Attacking Syria: President Obama Strikes the Right Pose

President Obama has appeared to be weak-kneed in a lot of ways, but one could make the argument that he has been a forward-leaning and assertive foreign policy President, following - ironically - in his predecessor's footsteps. Examples of his foreign policy assertiveness include his doubling-down on Afghanistan, his push to overturn Gadaffi in Lybia, and of course his independent, personal decision to invade the home of - and kill - Osama Bin Laden.

Yet with the Syrian civil war, Obama has appeared to be twisting in the winds of foreign policy complexity.  It is with this backdrop that I think people are misconstruing his decision to allow Congress to officially give him approval to strike Syria militarily. While this approach appears to be yet another weak-kneed devolution toward a lack of personal conviction with Syria (what with his "red lines"), this strategy to go to Congress is the right move in more ways than one:

• By asking for congressional approval, President Obama rightly ensures that the democratic process is engaged in this offensive maneuver.  Note: this is not a defensive strike that a Commander-in-Chief has the right to execute without said approval.  This is a choice that America is making based on our values and view of human rights.
• Because this strike is specifically targeted to "punish" the use of chemical weapons, it is all the more powerful when the U.S. congress backs this strike, demonstrating that this is not just another weaponized U.S. President, but rather this is a country that uniformly denounces the use of WMDs and is willing to make it known that our values do, indeed, bleed beyond our borders.  
• If the congress approves, it will be an assertion of a world power by its people, instead of a few forward-leaning politicians trying to get their party re-elected. The result of congressional approval will be telling Syria, our allies and our enemies that if you unite us as a country, we're still formidable, and a force to be reckoned with (ahem, Iran, Russia and China).

It's stunning how off-base otherwise reasonable and intelligent people like Steve Rattner appear to be about this decision (see his Twitter feed).  My suggestion is not to buy into the naysayers' conjecture that this shows weakness in the President. Yes, it does appear to re-enforce a pattern of weakness, but it's not.  It's actually going to be a great show of strength when it's approved.

It's Time to Give Fact Checking a Front Row Seat in Politics

On the heels of the second Presidential debate, I was fairly pleased by how I -- a fairly informed voter -- watched the entire debate and only a precious few times felt that something being said wasn't completely true.

And then I saw the FactCheck.org report:

• Obama challenged Romney to “get the transcript” when Romney questioned the president’s claim to have spoken of an “act of terror” the day after the slaying of four Americans in Libya. The president indeed referred to “acts of terror” that day, but then refrained from using such terms for weeks.
• Obama claimed Romney once called Arizona’s “papers, please” immigration law a “model” for the nation. He didn’t. Romney said that of an earlier Arizona law requiring employers to check the immigration status of employees.
• Obama falsely claimed Romney once referred to wind-power jobs as “imaginary.” Not true. Romney actually spoke of “an imaginary world” where “windmills and solar panels could power the economy.”
• Romney said repeatedly he won’t cut taxes for the wealthy, a switch from his position during the GOP primaries, when he said the top 1 percent would be among those to benefit.
• Romney said “a recent study has shown” that taxes “will” rise on the middle class by $4,000 as a result of federal debt increases since Obama took office. Not true. That’s just one possible way debt service could be financed.
• Romney claimed 580,000 women have lost jobs under Obama. The true figure is closer to 93,000.
• Romney claimed the automakers’ bankruptcy that Obama implemented was “precisely what I recommend.” Romney did favor a bankruptcy followed by federal loan guarantees, but not the direct federal aid that Obama insists was essential.
• Romney said he would keep Pell Grants for low-income college students “growing.” That’s a change. Both Romney and his running mate, Ryan, have previously said they’d limit eligibility.

Now, as far as the raw number of "mistakes" (a generous term for these transgressions, also known as lies, misstatements, exaggerations, or mischaracterizations if you like), there aren't all that many.  But the nature and substance around these mistakes are fairly significant if you're looking to make decisions for the country's direction based on what each man actually says in a highly public setting.

