Appearance or Reality?

We still have voters who call themselves “Democrats” and “Republicans.”  Congress is still formally divided along party lines.  But do these labels define a reality?  Perhaps, once again, we are trapped by habits of thought – or by conventions that have become obsolete without our having grasped the change.

A few weeks ago, in the wake of Scott Brown’s victory in Massachusetts, Drew Westen, the psychologist-turned-political consultant, faulted Obama on the Huffington Post for having tried to be bi-partisan.  “We have competing ideas in a democracy — and hence competing parties — for a reason. To paper them over and pretend they do not exist . . . is an abdication of responsibility.”  (See, “Obama Finally Gets His Victory For Bipartisanship.”)

Westen’s point is that Obama should have combated the Republicans more vigorously.  His failure to do so now saddles him with the requirement to work with Republicans, a need he didn’t have before.

Westen is not alone in deploring Obama’s lack of aggressive leadership.  But thanks to the splintering of the Democrats and the conflicting interests they represent, the health care bill that the Senate was so close to passing had been sliced up in dozens of ways.  To be sure, there actually was a bill in the works, before the Massachusetts election, but even most of the Democrats were unhappy with it.

On the other hand, who are the Republicans?  According to a Daily Kos poll:  “a large portion of GOP voters think that President Obama is racist, socialist or a non-US citizen.”

Some of the particulars:

39 percent believe Obama should be impeached,

36 percent believe he was not born in the United States,

31 percent believe Obama is a “Racist who hates White people” — the description once adopted by Fox News’s Glenn Beck.

63 percent think he is a socialist,

24 percent believe he wants “the terrorists to win,”

23 percent of Republicans believe that their state should secede from the United States, 19 percent aren’t sure, 58 percent said no.

53 percent of Republicans said they believe Sarah Palin is more qualified to be president than Obama.

Markos Moulitsas, founder and publisher of Daily Kos, commented: “This is why it’s becoming impossible for elected Republicans to work with Democrats to improve our country.  They are a party beholden to conspiracy theorists who . . . already want to impeach him despite a glaring lack of scandal or wrongdoing.” (See, Daily Kos, “Research 2000 Poll.”)

Bipartisanship requires two parties to work, but perhaps we have more of an illusion of parties today than a truly functioning set.  Few prominent politicians want to come out and say that the system is not working.  But perhaps what we don’t know we know is that, actually, it’s not.

“Rookie Camp”

Rather than exploit and blame sports figures who get embroiled in scandals for which they are unprepared, some team owners and managers are doing something to help young players.

According to a story in The New York Times last week:  “talented players are being prepared for the temptations and confusions of sudden fame, worse now than ever before:  The therapists and former major leaguers who work in the rookie program say the psychological challenges are the most daunting in its 18-year history — even more so than when the chief problem was illegal drugs.”

The story points out that “the culture of celebrity — aided by cellphone videos, social-networking Web sites and round-the-clock sports coverage — has grown so all-consuming that it has thoroughly invaded players’ lives. It can inflate their fame, or spoil it, far faster than most can mentally adjust.”

This is particularly troubling to baseball players, for whom the transition from the minor to the major leagues can be so sudden: “These guys come straight from playing in Elmira, Duluth, Tidewater, to the big stadiums and the media,” said Gene Orza, chief operating officer of the players union. “Their transition is far more abrupt than maybe any other sport.”

The camp uses small discussion groups, role playing and, even, brief skits to illustrate the issues the players are likely to face and put them on guard against the exploitation and loss of privacy they will inevitably face.  It also helps them to deal with frustration and disappointment.  A player who was the object of attention one minute, because of his exceptional promise, can be discarded the next if he suffers a significant injury.  A psychiatrist who works at the camp noted of one of them:  “Instead of a superstar, he was nothing. Nothing.”

“These guys play not only because they’re good at it but often because the performance euphoria is a good way to deal with their personal demons. Take the sport away, and, well, they need a way to cope with what’s left.”  (See, “Coaching Baseball Rookies for Life in the Limelight.”)

The preparation of the rookie camp can be good news for fans too, sparing youngsters the painful disillusionment of reading about the tabloid exploits of their new heroes.  It can give all of us fewer opportunities to indulge our appetite for schadenfreude.  And it might help to raise the general level of public expectations for those who stand out from the crowd.

How Simple Do You Have to Be For the American People?

No doubt, I am not the only American bewildered by the contradictory responses to President Obama’s State if the Union address.  Sounded OK to me, but what did others think?

Charles Blow, in The New York Times on Saturday, noted that the President is “stuck on studious.”  He went over the heads of most Americans:  “People want clear goals, clearly defined and clearly (and concisely) conveyed. They’re suspicious of complexity.”

He believes that the Republicans get that more easily.  Apart from simply saying “no” again and again, their points are easy to follow.  Blow concludes:  “The message that voters take away is not nuanced: Democrats in control. Bill complicated. Republicans oppose. Politicians bicker. Progress stalls. Democrats failing.

“Obama has to accept that today’s information environment is broad and  shallow, and we now communicate in headline phrases, acerbic humor and ad hominem attacks.”  Blow calls it “twitter twaddle.”  (See, “Lost in Translation.”)

Smart Politics, the University of Minnesota’s political science blog, has pointed out that in terms of verbal complexity Obama’s speech was at 8^th grade level, two grades below Bush’s SOTU speeches:  “Obama wrote and delivered a speech that incorporated shorter sentences, with those sentences containing shorter words, than nearly every such Presidential Address in the modern era.”  (See, “‘Professor’ Obama? President’s State if the Union Address Notches 4^th Lowest Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level Score Since FDR.”)

