Bob Schwartz

Category: Politics

March 22, 2013

The Iraq War and the Ryan Budget: A Modest Proposal

Paul Ryan Budget
We have two budget crises. One is the budget itself, which is clearly in need of work to make concrete our priorities and the willingness of citizens to support those priorities in the form of taxes. The second crisis is political dysfunction, where real and constructive talk about those priorities and that support is transformed and devolved into useless politalk. One way that uselessness is hidden is by obfuscation and throwing around lots of numbers, details, and core American principles.

Simplify, simplify.

We just marked the 10th anniversary of the Iraq War. There is going to be disagreement about many aspects of that war for generations.

But there is consensus on two things.

The war was financially expensive. How expensive is another matter of contention. The Costs of War Project pegs it at a few trillion dollars, give or take. So how expensive? Very expensive.

The war was not paid for. More precisely, the war was paid for by debt, not by taxes. The United States had never done this before. There are two perfectly good reasons to ask Americans to pay for and sacrifice for wars. Wars are expensive. And taxing for war asks all citizens at all economic levels to make real sacrifice, even if they or their loved ones are not in harm’s way. As a political matter, when the sacrifice outweighs support for the war, there may be pressure to question or even end the war.

It is uncontested that George W. Bush and Congress did not ask for that sacrifice. Without arguing about how that happened, it is the fact. There is no argument about the result. In the midst of this massive borrowing to pay for the war, the economy fell down, and is still having trouble getting up.

With a sense of humility, and standing in the shadow of today’s esteemed Congress, here is a simple and modest proposal.

1. Agree on the financial cost of the Iraq War. For purposes of discussion, let’s say $3 trillion, though it is certainly more.

2. Agree to taxes that will generate that amount of revenue, not a cent more or less. That revenue would then be spent on all the important things that would otherwise be underfunded or unfunded, including every possible entitlement for veterans.

3. Once that money is raised and spent, taxes will revert to the earlier levels, and some members of Congress can go back to babbling, bickering and posturing.

Simple, maybe even naïve. Certainly too naive for the sophisticated politicians who are busy building a budgetary hall of mirrors that only they can navigate, where they think they can hide themselves and some simple, inconvenient truths.

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March 20, 2013

Who Killed the Assault Weapons Ban?

Hoover Tactical Firearms
A ban on assault weapons is dead, at least for this session of Congress. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid announced that the Democratic gun bill moving forward will not include it.

The political math is that 60 votes are needed to pass a bill in this new and not improved super-majority Senate voting, and there weren’t enough Democrats, let alone Republicans, to make passage possible. The political reality is fear. There are Democratic Senators who believe that a vote for anything that looks like a gun ban, however reasonable and popular, would cause them grief or worse back home and in the voting booth.

We had a ban on assault weapons for ten years, signed by Bill Clinton, allowed to expire under George W. Bush in 2004, and never revived. It was far from perfect or comprehensive, but at least it represented recognition that as a modern civilization, there are things we try not to do or allow to be done. This isn’t heaven, but we can make it a little less hell.

An earlier post mentioned that we have not seen, and as a matter of decency (we are civilized people, aren’t we?) will not see, the photos of the dead children at Sandy Hook School in Newtown. Since then, though, the Senate Judiciary Committee held a hearing at which a vivid word image was painted by a first responder. Maybe not a thousand words, but we got the picture.

Harry Reid could tell us, name by name, which Democratic Senators did not want to have a vote on this so they wouldn’t have to be accountable. They wanted to avoid the double-edged sword, cut once politically by supporters and voters who believe that any banned weapon is one too many, then cut again by those who can’t understand why military weapons are needed by the hunter or the psychopath next door. By Adam Lanza’s mother and, in the end, by Adam Lanza.

Maybe we are asking the wrong questions of our politicians. Maybe we shouldn’t be asking whether they believe in a ban on assault weapons, or in the possibility that such a ban might reduce the number of gun deaths by even a little, and might reduce the brutality of an already brutal world.