It's OK for a human being to make a mistake. And it's even OK for a politician to try to frame facts in a way that helps them serve their narrative. But I don't think it's OK that 95% of voters get to watch a free-form oratory that simply won't match the policies that the candidate will actually implement when in office. That does the voter a severe disservice, and undercuts the very nature of a democracy.

In the age of Wikipedia, FactCheck.org and the Twitterverse, it would seem to me that we now have the technology and ability to bring fact checking to the forefront of the political experience. To exemplify this point, the media is all abuzz around Candy Crowley's "instant fact-check" on President Obama's inclusion of the word "terror" in his initial statement around the 9/11/12 attack in Libya.  This shows us two things:

1. There is a hunger out there for clearing up misstatements made by political professionals.
2. Facts don't live in a bubble -- facts live in context. Candy's initial indictment of Romney was technically true, but the context that FactCheck.org brings up gives Governor Romney's point a bit of breathing room as well.

We very well may need additional technology to bring instant fact-checking with required context to the political theater in a way that 95% of the electorate is exposed to both the political assertion and its veracity.  We have a lot of great resources now "the day after" where only a minority of voters will be able to see the corrected views of what they witnessed the evening prior.  That's not good enough.  We need to try harder.  Maybe it's FactCheck.org; maybe it's Politifact.com; or maybe it's Google Elections or Twitter. But some organization should make a play for fact-checking our dear pols in real-time, and ensuring it's seen with equal parity by the electorate.

We should vote for what we'll be actually getting from our government -- not for whatever they'll say to win.

Selective Amnesia

For those of us who tend to follow and care about political discourse, it may seem bizarre and depressing how quickly people can forget lessons we've learned as a society. Progressives face-palm whenever they hear Conservatives complain about too many regulations, and Conservatives cringe when they hear Progressives talk about providing additional services to the poor and needy.

Before we continue, here's a quick poll to get a sense as to why you think the above happens: 

Why do Progressives face-palm when hearing about regulations hurting the economy? Because they love regulations and like slowing down economic progress Because they remember what happened with the misdeeds that lead to the housing crisis, the Wall Street bail-out, Enron, etc.

Why do Conservatives cringe when they hear Progressives talk about providing additional services to the poor and needy? Because they don't care about the poor and needy Because they remember failed "big government" social programs like urban housing projects and a welfare system that turned people into victims.

As the quick poll suggests, each side remembers failures of programs and strategies that they don't believe in more acutely than they remember the successes. This is a phenomenon that psychologists call confirmation bias. We continually seek to re-affirm our worldview so that we can proceed more confidently in our personal life navigation.  Any information that challenges our worldview could make us question our principals, values and even our confidence. Our egos prefer to be fed with never-ending confidence boosts, so our egos hijack our cognitive activity to keep us safe and strong.

While there is a clear evolutionary reason for confirmation bias on an individual basis, it doesn't serve us nearly as well as a society and culture. A successful society requires that we trust in things beyond our control and narrative in order to achieve broader peace and prosperity -- which frees each of us up to be more productive and constructive with our lives.

In other words, what we give up in personal control and ego satisfaction is directly correlated to our ability to direct our individual energy in talents that improve the greater good.  

This is why societies (and therefore, governments) have an agenda that works against personal freedoms and personal egos. Any great society must convince its population -- through stories, narratives and sense of purpose -- that adhering to a shared narrative and a shared history makes the country stronger, more cohesive and more functional. Conversely, this is why individuals (especially libertarians) don't trust governments -- because they know that the agenda of a government is to reduce the individual ego in exchange for a national ego.

In America's current body politic, the increasing distrust in government in conjunction with confirmation bias has created two sub-cultures -- a progressive/liberal culture and a conservative/libertarian culture. Our free-market system is very efficient at serving people's preferences, so media outlets have sprung up to serve these sub-cultures and have as a result created echo chambers of sub-cultural context for every current event, as well as selective amnesia around prior events.

Increasingly, America is not a country of a shared history. We are increasingly a culture of conflicting accounts of history. Even the Civil War is still widely considered the War of Northern Aggression.

