Bob Schwartz

Hillary in Iowa 2008

Hillary Iowa State Fair

“Character is destiny.”
Heraclitus

Will Iowa 2016 be Iowa 2008 for Hillary? Here are her thoughts back in 2008, as documented in Game Change: Obama and the Clintons, McCain and Palin, and the Race of a Lifetime by John Heilemann and Mark Halperin:

The problem was, she hated it there. Every day felt like she was stuck in a Mobius strip: another barn, another living room, another set of questions about immigration (from people who were anti-) and the war (ditto). She’d get back on the plane, slump into her seat, heave a deep sigh, and grunt, “Ugh.”

The Iowans didn’t seem to be listening to her, just gawking at her, like she was an animal in a zoo. Hillary would hear from her staff the things voters were saying about her: “She’s so much prettier in person,” “She’s so much nicer than I thought.” It made her ill. She found the Iowans diffident and presumptuous; she felt they were making her grovel. Hillary detested pleading for anything, from money to endorsements, and in Iowa it was no different. She resisted calling the local politicos whose support she needed. One time, she spent forty-five minutes on the phone wooing an activist, only to be told at the call’s end that the woman was still deciding between her and another candidate. Hillary hung up in a huff.

“I can’t believe this!” she said. “How many times am I going to have to meet these same people?”

Over and over, she complained about the system that gave Iowa so much power in selecting the nominee. “This is so stupid,” she would say. “So unfair.” She bitched about Iowa’s scruffy hotels and looked for excuses to avoid staying overnight. But among the sources of her frustration and bewilderment, the absence of connection was paramount. “I don’t have a good feeling about this, guys,” she told her staff on the plane. “I just don’t have a good feeling about this place.”

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January 15, 2016

Why should the President be born in the United States anyway?

We are asking the wrong and less interesting question about the Constitution and presidential qualification.

A lot of people are talking about Ted Cruz’s birth (the place, not the biological event). The better question is whether the requirement, however interpreted, is in our best interest.

It isn’t. There are plenty of brilliant and capable non-native American citizens who would be terrific at trying to run this country with some vision and imagination. (Though most of them are too smart to want to get involved in the thankless insanity we are now witnessing.)

We have rules, and if any rules deserve respect, the constitutional ones do. But just because it’s in the Constitution doesn’t mean it’s the best idea.

I am not suggesting that we amend the Constitution, especially not for Ted Cruz. But we should at least be talking about maybe expanding the talent pool. Because if most of the current crop of candidates is what we get when we limit ourselves to natural born Americans, we could definitely do much better.

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January 14, 2016

The History of My Sweater Vests

Sweater

A number of years ago, I wore buttoned sweater vests for a while. They were kind of colorful and designed, and I thought pretty cool. Not everybody liked them, not everybody who mattered liked them, but I did.

Then buttoned sweater vests disappeared. In their place were the equally traditional pullover sweater vests. So I swung that way, mostly solids in the core colors (grey, brown, blue), but a few with designs. It went like that for years, though I never gave up looking—mostly unsuccessfully—for the next generation of buttoned ones.

The low point was probably Rick Santorum attempting to “rock” his pullover sweater vests during his 2012 campaign for President. Every time I went out wearing mine, I was moderately embarrassed, as people affirmatively mentioned Santorum when they saw me. He and I share nothing, then or now, except our belief in sweater vests. This didn’t stop me from wearing them.

Buttoned sweater vests arrived again this past year. Actually, all kinds of vests arrived on the racks, along with three-piece suits. I was able for the first time in a while to have some new and attractive buttoned sweater vests to wear casually, or under a sport coat, or whatever. Awesome and attractive, to me at least. Others, as mentioned above, are not so sure. Or are vocal dissidents. Oh well.

The photo above shows an example of one of my new sweater vests. That is not me, just some model for Macy’s, but you get the idea. Honestly, I think I carry it off just as well. My watch isn’t that big or clunky, but I can cock my left eyebrow just as insouciantly. Of course, he got paid for wearing his, while I had to pay for mine. Totally worth it.

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January 14, 2016

Two Kinds of Conservatives: The Reasonable and the Cowardly

There are two kinds of conservatives.

One says that we might take a pause, even a small step back, while we consider how to boldly move forward.

The other says that we should take a giant step back and stay there, because that is where the successful future lies. Boldly going back where others have gone before, with mixed results.

The first kind are rare, are not to the liking of some, and are not appropriate for all circumstances, especially ones that call for immediate forward thinking. Overall, though, it can be seen as a reasonable approach.