Maybe we should be asking our politicians whether they believe in ghosts. The kind of ghosts who visit all of us, in the moments before sleep, in sleep itself. Ghosts of things done or not done. For Senators, ghosts of bills passed, unpassed, and too many times, never voted on at all. Ghosts that aren’t abstract, but that take stark, all too real form. Ghosts that look like mangled, barely recognizable angels, just wanting somebody to speak—and vote—for them.

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March 19, 2013

The Tin Anniversary of the Iraq War

Tin CupTin is the traditional gift to mark a 10th wedding anniversary, just as it is silver for the 25th and gold for the 50th. There is no tradition about the anniversaries of wars, so tin will have to do.

All wars are controversial, whatever the split in support (80/20, 20/80, 50/50, rarely true 100% support), whatever the rationale, whatever the price. Every American war has had its naysayers, contemporary with combat and in the rear view mirror of history. World War II came close to consensus, although even there questions are still raised about whether we were late getting in and whether the unprecedented brutal way we got out was necessary.

This paragraph was going to include a bunch of numbers about the Iraq War. But you are going to find those numbers everywhere: how many of our personnel served, how many were killed and wounded, how many civilians were killed and wounded, how much it cost in dollars. Those numbers are meant to demonstrate the price paid, in, as they say, blood and treasure. Here it is in brief: the price was staggeringly high.

And next is something surprisingly good to say about the Vietnam War. If we learned nothing else from that nation-dividing conflict, we learned this: whatever we believe about a war, we can never, ever, ever take anything away from the service of those who fight.

Some people miss an important point when they argue that we have to justify a war after the fact so that those who suffered won’t have suffered “in vain”. It is the exact opposite. When a war turns out in hindsight to present real questions about why, those who fought are maybe more our most loyal heroes, especially in a volunteer army. They didn’t answer a call to defeat some cosmic embodiment of evil (e.g., Hitler); they just loyally answered a call to serve. They deserve all we can give them (which, by the way, includes world-class medical care).

In August 2002 I sent an e-mail to some U.S. Senators, including Bob Graham of Florida and Robert Byrd of West Virginia. Both of them were skeptical about the rush to war, and both—particularly Byrd—believed that the role of Congress was being ignored.

This is an excerpt from that e-mail It is not here to reveal some astute analysis or prescience. Lots of people knew or suspected that something was wrong. It is just here as an artifact of a moment that led us to the anniversary today.

Sent August 29, 2002

Congress has the constitutional power to make war, which includes careful deliberation and action if necessary.

In the case of Iraq, you and Congress should assert that power immediately and clearly. Congress has previously allowed that power to erode in the face of political pressure, and now faces an administration that is using an atmosphere of fear (that it has intentionally or inadvertently helped create) to dare Congress to defy its claimed authority.

When you do exercise that power, as I hope you will, it should be more than a rubber stamp. The President seems to have a simplistic and maybe, with all due respect, a simple-minded view of world affairs. The role he is carving out for the U.S. as the world’s sheriff may be right in a moral sense, but is possibly disastrous in the world of the 21st century. Which evildoer is next on the list; which town is he planning to clean up?

This isn’t High Noon or The Magnificent Seven. We have been lucky in Afghanistan, though I expect things will fall apart there within the next year or so. The destabilization of Iraq, especially in the face of global disdain for our actions, could be much more costly.

Finally, I believe that the President’s strange game of hide-the-ball regarding his plans for Iraq (in the guise of not telegraphing our strategy) is wreaking havoc with our economic confidence. Anybody with any economic insight knows that things are much worse than anyone is willing to talk about, restraining such talk in the hope that consumers and businesses will regain lost faith in the future. There is no way that an attack on Iraq can help that situation, and a thousand ways it can and will hurt.

