative services, your firms will die. Employers like myself will laugh at your demise.

If you want a good indication of how the environment has degraded over time, get out your old home movies. My parents did this last Christmas in an effort to embarass me in front of my girlfriend, an endeavour made simpler by a recent transfer of some old Super 8 films onto DVD. As I inwardly squirmed through the showing, there was one scene that caught my attention in the 1979 film provisionally entitled, “When I Learned to Ride a Bike”. I was seven years old, making my first wobbling, halting attempts at balancing myself properly on a bike with an obviously shaky front wheel. The scene was familiar: our old street, like many streets in American suburbia, was lined with sycamore trees. It was a bright autumn morning and the wind rustled against the film camera’s crude microphone. My father had obvious problems with the zoom lens as he focused on my younger self pedalling away.

However, what really caught my attention was the colour of the leaves. The sycamores were an explosion of reds, golds and oranges, made all the more brilliant by the slight Impressionistic blurring that came from the poor quality film and the dubious DVD transfer. As I thought about it, I realised that my childhood was dominated by that spectacle every autumn: sometime in September, the days got shorter, the air acquired a chill, and the leaves began to change. By the time October came, the colours dominated my home town, as if Providence had quietly drawn its brush across the scene and lacquered it with brilliant oils.

After being dazzled by the scene and by the memory, I turned to ask my mother, “The leaves, do they change colour like that any more?” My residence overseas had meant I hadn’t been around to see an American autumn for quite some time.

She thought for a moment. “No,” she replied.

Now I’m aware this is anecdotal, not definitive. I am also aware that there are many places that still do experience spectacular autumn colours: I haven’t been to New England in the autumn for over a decade, but I’m told that “leaf looking” is still helpful to the tourist trade. However, looking that far back in time and witnessing what was, is indicative that something has changed, and not necessarily for the better.

Yesterday, Hurricane Gustav hit the coast of Louisiana. As it wasn’t a category 5 hurricane by the time it arrived, the damage is apparently less severe than that inflicted by Hurricane Katrina. Still, there was footage from the BBC this morning that made me wince: the sight of waves lapping just over the top of the levees was somewhat frightening. It reminded me of an attempt to carry an over-full bucket, the water sloshing over every so often. If too much poured over, the painful reconstruction of New Orleans would have been set back yet again.

Yes, hurricanes are a fact of life on the Gulf Coast; but rather like with the leaves changing, the changes in the frequency are happening sufficiently slowly that we have an intellectual escape route into thinking this is normal, expected, and that somehow the weather patterns aren’t altered. This is the classic boiling frog scenario: according to popular myth, if you drop a frog into a pot full of boiling water, it will jump out immediately. However, if you put a frog in a pan full of cold water, and raise the heat gradually, it will cook before it realises it. It takes drama to make a lot of people notice that similarly, nature is on the boil, just as it took a long-ago film to make me realise how much had changed in less than thirty years.

If we accept that things are changing, the question comes down to responsibility. Many “carbon apologists” now admit that climate change is happening, but refute man’s role in creating it. This denial made easier by the fact that science is rarely set in stone: hypotheses are there to be tested, assumptions are there to be challenged. Man’s role in climate change is only largely proven, not totally, absolutely proven because of this inherent flexibility.

That said, it’s the height of irresponsibility to ignore the possibility that man might be at fault. I know that from my career in technology, when I try and diagnose a problem, the first step is to eliminate possible causes. For example, if a bug shows up on this WordPress installation, I de-activate plugins, one at a time, to see which one might be having an issue. Similarly, if indeed the potential exists for man to be the creator or contributor of climate change, should it not be contingent upon us to rule ourselves out of the equation?

I am not suggesting that if man did this, that the climate would stop changing. Nature is in a constant state of flux: some deserts were jungles in the time of the dinosaurs, rivers flood or dry up, lakes and seas can disappear and this happened well before man arrived on the earth. However the rate of these changes may vary: the boiling frog can be given a reprieve. If we make a change, what nature does as opposed to what man does could then be seen much more clearly, and a better response could be formulated.

It is among my long term plans to become a father. It makes me sad to think that when and if I have a son or daughter, that in the bright dawn of his or her youth, that child won’t have the same autumns that I did, and won’t be able to learn to ride their first real bicycle on a crisp autumn day, bright with the colours of the fading trees under a clear blue sky. It makes me more sad to think that when the time may come to embarass him in front of his significant other, the changes in nature since that time may be even more wretched and heartbreaking than the ones I’ve already seen. If we haven’t done anything to stop it, this melancholy will naturally be accompanied by well-deserved guilt.

I must admit, I was surprised by McCain’s vice presidential pick. Unlike many, I’d heard of Sarah Palin before, mostly because she was in favour of drilling in ANWR.  Still, because of her relative lack of notoriety (and the fact she’d only been governor for two years), I thought McCain was going to choose a standard issue boring white guy who would be to politics what warm milk is to beverages. I was fully prepared to time my naps around this: in particular, Mitt Romney should be classified as a sedative by the FDA.