The second kind may be disguised to look bold, but are actually timid, even cowardly. If their way looks like retreat, that’s because it is. It is also the kind of conservatives that are dominating much of our national discussion these days.

So the next time you hear one of those conservatives promoting back to the future, think of them as defeatists, cowards rather than heroes. Because they want support for their plans to actually just surrender.

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January 12, 2016

“Wrong Direction” Is the Wrong Question: A Nation Lost

GPS

Seventy-five percent of Americans say the country is moving in the wrong direction. But that isn’t the problem they actually perceive. It isn’t that they think we should go East when we’re heading West. It’s that, like an unprogrammed GPS, we have no idea where we want to go.

Americans love their GPS. They love it not because it can tell heading North from South; any compass can do that. They love it because when you put in a particular location, it will, mostly, direct you there. But that presupposes that you have a particular destination in mind.

America was least lost in the years following World War 2. There had been two very specific objectives, both of which had been achieved. We wanted to restore a failed economy and introduce renewed prosperity. Done. We wanted to defeat the most evil threat the world had ever known. Done.

We proceeded on autopilot for decades, though there were bumps on the road. It was about prosperity and freedom. When there were obstacles to either, we eliminated or overcame them. There were recessions here and there, but they passed. There was global Communism, which we fought wherever we found it, and found it sometimes where it wasn’t.

Then some things happened. A new generation was born, which had no native knowledge of any of that. A new economic generation was born, with money machines on a scale that dwarfed anything in history. A new technological generation was born, transforming the nature of human experience. A new threat to freedom and security emerged, though it didn’t much look like the Communism we had come to know, hate, and fight. Whereas only two countries had world-destroying weapons after WW2, the list was now long and growing.

And then, on top of all that, the prosperity we had depended on for more than sixty years was put into question. It wasn’t that it was taking a break. Maybe it would never come back again, ever, at least not the way it had been.

Which brings us back to the ‘wrong direction” question. If we say that 20th century-style prosperity and that freedom and security are what America is living for, is our personal and national direction, there is nothing wrong with that. But what if that is something we can’t program into our national GPS because it is not a destination we can reach, at least not fully and unconditionally?

We can keep saying we are moving in the wrong direction. Politicians and leaders are more than happy to exploit this, telling us who to blame and how they can fix it. But maybe we are lost, and should admit it, and should spend our energy figuring out, very specifically, without vague ideas of “prosperity” and “freedom”, where exactly we want to go, and then how we might get there.

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January 11, 2016

The Weight of Light

You catch me
Head cradled gently in my hands
As if in pain.
You might even ask:
Are you okay?
Is something wrong?

When I release my hands
Raise my head
And you look closely
You are not so sure.

No lines of worry
No clenched brow.
No smile, it’s true,
Instead a convoluted calmness.

The light is in tiny pieces
Arriving and out of reach.
Visions, memories, hopes
That neither burden nor comfort.

I hold my head
As I see and stretch.
Nothing else but an exercise
In near sweetness
Lifting my way
To the rest of the day
To the rest of the days.

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January 11, 2016

“Didn’t Occur to Me That David Bowie Could Die”

David Bowie - Heroes

Of the thousands of messages after David Bowie’s death, none seemed truer than this from a fan: “Didn’t occur to me that David Bowie could die.”

There are rooms in our life/culture houses for people and things that joyed us a little or influenced us a lot. For many of us, the David Bowie room was pretty big. Even though we may not have visited that much anymore, we knew it was there, we knew what was in it, and we knew we would always find David Bowie there—getting older, as must be, but there.

Whether you call it re-invention or evolution, and even though most of us in any one version won’t be what he was in multiple versions, we could all share in the possibility of growing and changing. If the Rolling Stones have been doing the same thing for fifty years, David Bowie seemed not to be doing the same thing for fifteen minutes.

No lyrics excerpts here, no album recaps, no discussion of his life, loves, and death, all of which will be found in infinite number elsewhere today. But of all the tracks, especially for those unfamiliar with Bowie, it is worth mentioning Heroes. We can do anything.

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January 10, 2016

The Unasked Simple Question About Hillary’s Emails: Why the Private Server in the First Place?

U.S. Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton listens to her introduction at a campaign event in Sioux City, Iowa, United States, January 5, 2016. REUTERS/Jim Young

We are lost in the tall weeds of questions about the emails from Hillary Clinton’s private server. Did a particular email contain classified information? Was it classified at the time it was sent or received? Did she know it or should she have known it?

All of which ignores an early question that is not repeated often enough: Why did she have a private email server in the first place? The early answers vaguely had something to do with convenience, or multiple devices, or a bunch of other explanations—none of which should be satisfying to fair-minded observers (not to mention partisan opponents).