For the record, when the Iraq War Resolution did pass Congress in October 2002, Byrd, Graham and a total of 23 Senators (21 Democrats, 1 Republican, 1 Independent) voted against it. Of those, only a handful are still in the Senate: Barbara Boxer, Dick Durbin, Carl Levin, Barbara Mikulski, Patty Murray, Jack Reed, Debbie Stabenow and Ron Wyden. It has been more than ten years, so choice and death have taken the rest of them. One who did vote for it who is no longer in the Senate is John Kerry, who became Secretary of State after the “official” end of the Iraq War, and who, between the vote for the war and the end of it, ran for President.

It’s a funny old world.

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March 18, 2013

Actor Is Typecast As Satan

Satan
The media is all atwitter over the observation that the actor who plays Satan in a new Bible series looks a lot or something like President Obama.

The Associated Press got a response from the producers:

Mark Burnett and Roma Burnett said Monday the Moroccan actor who played Satan in the History channel series has played Satanic characters in other Biblical programs long before Obama was elected president.

First, separate from any questions about motives or about whether Mohamen Mehdi Ouazanni does look like Obama, let’s quickly get past a gap in this reply. If an actor looks like the President, and you have some creative notion that this helps make it a good casting choice (for artistic, political or publicity reasons), his having played Satan before just might be a bonus. Or if his experience as Satan is the driving reason, then the look-alike feature might be a bonus. The earlier Satan experience doesn’t fully dismiss any possibilities.

Beneath all this is a commentary on the craft and business of acting. From the producers’ comments, it appears that Mohamen Mehdi Ouazanni is, or is on his way to, being typecast as Satan. He played the part before, he is playing it now (and getting lots of attention for it), and may then be asked to play it again. If Charlton Heston had done a few more Moses movies after The Ten Commandments, what would his later career have looked like? Would he have been waiting around for the next Moses movie, instead of giving us Ben Hur, Planet of the Apes, Soylent Green, etc.? No major actor has ever reprised the role of Jesus, either, because besides the fact that there is no sequel to the story, it is the kind of part that is hard to shake.

There is a silver lining, though. Whether or not there are other Satan parts in this actor’s future, there is no doubt that in years to come, we will be seeing all kinds of films about Barack Obama. Some will even cast Obama as a metaphorical devil—a part he already plays in lots of political punditry. When those films are finally made, there will be a call for actors, and maybe having played Satan will be a real qualification.

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March 16, 2013

Another Reason We Need Assault Weapons

Attack of the 50 Foot Woman
The 1950s were the reel golden age of science fiction movies. Consider the shots above from Attack of the 50 Foot Woman (1958). It is the story of a rich socialite turned into a giant woman by a giant alien. She seeks revenge on her cheating husband, something made easier by the fact that she is…50 feet tall. (She is also pretty sexy, wrapped in what looks like a few very big sheets, needed because her designer socialite clothes did not grow.)

The sheriff discovers that a pistol is no match for the giant alien, and as you can see, her husband learns that his pistol is useless against her. (She is ultimately stopped when the sheriff shoots an electric transmission tower she is standing next to.) This is an old story and a lesson we should have learned by now: pistols are not effective against aliens, monsters, people turned into monsters, etc.

Assault rifles may do no better, but at least they might give you a fighting chance and a little extra time to escape. The NRA, for some reason, has failed to make this argument. But it is both appealing and rational. The chances of the government turning against all its citizens may be small, but it could happen, and the NRA believes it and promotes the possibility. The chances of alien invasion, experiments gone rogue, the sudden appearance of strange new enemies may be small, but it could happen too.

In that case, would you rather be carrying a pistol, rifle, or shotgun, or do you want some serious firepower? You know the answer.

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March 4, 2013

NASCAR Follows NRA Off the Roof

NRA 300
The National Rifle Association jumped off the public relations roof in the wake of Newtown and the legislative attempts to curb gun violence.

Which is fine. The First Amendment guarantees the right of individuals or groups to jump off any rhetorical roof, so long as no one is harmed (except maybe for the jumper). There is money to be made and power to be gained by taking extreme or contrarian positions, sometimes the louder and more insistent the better.