So the President is trying to reach down to us, but I suspect that is not what Blow means.  It is emotional complexity — not verbal complexity — that is the issue.  Blow is arguing, I think, that Obama should mobilize public anger while soothing our economic injuries.  He should divide us into victims and victimizers, the “good” homeowners and the “bad” bankers.

Blow has a point, but I am not sure it is a good point.  Yes, such an approach might shore up the President’s popularity, but we are already so polarized that the long-term costs might well out-weigh the short-term benefits.

The greediness of hedge-fund managers and the short sightedness of bankers are a problem.  That has to be clearly labeled and combated.  On the other hand, they are doing what they always so, what our system is set up to encourage.  But so is the indebtedness of ordinary citizens, their struggle to make ends meet.  They were going down a path cleared by both the public and private sectors.

I see the President trying to find the line between frank discussion of complex issues and taking strong and necessary positions.  Frustrating as it is to observe, he seems to be resisting the temptations of emotional simplification.

Perhaps it is too soon to fault him on that.

An Outrage — and a Distraction From the Bigger Picture

The public is outraged by the bonuses that Wall Street firms are handing out in the wake of last year’s giant bailout.  But that entirely legitimate concern actually obscures a much larger and more momentous issue:  a dramatic shift in the distribution of wealth that has occurred over the past 30 years.

Thirty years ago, the average CEO earned roughly 40 times the wage of entry-level employees.  Now it is a staggering 400 times.  And that does not include other salaries for inhabitants of the corporate “C Suites,” or their stock options, benefits, bonuses, golden handcuffs, golden parachutes, and other forms of largess.  Over time, a new class of super-wealthy corporate leaders has emerged.

In his new book, From Higher Aims to Hired Hands, Rakesh Khurana has delineated the “wholesale transformation in the relations between executives of large, publicly traded companies and shareholders and the appearance of a new type of chief executive, along with the development of a new kind of corporate model in which the interests of corporate executives and shareholders were to be closely linked.” The rationalization for the change was that the executives charged with managing our corporations would do a better job if they had a significant stake in the enterprises they managed.

Khurana adds: “as the image of the ideal executive was transformed from one of a steady, reliable caretaker of the corporation … to that of the swashbuckling, iconoclastic champion of  ‘shareholder value’ a larger story has remained untold and largely uncomprehended.”

The net result is that the people running corporations as well as the banks and investment firms that fund them have come to act like owners.  Boards of directors have largely ceded oversight and control, seldom intervening to exert their fiduciary responsibility, while enjoying the generous fees they collect for presiding. (See my post for December 30, 2009: “Unaccountable Boards.”)

Meanwhile, the actual owners of the enterprises, the shareholders, in whose name this transformation was made, have been largely passive bystanders – and victims.  John Bogle, author of the highly influential book , Common Sense on Mutual Funds, concluded last week in The Wall Street Journal that “the faith of investors has been betrayed.”

“How so? Because the returns generated by our corporate stewards have often been illusory, created by so-called financial engineering and produced only by the assumption of massive risks. What’s more, too many of our professional money managers have failed to act as vigilant stewards of the money that we investors entrusted to them.

“In short, far too many of our corporate and financial agents have failed to honor the interests of their principals. . . . allowing our corporate managers to place their own interests ahead of the interests of their shareholders.” (See, “Restoring Faith in Financial Markets.”)

But now, Bogle argues, the massive accumulation of investments in giant mutual funds and pension plans has created a potential countervailing force.  These funds all have informed professional managers, capable to exerting their clout.  They have not done so, but the recent debacle suggests that they can and should.  The helpless investor may not be so helpless now.

What we don’t know we know about our current rage against financial managers is how long it has been simmering below the surface.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703436504574640523013840290.html

The Problems of Being an Organization – or Even a Movement

The various tea party factions are at each other’s throats, according to a story in Tuesday’s New York Times, suspicious of anything that suggests the establishment. Their efforts to work together on planning a convention in Nashville next month are surfacing irreconcilable conflicts and fears. (See, “Tea Party Disputes Take Toll on Convention.”)

The national director of the National Precinct Alliance, Philip Glass, announced his organization would no longer participate in the convention. American Liberty Alliance withdrew as a sponsor after its members expressed concerns about the convention’s finances being channeled through private bank accounts and its organizer being “for profit.” As for FreedomWorks, not a convention sponsor, leaders said their members, for the most part, could not afford the convention or were not interested.

Groups like Tea Party Express, which has held rallies and organized bus tours, has been accused of being related to the Republican National Committee and acting on its behalf. Tea Party Nation, begun as a social networking site year, is feuding, its founders, former sponsors and participants now trading accusations. Many are wondering who agreed to pay Sarah Palin $100,000 for her keynote address.

It doesn’t all add up into a coherent picture, and yet the reasons may not be so hard to find.

It was inevitable that differences in their interests and agendas would become more apparent over time. Easy assumptions about sharing the same basic goals were bound to fade. Moreover, planning a national event required that they raise money, establish guidelines, and make decisions, becoming more and more like the establishment organizations they set out to protest in the first place.

Their anti-authority disposition would inevitably come into conflict with the authority they needed to establish and to plan and carry out a complex event. But I also suspect that the underlying suspiciousness they share towards big government, the fears that brought them together, could not be contained once they had to set up their own organizations. They began to suspect each other.

It is an interesting and instructive example about both the need for and the difficulty of creating an organization, especially when the focus us anti-authoritarian. It is a big step from the motivation of rage to the problems of cooperation and compromise inevitable in actually carrying out any agenda. What they didn’t know they knew were the complexities of organizational life.

What started out looking like a grass-roots movement, now looks more like a sporadic set of brushfires.