Miss Cali Thinks Gay Marriage Is Not Right, But Does That Make It Wrong?

Miss California made a fatal gaffe at the venerable Miss USA pageant, or did she? Basically she stood up and gave her honest opinion on gay marriage, saying she was brought up to believe that marriage "should be between a man and a woman." Respectable an opinion as that is, her response became red meat for partisans on both sides of the issue.

See for yourself.



The general public's response to this is as you would expect, namely praised by some as ideologically pure and derided by others as ignorant bigotry. These are, of course, dead end talking points, so I feel motivated to offer an alternative angle on this touchy gaffe.

There may be no wrong answer to the question of gay marriage, but I believe there is in fact a right answer.

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The way I see it, Miss California should have said 'I don't believe gay marriage is right, but that doesn't mean gay marriage is wrong.' Such an answer would have been at once politically correct and in line with her stated morals.

Had she said that, I bet she would have gotten every single one of those judges' votes for her encompassing vision; she would have gotten mine. Instead, she basically said 'I believe straight marriage is right, which means gay marriage is wrong but oh, it's ok if you do it; it's a free country."

In my view, there is nothing wrong with her principles per se, but that is simply the wrong answer.

Analysis

Other than the fact that I am an admirer of painfully hot women, I am not interested in these pretty contests. What does interest me about this particular gaffe is that it showcases the woefully black-and-white vision of the world many Americans are comfortable with.

The notion that either you're right or you're wrong--you're with us or against us--simply repulses me. Life is never as simple as a rulebook. When a partisan blasts the viewpoint of an opposing partisan, usually he is just as guilty of myopic vision as his counterpart. This is a classic case of existential hypocrisy that I hope to explore here at a later date.

Consider the case of Miss California. Had she given the answer I suggested above, she would have in fact demonstrated a POST-partisan understanding of gay marriage. By suggesting that gay marriage is not right but not wrong either, she could have genuinely vindicated gay marriage without sacrificing her own moral integrity and sense of honesty.

If you listen closely, that is basically what she was trying to say. In her full statement, she began by stating that "it's great that Americans are able to choose one or the other . . . [that] we live in a land [where] we can choose same or opposite sex marriage." However she failed miserably at reconciling this open-minded statement with her subsequent and proud declaration of heterosexual supremacy.

(I recently read this great quote by G.K. Chesterton: "when the modern man see two truths that seem to contradict each other, he would take the two truths and the contradiction along with them." Apparently this afflicts modern women as well.)

Fortunately I am here to connect the dots for dear Miss California. By having cheered the freedom to choose, she basically suggested that there possibly exists an overriding ethos of responsibility and pragmatism which trumps the rigidity of ideological belief, namely her own.

(Yet I am not convinced she really knew she was actually suggesting this, which doesn't exactly surprise me considering how modern and hot she is 0_0)

This is, as I have asserted elsewhere, my definition of a true post-partisan stance. The post-partisan may take partisan positions, but he also recognizes that there may be greater truths to which he must submit.

In other words, you can support gay marriage without being a supporter of gay marriage.

Americans, however, are generally not bred to think this way. We are raised to cherish the sanctity of individual opinion. That is all fine and good, but unfortunately life is not as simple as a rulebook, and as such certain social issues intrinsically lie beyond the purview of partisan opinion. Such it may be for gay marriage, that is if you believe gay people are precisely that: people.

In a democratic society, the tenet of self-governance demands that we look beyond rigid partisan beliefs with the understanding that not one party has the right answers. The fact that Americans are generally satisfied with knee-jerk partisan outbursts tells me that perhaps self-governance is getting to be a burden too heavy to bear (see my post on AIG).

Incidentally, I happen to agree with Miss California in that gay marriages are not right. However I also recognize that just because I think it is not right, that does not make it wrong. This effectively puts me in the pro-gay marriage camp, although I am not pro-gay marriage per se.

This is what a healthy democracy should be all about. I fancy Obama might agree that I have been a good post-partisan on this issue. Taxing my RYO tobacco habit, however, would be an entirely different story..