But as your parents advised you—though you may have willfully ignored the advice—just because Johnny jumps off the roof doesn’t mean you should do the same.

As recently as last September, the NRA sponsored a NASCAR race, the NRA American Warrior 300 in Atlanta.

Today it was announced that the NRA will be sponsoring a NASCAR Sprint Cup race at Texas Motor Speedway this April, to be called the NRA 500.

Something happened between September and April: Newtown, Sandy Hook, twenty children slaughtered.

The NRA believes that if anything happened, it only makes it more important than ever to pretend that nothing happened, or to pretend that whatever happened can’t be prevented by any proposed measures, or to pretend that what happened is being unfairly used to threaten their existence and the Second Amendment. The NRA believes it has the support of millions, and that its obstruction is massively appreciated, all national polls to the contrary. It believes that even if it is jumping off some roof, there is a safety net to catch it.

NASCAR may believe that it will be caught by that same safety net, since many NASCAR fans are also gun owners, if not NRA members. NASCAR may feel it is caught between a rock and a hard place: damned if they continue to work with the NRA, damned if they don’t. Of course, even many NRA members are skeptical, some embarrassed, by the NRA’s current extremism and obstruction. On top of that, the NRA PR safety net, even if it does still exist, is probably big enough for just one.

Maybe an NRA race this April won’t be such a big deal for NASCAR. But maybe it will be. If it is, NASCAR shouldn’t expect that there will be a net to catch it. We will know in the days to come whether this is a brilliant move, just business as usual, or a thud.

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February 20, 2013

When Brands Are Like Packaged Bad Mortgages

Once upon a time, a home loan was a simple but powerful thing. It allowed people who could not afford a house get one and get on the path to full ownership. And it allowed financial institutions to have a concrete obligation that could be sold, the value of which was based on the house and on the ability and duty of the borrower to pay.

If the solid simplicity of that is not completely gone, we know that over the last few decades, culminating in a mighty disaster, very creative financial craftsman were able to turn this into something supposedly bigger and better, but something not rooted in anything other than itself. Once that became obvious, as with the naked emperor, all hell broke loose, and the economy collapsed

Every maker and marketer of goods and services should be students of this phenomenon. Brands, for example, are truly things, and things of value. So much value that we attach a measure to it—brand equity—and for some companies, it is their greatest asset.

The idea that brand, or marketing, or messaging, exists independent of some more basic thing is seductive but silly. In American politics, we are witnessing this debate on a grand scale. Is reliance on creating or refurbishing a brand, ignoring the unvarnished nature of the product you’re selling, a form of denial? Or is it an implicit acknowledgement that adapting products to the times, to demographics, and to competition is just really, really hard—and sometimes impossible.

This isn’t only, or primarily, about politics. It is about business, about companies who may have come to believe that marketing is all there is, and that ever more sophisticated approaches can leave the basic realities behind for fancier and more valuable derivatives. The sophisticated and fancy can be important, but it’s not all of it, or even most of it.

The smartest people in the room (they would say in the world) forgot that a mortgage was nothing more than a house and borrower. We all, sadly, paid the price for that arrogance and, let’s say it, stupidity. Products and services of all kinds are exactly the same. Businesses, no matter how big, no matter how branded, forget those basics at their peril.

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February 13, 2013

Political Speeches As Mass Shout-Outs

Some political audiences still get fired up by pandering platitudes and principles, even if the words are not backed up by any substantive proposals, or by any proposals at all.

This is sometimes punctuated by the occasional mention of a target interest group, just to show that the politico is paying attention to them. Once again, this might not be attached to anything concrete, but it often does the trick.

It is time for this to be taken to the next level.

A really bold and innovative politician could skip the platitudes, principles and proposals. Instead, entire speeches could be built out of the names of places, organization and people. If this sounds too much like reading an atlas, almanac or phone book out loud, without context, that is precisely the idea.

Depending on the crowd, this would be a string of guaranteed cheer and applause phrases. Las Vegas. Wichita. National Rifle Association. Veterans of Foreign Wars. Latinos. Blacks. Women.