So it should be of no surprise to the politically savvy that each political side recalls only the best of their favorite policies and the worst of their opponents' favorite policies. However, in an effort to improve our body politic, I request and submit that we should all at least acknowledge that we may all fall prey to selective bias, and perhaps consider that each and every policy has a good side and a bad side. 

No policy that does anything substantial can only be good, or only be bad. Rather, the right policy at the right time solves a certain set of problems at the expense of what are deemed to be lesser problems. That's all we can ask for. And that's all that we should expect. For instance, increasing spending during a recession has historically been deemed the better approach to recovery than to implement austerity measures. That may seem counter-intuitive to the layperson, but this policy is an example of solving a bigger problem (i.e., citizens suffering, economy shrinkage, lack of liquidity in the markets) at the expense of what are deemed smaller problems (i.e., debt, inflation, currency devaluation). With this policy, the argument can and should be about which problems are more important than the other.  But it should not be an argument over who is socialist and who is a real American.

I will now close with non-selection-biased answers to the opening remarks:

Regulations are natural government responses to problems that occur in free markets.  Freedom is great, but unfettered freedom can be dangerous. Sometimes, we need our government to protect us from ourselves, because we will innovate our way into oblivion if we aren't measured and strategic with our innovation. To put it another way, cell multiplication is a great thing when you want to heal a wound, but without regulations, that very multiplication process can turn into a deadly cancer that will destroy the larger organism.

That said, regulations also solve a particular problem at a particular point in time.  Over time, problems evolve, and the existing regulations become less and less relevant over time.  Similar to a patent.  As a result, many regulations are truly destructive for business and innovation (again, like patents).  In addition, regulations are defined by lawmakers and not industry experts, so many regulations may not truly address the core issue, and create unnecessary headaches while still not truly addressing the issue it was intended to resolve. 

Social services are, similarly, natural government responses to socioeconomic problems that occur in a free market system. Freedom to hire and fire makes our economy robust, efficient, flexible and more business-friendly. However, the downside to this freedom is when businesses no longer give back the same value to our society that they prosper from by simply being in America in the first place. Ultimately, in a civil society, we've determined that we will take care of people truly in need.  And that has a cost that we all chip into in exchange for the system working relatively well for those who can chip in.

That said, social services like the housing projects of the 1960's and 70s, and the pre-Clinton welfare state were blunt, naive and ultimately ineffective methods to solve these problems. They may have successfully put a band-aid on the problem, but the band-aid never helped heal the wound. It just left the wound there to fester and provided no on-ramp to a better, more fruitful life.   However, we must also be aware that there will always be a certain percentage of the population that will require life-long social support due to biological capacity, derangement, etc.  But the housing projects and old welfare policy did a poor job of distinguishing between life-long assists and temporary assists. 

Flights of Fantasy

As I listen closely to the arguments being made by the two major candidates for the Presidential election this fall, I'm hearing two very distinct visions for how America can "get back to work:"

• Increase taxes on the richest Americans (i.e., increasing revenue)
• Reducing taxes on all Americans and businesses (i.e., freeing up money for investment)

Neither of these visions come close to resolving the issues that are structurally strangling America's economy.

Due in part to this vapid debate at the top of the ticket, there are big, powerful movements behind each candidate that are advocating political arguments to bolster their viewpoints:

• Conservatives blame an entitlement and regulatory culture for America's cultural and economic issues.
• Progressives blame an unjust tax policy, lack of investments in strategic initiatives, and a lack of regulations that favors the rich at the expense of the middle class (and poor). 

There's the problem: both of these views sound great, but both are based on fantasy.  As long as we argue fanciful flights of fiction, we will continue to feel moral, just and courageous while actually throwing ourselves under the proverbial bus.

Due to these grand-scale philosophical arguments driving the debate, politics has become a lot more like organized religion than organized civic governance.  We argue ideas in concept, and attempt to interpret these ideas to fit our per-ordained and desired outcomes.  We no longer consider fact-based arguments to be satisfying, because we no longer really believe in facts.  We have essentially decided that facts are simply agenda-driven tidbits designed to re-enforce an existing belief. 

In other words, facts have evolved from being assessment tools to belief ammo.