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GM in America, Land of the Subprime?

The joke is on us. If you thought the subprime mortgage market collapse was "funny," then the auto market collapse is even funnier. GM, as it turns out, was no less subprime than home owners in Arizona who borrowed beyond their means. Like Washington, our bankruptcy-bound automaker had presided over a business model running almost entirely on debt.

They call it 'borrowing,' but in reality Wall Street was basically GM's way of printing its own money. It is no coincidence that, just as Wall Street collapsed, GM executives promptly knocked on Washington's door. They were begging the Treasury to print some money for their company because, for the first time, Wall Street (and GMAC) didn't have any left to bail them out.

To Washington, this was something wholly new, but to GM it was just business as usual. What difference does it make that GM is bailed out by Washington or Wall Street? Perhaps one: GM is now dealing with a lender with real teeth and some semblance of conscience. After all, we are talking about prospective taxpayer money here.

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The truth is that GM was crushed beneath an old weight. It was a slow death because up until 2008, plentiful Wall Street loans kept GM humming indefinitely. Armed with credit eternal, GM made and sold enough cars to make its minimum loan payments. All the while GM's debt kept ballooning and its global competitiveness continued to falter.

But that was fine with GM, apparently, so long as it could borrow enough money to pay its bills.

Little did Wall Street know it was lending to a subprime borrower in GM. Perhaps GM itself did not know. Actually, maybe regulators, bankers and rating agencies just ignored some facts (from 2004) and made the loans out anyway. This kind of self-assured negligence in Washington and Wall Street is precisely what precipitated the subprime mortgage market crash and vaporized a whole lot of phantom wealth.

Sadly, GM's bankruptcy will vaporize more than just wealth, namely tens of thousands of jobs.

This is not just about GM. What brought down the ill-fated automaker also brought much of the American economy to its knees. See job losses in 2008. As it turns out, credit flowed from Wall Street to credit-unworthy or -addicted borrowers across the economic spectrum. The question now is who will be the latest on the chopping block.

Don't just take it from me, but from the man who saw it all coming: Nouriel Roubini, affectionately known as Dr. Doom, who had the strength of will to see through mainstream pre-2008 economics. Everything he is about to say in the following warning is worth looking out for:

This crisis is not merely the result of the U.S. housing bubble’s bursting or the collapse of the United States’ subprime mortgage sector. The credit excesses that created this disaster were global. There were many bubbles, and they extended beyond housing in many countries to commercial real estate mortgages and loans, to credit cards, auto loans, and student loans. There were bubbles for the securitized products that converted these loans and mortgages into complex, toxic, and destructive financial instruments. And there were still more bubbles for local government borrowing, leveraged buyouts, hedge funds, commercial and industrial loans, corporate bonds, commodities, and credit-default swaps—a dangerous unregulated market wherein up to $60 trillion of nominal protection was sold against an outstanding stock of corporate bonds of just $6 trillion.

(read the whole thing here)

This is a joke on us. Have we emerged from the American Century not only as the sole superpower, but also a subprime nation in disguise? When the American economy looks itself in the mirror, does it see GM? How about that family with the foreclosed home? Just don't ask Dr. Doom.

One thing is for sure: we reap what we sow. Wall Street made us rich beyond imagination; too rich, as it turns out. By the 21st century, we had too much wealth chasing too few worthy investment opportunities. So Wall Street, with Washington's nod, proceeded to loan out to the unworthy, the subprime, the GMs of the world, and any family who happens to wants a house.

(Hell, even to illegal immigrants; I mean come on, why not! The party was just getting started!)

After all, Wall Street had no choice. The only alternative was to forfeit the wealth flowing into our markets from all around the world and say, "thanks but no thanks, heehee, we are too rich already." But of course, no self-respecting capitalist nation could ever do such a wrong thing. Certainly not Wall Street, the key driver and underwriter of the indomitable American economy.