It is a simple question, with a reasonably simple answer. She wanted to have maximum control of her email communications while she was Secretary of State. Which, while it completely transgresses the principle of relatively transparent and accountable government, is completely understandable. If you were in her position, the country’s top diplomat, but also a controversial politician aiming to finally become President of the United States, wouldn’t you want to reduce the risk of being misunderstood—or worse, being perfectly understood?

Of course if she did say exactly that, that it was done entirely to keep maximum control, she would be more than lambasted. She would be done, or close to it. So that isn’t how she answers. And now, the question is supposedly settled, so it isn’t asked much anymore, if at all.

But maybe it should.

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January 10, 2016

Balls of Power

Powerball

She had a dream.

I played my first Powerball lottery yesterday. In fact, it was the first lottery I’d ever played, though I’d been given tickets before.

I played because someone had a dream, not just that I had played, but had used the I Ching to determine the winning numbers.

I didn’t mind using the I Ching for the purpose. After three thousand years, it has been used for purposes profound (war and statecraft) and frivolous. Like all great scriptures and texts, it stands ready to be put to work as the user sees fit. The wisdom and efficacy of doing that is a different matter, but there it is. I am positive that some very faithful people who hold the Bible sacred were nonetheless happy to use it to pick their Powerball numbers. A billion dollars is a billion dollars.

I faced three challenges.

First, I had no idea how Powerball worked. It didn’t take long to study up. The current version asks players for five white ball numbers between 1 and 69, another red ball number between 1 and 26, and an optional choice of the Power Play, which multiplies your winnings—if any.

Second, and this one was confounding, the I Ching generates hexagrams numbered 1 to 64. A real problem, since Powerball asks for numbers 1 to 69. Rewriting the I Ching to include 69 hexagrams seemed an act of hubris beyond anyone, let alone me. So I devised a scheme to extend the I Ching, just for this purpose. I cannot reveal the method at the moment, but you can be sure that if it results in winning a billion dollars, I will comfortably share that secret with the world, being then as comfortable as a billion dollars can make me.

The third challenge was mundane and ridiculous. I arrived at the supermarket service desk, only to find a display of ten different computer cards to fill in for different lotteries, including Powerball. I felt like an alien, stupid and stupefied. Thankfully, the very nice lady behind the counter patiently answered all my questions:

Q: Why are there five sections marked A to E?
A: Each one is a different play. If you want to play five times, you fill in all five.

Q: What about this box next to Pick 5?
A: That’s if you want the computer to pick your numbers. (Which I didn’t.)

Q: Does the Power Play box mean the bonus multiplier?
A: Yes. It costs an extra dollar. (With $2 for the basic play, it cost me $3.)

The result: I matched one of the five white ball numbers. You don’t win anything unless you match three of them.

The Powerball jackpot has again rolled over. The next time it will be up to something between one billion and two billion dollars. I will probably play again and use the I Ching again. And if it rolls over yet again, I might add the Bible as a lottery oracle.

After all, I would love to make someone’s dream come true.

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January 9, 2016

A Message to Americans Descended from Once Hated or Feared Groups: Stand Up and Speak Up

The majority of Americans are descended from national, ethnic or religious groups that once were—and may still be—hated and feared by other Americans. Italian-Americans. Irish-Americans. African-Americans. Chinese-Americans. Japanese-Americans. Mexican-Americans. Jewish-Americans. On and on. This means you, too, Mayflower-Americans. Your Pilgrim ancestors were refugees from religious persecution.

This is the message: Stand up and speak up in the face of a growing tide of “Americanism” that translates to hate and fear of “the other.” You and your ancestors were that “other” (ancestors may even mean your parents). Don’t do it because it is the right thing or the American thing to do, though it is. Do it because if you and your family are lucky enough to have transcended that pernicious nonsense, there but for grace go you.

There is a special part of this message for my Jewish-American brothers and sisters. If I say “how dare you!” that may sound too shrill. So let me instead say “you of all people should know better.” Those who want the Holocaust to be eternally remembered don’t seem to completely understand what “Never Again” means. It isn’t that we should never allow mass extermination of much of Jewry. It isn’t even that we should never allow the mass extermination of any group.

“Never Again” means never allowing anyone, including ourselves, to express our baser selves in ways that diminish the humanity of anyone. Because if you believe in divinity then you believe in the divinity of humanity. And if you diminish anyone with shouts and protests and politics and prohibitions, based on no more than identity, you have denied their humanity and their divinity.

And your own.

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