It's ironic that businesses work so much more on facts -- measurement of all things important to the success of the organization, including project deadlines, ROI, performance ratings, etc. -- yet the very business executive running for office has decided to run as a philosophical conservative that debates big ideas (using facts as belief ammo) versus the very thing we need more of in our government: accountability to facts, and measurement transparency. 

Fighting for the Past

In thinking about all the issues swirling around our national political discussion (yes, discussion is a generous term), I think I've stumbled upon one of the root causes of our collective inability to work together across political divides, and to increasingly distrust each others' political perspectives:

The direction we're fighting over.

Over time, as America has come off it's "high" of being the King of the World (big economy, big military, big values, big promises, big opportunities, never-ending optimism), we find ourselves increasingly engaged in ideological arguments about whose fault it all is. 

This is not surprising.  When someone you know loses a job, they tend to find all of the external reasons why it happened, and construct a narrative that essentially makes them a victim of other people's decisions.  This way, the victim is not solely at fault for their own demise -- it was someone else's policies and decisions that created the environment for their demise.

So, in American politics, as we see our structures of success underwhelming us one by one, we all create narratives that help ensure ourselves that our political beliefs are the victim of the others' policies.  In other words, what has changed in America is that instead of two political perspectives competing for mind-share around which vision can enable the best future of America, we are now engaged in a debate around whose perspective is responsible for the our slow, insidious decline.  True, the argument is still couched in "best for the future" language, but what's right beneath this rhetoric are thought leaders angling for blame for what's created our decline. 

This fight to define the past is quite different than the traditional fight for whose philosophy will define the future. 

Fighting to define the past is ugly, because it's a battle for blame.  Blame doesn't improve GDP.  Blame doesn't reduce the deficit.  Blame only lets one stand atop the battered shoulders of others.  The winner of a blame game is merely the winningest of losers.

It will take true leadership -- leadership that has so far been lacking in both Democratic and Republican circles -- to get us beyond the blame game, and to get us focusing on what the best version of the future can be for a country as we enter a new period of our country's life.

On Defending the Individual Mandate: Why getting to the meat of the issue is categorically the wrong approach to the argument

While much discussion and hang-wringing has ensued after hearing Solicitor General Veriilli's lacking performance in defending the individual mandate to the Supreme Court, a far deeper issue lurks beneath these arguments that needs to be discussed and resolved.  There seems to be an orientation and approach to arguing cases like this, where at least a part of the argument is based on tangible issues and practical outcomes.  For instance, in this case, part of the argument included the real-world ramifications of the current state of affairs, as well as projected outcomes and distribution should the mandate be upheld:

 

[General Verrilli] Rates, for example, in New Jersey doubled or tripled, went from 180,000 people covered in this market down to 80,000 people covered in this market. In Kentucky, virtually every insurer left the market.

And the reason for that is because when people have that guarantee of -- that they can get insurance, they're going to make that calculation that they won't get it until they're sick and they need it. And so, the pool of people in the insurance market gets smaller and smaller. The rates you have to charge to cover them get higher and higher. It helps fewer and fewer -- insurance covers fewer and fewer people until the system ends.

In too many liberal and progressive circles, there seems to be a belief that practical solutions to complex problems are germane to the Supreme Court and the Constitution.  Simply put, they are not.  General Verrilli should have never ventured down this avenue of defense, as it has simply nothing to do with the Supreme Court's job with respect to its decision making powers.

Let me clarify what I mean by this: As we all know, the Constitution is a foundational document. It is a framework for laws to live within. It conveys power as well as creates boundaries and limitations on powers.  As a result, the Constitution is, by design, completely blind to the specific issues at hand, as all frameworks are. Using a biological analogy, if the Constitution is the legal skeleton, our nation’s laws are the meat.  The meat is where the taste, nutrition and variety come into play.  The meat is what drives opinions on what tastes good or bad, what is overcooked or undercooked, or over-seasoned or not.  Very few people have strong opinions on the skeleton... it doesn't have a specific taste; it’s just there to keep the meat in place.