This is precisely why our best and brightest minds worked on Wall Street, and why the sum of Wall Street bonuses can dwarf entire nations. This is also why AIG "deserves" its retention bonuses (as I have argued) and Wall Street managed to bag the sixth largest all-time bonus payout in 2008, as I have previously reported.

(F*%&-ing EH, where were the pitch forks for the Wall Street bonuses??!?! AIG was NOTHING compared to what the real banks got. I'm REALLY pissed about that. It was appalling, what populist Washington did to AIG. Democracy at its worse, I'm sorry to conclude.)

It may be hard to imagine today, but there was a time when Wall Street was a legitimate force respected worldwide (even if grudgingly). Of course, this was before Wall Street had to squeeze corners and coax the subprime to keep growing, and growing, and growing, which is what capitalism is all about: relentless growth for profit and shareholders, often at a cost that is not immediately apparent.

Capitalists, as such, cannot escape the temptation of alchemy, that elusive art of spinning straw into gold. The best kind of money is, of course, the kind that you don't have to do anything to make. Just ask Wall Street.

Admit it, you wish you had a friend named Rumpelstiltskin, just like the American economy and GM had a friend named Wall Street.

Whether we like it or not, the post-industrial American economy, as it were, is done for. "Change" is coming and it has nothing to do with Obama's initiative, whose job is merely to administer change. It is "change" we might have to believe in.

The biggest irony is that this crisis was made in our own subprime image. Like GM, Washington saw this coming with eyes wide shut. Have our free markets grown to a weight that can rival that of any centrally planned economy?

Now that, my friends, is a scary thought.

Forget about AIG bonuses or Obama palling around with Jay Leno or his stupid teleprompter. That the very notion of American capitalism is under siege at home and abroad should receive our full attention.

I for one never imagined I would write as I am about these topics. Hell I can't even vote yet!!

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Part 1 - AIG Bonuses Are Immoral, But That Is a Good Thing

Anger can be therapeutic, so can drama. Therapy, however, does not always diagnose accurately. Especially when the therapist is a politician, we should all know better. The mad drama surrounding the AIG bonuses is such that one is hard pressed to separate reality from truth.

I juxtapose truth and reality because, in reality, there is every reason to demonize AIG and Wall Street. After all, the financial sector did bring down our economy. In truth, however, these are bankers and executives who were merely doing their jobs. To punish them is to punish guilt by association, while the real culprits of the financial crisis lie safely elsewhere.

Do not forget that there was nothing illegal about the practices that brought our economy to its knees. For the sake of keeping our eyes on the ball (forthcoming in Part 2), I will defend AIG insofar as reality permits and truth allows.

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In Truth
Bonuses are standard practice on Wall Street, be they performance- or retention-based. Even when financial firms suffer big losses, big bonuses are still doled out to executives in the name of retaining their services and clientele. However reasonable they may be, retention bonuses alone seem unconscionably huge to the common man.

But the truth is, these exorbitant sums accurately reflect the importance of finance to the post-industrial American economy. Simply put, Wall Street salaries and bonuses are set in proportion to its real economic worth, not by losses in a single fiscal year. $165 million does not sound unreasonable in today's context.

I have argued in another post that, even today, our economy needs Wall Street more than Wall Street needs us. Certainly the massive and grudging bailouts of Wall Street and AIG affirms this point. Without Wall Street, the most desirable aspects of the American lifestyle that each one of us covets (admit it) would not be possible.

Until our reliance on Wall Street changes--and it will--AIG deserves its bonuses as much as they ever did, plain and simple.

The truth is, why should it make a difference whether their bonuses are comprised of tax money from their fellow citizens or deposits from far off Asian savers? Their bonuses are deserved because Wall Street gave us our lifestyle, albeit one that eventually drove us into the ground. But what's that got to do with them? Nothing. After all, they're just mere bankers and executives merely doing their jobs.

In Reality
Despite all truth, rewarding executives--no matter how deserving or innocent--whose company is on life support is seen by most people as outrageous at best and criminal at worst. The specific indictments are superfluous to name here. No matter how you look at it, AIG executives who helped themselves to the taxpayer's dime while the economy burns are morally indefensible.