This is far from an uncreative exercise. In fact, it is a sort of minimalist poetry, idea and intention reduced to the smallest possible expression. Obviously, there are a few pitfalls, so care must be taken. Saying the word “Nazi” out of context can be trouble; saying it in relation to saying “Jews” may be more or less trouble, without the benefit of further explanation.

All in all, this would be an exciting and enlightening direction for our politics to take. We can stop wondering and fretting about speeches filled with air and little more. The pretense would be gone; speeches could once again be rooted in reality, or at least in one political reality. That reality, which lives alongside the genuine value of getting things done, is the value of getting elected or getting someone else defeated. And then there is the value, if just for a moment, of giving a little harmless recognition to folks who are waiting, maybe quixotically, for much more.

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January 30, 2013

If We Could See the Children of Sandy Hook

Sandy Hook School
Early in the Iraq War, President Bush tried to block taking pictures of the arrival of the coffins of fallen soldiers at Dover Air Force Base. The proposal was couched as a gesture of respect to the families, but the real point was to shield citizens from the ultimate cost of war.

There are different opinions on the impact of viewing carnage, fictional and real. Does constant exposure immunize us from taking violence seriously? Would we pursue wars so readily, or at least try to better distinguish the necessary from the chosen, if we were bombarded by those images? If we saw footage of the early days of the camps in real time, would we have allowed the Holocaust to proceed?

The images of the children killed at Sandy Hook School in Newtown are blocked from us. This choice is almost beyond argument. We have heard the reaction of those who did witness the aftermath, and even those who have participated in war said that scene was worse. We are protecting the dignity of those lives unlived and respecting the immeasurable grief of the families. Our imaginations are already enough to rend our hearts.

And so instead we have pictures of those children as they are remembered, beautiful angels, joy and potential, and we have the testimony and imploring of their parents. But somehow, this doesn’t seem to be quite enough to stop abstract arguments about the essential value of the Second Amendment, how it must continue unconditioned even by sensible restrictions that meet moral, practical and constitutional muster. First they come for my AR-15, this line goes, and next the deer and the police will be hunting me.

There is a way to end this argument, though for good reasons we will not do it. If we ever get to see the killing field at Sandy Hook, there will be little more talk of a free trade in assault weapons and big ammunition clips. There may be talk, but it will be silenced by a new and more powerful outrage. The NRA might try to keep repeating a mantra that is already falling on more deaf ears, and some of their political operatives will follow. But the vast majority of Americans will move from just saying the right thing to a pollster to demanding that the right thing be done. Now.

If we could, as we won’t, see the children.

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January 25, 2013

Assault Weapons: The Art of the Art of the Possible

Bushmaster ACR
Watching Joe Biden back off the primacy of an assault weapons ban in the curbing of gun violence—following Senator Diane Feinstein’s introduction of exactly that legislation—is discouraging. And it brings to mind Picasso and Pollock, among others.

Politics is said to be the art of the possible. The motto is roughly “we fight the fights we can win.” Very pragmatic, and there is something to commend pragmatism. That won’t be much comfort, though, when well-meaning politicians have to show up at the next inevitable massacre and solemnly announce that they aimed at the possible, and even then settled for half.

Exactly what kind of art is politics?

Here’s a style of art, the kind everybody finds acceptable and can endorse. Who is going to argue about Rembrandt?

Rembrandt - Self Portrait
Then again, over time there were a number who wanted to argue about and with Rembrandt. By the time the twentieth century rolled around, artists wondered why they had to pay slavish homage to ideas that no longer suited the times. They determined that new ways were not only possible, but that they must be possible.

And so Picasso

Picasso - Les Demoiselles D'Avignon

and Jackson Pollock

Pollock - No. 5
Maybe every progressive politician who is wavering on support for an assault weapons ban needs to visit some museums with modern art; there are plenty in Washington. Then maybe they will discover what real courageous progress is. The possible is limited only by our imagination, spirit and will. That’s the real art.

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