Solving complex social problems are supposed to be -- by design -- handled by Congress, and signed into law or vetoed by the President. And only when these passed laws don’t fit within the framework setup by The Framers do the courts get involved to judge if the law (i.e., the meat) lives within the framework (skeleton) or does it protrude beyond.

The court's job is to keep the meat from protruding beyond their skeleton -- it’s akin to avoiding a legal hernia.

It is understandable that liberal and progressive lawyers and policy wonks would not see this kind of clarity. In prior decades, the Supreme Court (and lower courts) were in fact actively getting into the meat of matters and acting as practical practitioners of legislation (i.e., Roe v. Wade and Bush v. Gore). Frankly, it’s understandable why the high courts would actually prefer to wade into the meat of matters -- we all see what happens when the “blind eye of justice” allowed Citizens United to prevail over campaign finance reform.

This wading into prescription and policy around the meat of the issues by the Supreme Court has led to a rebellion in the shape of the “strict constructionist” movement within the conservative arena.  It's a movement where justices have clung so tightly to each fragment, and have so much reverence for the original document's specificities and details, that it works against the very notion of the Constitution being a living document, designed specifically to be interpreted based on evolving contexts.

While all of this is understandable, it doesn’t make it right.  What seems clear to me as we look at the ultimate design of the American system and rules of governance is that both sides have it wrong to a large extent:  The right approach is neither the liberal/progressive prescriptive arguments over “what works best for America” in a practical way, nor is it “strict constructionist” ideology that treats the Constitution more like religious scripture than a framework. Rather, it's about establishing a clarity of thought and purpose around the Constitution as a legal framework that laws are tested against.
 
The Constitution (and its protectors -- the justices) should not actually know if a particular law is right or wrong for the nation.  However, the Constitution and its protectors can and should apply the multiple (and sometimes, competing) dimensions of the skeletal framework to new laws that try to manage contemporary societal and national issues and challenges. Which means that arguments to the Supreme Court need to have the focus and discipline around constructing arguments based purely on the orientation and position of the meat within the skeleton -- while staunchly avoiding discussing the details and ramifications of the specific meat in question.

The same discipline should be adopted and upheld by the Supreme Court justices. Ultimately, there will always be left- and right-leaning justices. But the difference between them should not be what it is today -- practical problems-solvers vs. strict constructionist.  It should be justices that give different philosophical weight to varying dimensions of a fairly comprehensive framework document that, by its very nature, needs to be interpreted by human beings to ensure the meat of the issues are contained within the protective skeleton of our democracy.

A Problem for "Progressives"

A recent NPR article What Americans Do for Work outlines a troubling trend for "Progressives" and a "told ya so" moment for Conservatives.   Over the past 40 years, the shift of employment has moved from making things to governing things.  Meaning, government workers are now the highest percentage of workers in America.

Now, there are plenty of caveats that ensures this is not nearly as bad as the report shows at face value:  Total percentage who work in Government services, in fact, is down over the past 40 years.  It's just that it's higher than any other category.  Also, this Government slice includes military, and we know that's been a boom industry over the past 10 years.

But the troubling sign for "Progressives" (I'll get to why I keep putting this term in quotes soon enough) is that while traditional building-type jobs have shrunk due to economic hardships, it shows how resilient government jobs are to change.  From a raw unemployment perspective, this is actually not such a bad thing.  But from a responsiveness to reality perspective, it does show that government just doesn't live in the "real world" -- it exists in a bubble that just doesn't respond to dynamics like other industries.  Which means it's just not going to be setup, aligned, or managed to support contemporary situations.

Ultimately, this is not a Progressive problem -- Progressivism should be based on progress -- progress toward fairness, equality, and ensuring opportunities are available to those who don't get a head start based on birth right alone.  Progressiveness should have absolutely nothing to do with who solves this problem.  It doesn't have to be government.  It just so happens that today's Progressives tend to link government solutions with progressive outcomes.

And before Conservatives jump on this like kids on candy, let's all remember that the overall percent of people who work in government and military has actually gone down in total (which is pretty remarkable considering how much larger a country we are now), and most of this industrial slump is a result of an unfettered free market system working hard to weed out inefficiencies.  Many of those inefficiencies just so happen to be American citizens.