But in reality, does Wall Street or AIG operate on an ethic of morality? If they did, then:

• AIG would preemptively volunteer to forfeit their contracted bonuses;
• AIG would graciously allow us to tax back their bonuses;
• AIG would not have doled out bonuses at all;
• AIG would not reward failure, not on the taxpayer's dime;
• AIG would never have run a quasi-hedge fund that gambled our money away on bad bets;
• Wall Street might not have destroyed itself and our economy along with it.
  

It is as if we expect our bankers and executives to do the moral thing, and getting really mad that they are not. The trouble is, there was never anything moral about this business in the first place. And we know it.

Wall Street plays the market, an institution that knows no moral bounds. Business ethics ring hollow because a free market economy is held to work on efficiency and not morality. More often than not, voluntary "moral" actions contradict market rules and drive the moralizing entrepreneur out of the game.

Can you recall any large shoe-making companies that refused to offshore its manufacturing to Chinese sweatshops? Probably not, since those companies would have disappeared long ago for their morals. Market competition is such that executives cannot submit to their moral discomfort, if such even exists.

As I have asserted elsewhere, this is an economic reality that Americans must own up to: moral detachment, and the productive exploitation of greed, is what drives a capitalist economy to its optimal output.

Immorality, as it were, is a good thing.

The Conclusion
In truth, bonuses are price tagged by the market, not individual intent. In reality, immorality is often rewarded by the market, not rebuked.

As such, moral truths and expectations have no basis in the capitalist reality which Americans subscribe to. To scream about the immorality of AIG bonuses, let alone expecting executives to forfeit them, basically amounts to a moral repudiation of free market principles.

Are Americans really prepared to take this stance? I'm not; not yet, anyway, until all is ruinous. We are not quite there yet, though our economy "stands on the edge of a knife. Stray but a little and it will fail, to the ruin of all. Yet hope remains while all in the Company is true." (from Tolkien)

When things are good, we love Wall Street. When things sour, we do not stay true to the very institutions that brought us riches with the world's envy. Instead we turn against them as if they were filth to begin with.

There is something profoundly misguided about populist anger at the immorality of AIG bonuses, to which an even stronger objection might be raised, namely that the populist anger is itself immoral.

If the AIG bonuses debacle, and the financial crisis at large, can help Americans reflect on our moral contradictions, the cost might well be worth it.

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Sitting President Sits with Jay Leno: A Post-Partisan Act

Thursday night, Obama sits in with Jay Leno. Some see this as good, some bad, and most say risky at the least. These are all legit opinions except that they are all irrelevant. I argue that Obama's choice was a matter of necessity, if he is intent on proving his commitment to the promise of "changing" Washington.

Obama's appearance, unprecedented for a sitting president, gives him an unprecedented chance to vet his unprecedented promise: achieve a post-partisan Washington, somehow, by relegating partisan ideology to the back-burner in politics. Some promise, isn't it!

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In reality, he faces a poisonously partisan Congress wherein neither parties are willing to yield their party lines. While not surprising, this impasse effectively voids Obama's promise of change. As Washington looks today, post-partisan politics will not appear any time soon, much less bipartisan agreement on anything of import.

But Obama still has his trump card: popularity. He must use it or fail his promise.

At this point, the only way Obama can move Washington toward a post-partisan future is by appealing directly to the people. If he cannot do this effectively, Congress will forever remain as we know it today: divided by ideology, and speaking of things as they ought to be rather than as they really are.

All this while reality burns.

In fact, Obama really does not have a choice but to go straight to the people. Democracy requires that Congress speaks the language of its electorate and none other. Even as president, Obama can talk post-partisan all he wants but it does not mean Congress will speak his language. The only way to "change" Congress, therefore, is to "change" the people.

After all, how can we expect our leaders to transcend partisanship when their own electorate cannot? Lots of Americans are fed up with our government, but they want to look for the cause of their malcontent in all but the most obvious place, which is the mirror.