Palin isn’t like that. She’s different: however, I don’t buy the whole “Alaska hockey mom” thing; after all, she is a governor. You don’t get into any Governor’s Mansion by merely being normal, on the contrary. Mid to high level politics requires a different set of instincts and nerve endings that precludes most “normal” people. That said, I don’t think some of the commentary by some of Barack’s other supporters has helped: I wasn’t thrilled by the suggestion that her Down’s Syndrome child is actually her daughter’s son. Sorry, folks, there are pictures of her with a baby bump, and there’s a difference between that and stuffing a basketball in her skirt. Going on about this simply looks nuts.

Nor do I think it’s good politics to be saying she’s a “beauty queen”; yes, some beauty queens tend to reveal that they’re pretty dumb when they get asked about world affairs. However, if her answers aren’t stupid enough to elicit laughter, this too might backfire.

Furthermore, I heard a comment from CNN that really alarmed me: I can’t reconstruct the actual quote, but I certainly can recall the gist. The commentator basically said that the demands of taking care of a Downs Syndrome child and running for public office were incompatible, and nearly suggested she was neglecting her kid. Worse, the talking head in this case was male. Ouch: I could almost hear the scraping sound of disembowelling knives being sharpened echo across the ocean.

Anyway, these approaches also miss the point.  Her big bugbear is sucking more oil out of the Alaskan wilderness; let’s go ahead and rape nature some more, shall we?  Furthermore, for all her talk of “reform”, she simply wants to do things in the same way, perhaps even more vehemently than before. These are the genuine obscenities that should get us worked up; I know that the tactics of Karl Rove have conditioned people to look for the quick, easy kill on the basis of some scandal. Trying to go for one of those is going to be tough, and the risk of backfire is too much.

But as ever, Barack knows best.   He and Joe Biden issued a gracious and polite statement.  I think he knows that being too aggressive against Palin personally isn’t necessarily the wisest move.  Furthermore, I think he also knows that McCain is taking a real chance here: Alaska is one thing, the national stage is quite another.  If she messes up and confuses Iraq with Iran, it’s not like when McCain did it: everyone assumed he was having a “senior moment”.  If she shows any intellectual cracks, she’s a female Dan Quayle. The microphones can and should be at the ready.

Barack is deliberate; I can imagine him reading her file, looking at videoed speeches and having quiet discussions with Biden and his advisors.  I envisage they have a few ideas on what to do: but I suggest that one of the best ideas is the simplest.  Just say, “I disagree”, or “we disagree”. No one can deliver that line better than Obama: “John McCain and Sarah Palin believe in continuing the same economic and foreign policy of the past 8 years, and infact, want to go even further – I disagree…John McCain and Sarah Palin want to follow the same environmental policies – I disagree.”  The frame of the debate in this scenario shifts from personalities to policies, which is decidedly an Obama advantage.

Some people I know are tempted to be dismissive of Palin; there’s a chance that could be interpreted as sexist.  Furthermore, the fact that Geraldine Ferraro was so warm and effusive in welcoming Palin’s candidacy does indicate that at least some women are seeing this as a historic pick. Please: take her seriously, take her calmly, just disagree.

So, things are a bit more complicated than they once were.  I’m disappointed that my Romney induced naps turned out to be a pipe dream.  Still, 2008 is on its way to being the best election ever.

Some people might take umbrage at that title.  After all, the economy is in bad shape, the environment is in trouble, Russia is running rampant, and China appears to be in the ascendant.  However, look at the situation: even the Republicans are having to move in a progressive direction, albeit nominally. Their glass ceiling was always thicker and more bulletproof than the Democrat one: the Democrats had their first female Vice Presidential candidate 24 years ago. The tickets taken together show that politics is opening up: none of the Presidential and Vice Presidential candidates are part of a long-established political dynasty (Mccain’s family is admittedly high up in the Navy).  Neither Barack nor Palin are particularly rich.  This is also the most youthful election in many respects: this not just refers to the ages of some of the candidates, but it also refers to the engagement of young people in the process. Democracy is working: it’s vacuuming up the dust of yesteryear, and in the process, establishing a new set of norms.

No longer is it going to be “groundbreaking” or “historic” for there to be a Presidential candidate who is either a minority or a woman or both. These things have become normal thanks to Barack, Hillary and yes, both McCain and Palin. After this year, I doubt they’ll merit too much comment. If Deval Patrick runs one day, or Kathleen Sebelius decides to step up, no one will tell either of them that it can’t be done. Of course it can be done; it’s there to be done, and now it’s been done before. Thanks to the best election ever, while some of the candidates may never be normal, having the corridors of power open to anyone regardless of race or gender certainly is.