Obama understands this, but he cannot say it. This is why he decided to take the unorthodox step of appearing with a talk show host. If appearing on Jay Leno lessens the stature of the presidency, it is because Obama thought it necessary to attain his goal. Necessity and pragmatism are, of course, the definition of a post-partisan act.

Tomorrow night on Jay Leno, Obama must defend himself by making a post-partisan case for why his agenda leans so heavily on classically liberal ends. He must convince Americans that there is a practical need for doing so, not because he is a liberal nut trying to remake the country in his own partisan image. And he must do this without a teleprompter, which is why I suspect he chose this venue.

Because spending is a liberal thing, Obama must face the people and convince us that spending is also a thing of necessity in today's anemic economy. Making this kind of argument directly to the people is what it takes to bring post-partisan politics to Congress.

The political situation in Congress today is more than mere partisan gamesmanship, but getting perilously close to political brinkmanship. Obama cannot be the man who "changes" Congress because he does not elect its members. Rather, it is the American people who sets the tone in Congress, an institution designed to speak the language of its electorate (too often does it work the other way around). Tomorrow night, if Obama can convince enough Americans that he is pursuing an imminently post-partisan agenda, not just a liberal one, it would be a small step toward a post-partisan Washington.

Jay Leno is a risky but necessary step, given the political climate today. This move is very courageous on Obama's part and has earned my respect. For my part, I will be watching very closely not at what he proposes, but in how he proposes it.

Therein lies the key to post-partisan success.

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Part 2 - Post-Partisan Politics Defined: Descrambling Obama's Rhetoric

Most mainstream commentators have so far confused Obama's hypnotic suggestion of post-partisan politics with some kind of imminently polite, new-age bipartisan politics. They did so because, like all politicians, Obama praised bipartisanship by making the standard cookie-cutter pledges to "reach across the aisle" as president.

It is with great skill that he did so with a straight face because nothing else about his rhetoric had anything to do with praising bipartisanship.

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On the contrary, Obama often uses words like "petty," "posturing," and "irresponsible" when describing Washington politics. His conceit centers around the notion that bipartisan legislation has become mired in ideological gamesmanship serving the electability of politicians, rather than be in the service of some higher cause. At worst, cynics argue that bipartisan deals equate to transactional politics whereby opposing lawmakers scratch each other's backs (read: re-electability) without regarding the bigger picture. In other words, even in bipartisan unity, Congress seems more concerned with appeasing the ideological leaning of their constituents instead of solving problems.

Obama attributes the root of this evil to eternal ideological warfare in Washington. To a professed post-partisan politician, unmitigated bipartisanship is tantamount to irresponsible lawmaking.

As I previously observed, railing against bipartisanship like this is a bit controversial to publicly say outright, so Obama did it by throwing trashy yet elegant rhetoric at the "status quo" in Washington. He speaks of going from "ideological and small thinking [to] our better angels," putting aside "stale ideology and petty partisanship, and embrace what works," and even suggesting a type of leadership where "facts and evidence are never twisted or obscured by politics or ideology."

Perhaps most telling of all: "[ex-]President Bush continues to not let facts get in the way of his ideology" or, as he utters in another breath, "wishful thinking and outdated ideology."

Now, I do not ask the reader to swallow all this dreamy and probably hypocritical stuff, but merely to observe how often the word "ideology" shows up in his rhetoric regarding Washington. These sound bites serve as irrefutable evidence of Obama's disingenuous praise for BI-partisanship and his unstated preference for something less shackled to ideology, namely POST-partisan politics. Yet just about every mainstream political pundit or politician continue to wrongly equate post-partisanship with bipartisanship, which makes no sense to me whatsoever; it is Obama's power of unspoken words at work, as I observed in my previous installment.

What Obama should have said outright is this: 'we should supplant the role of partisan ideology in politics with some kind of higher calling, that there exists an overriding ethos of responsibility and pragmatism which trumps the rigidity of ideological belief.'

This is Obama's unspoken post-partisan vision as I can see: a pragmatic approach to politics that separates solutions from their parent ideology. In a post-partisan world, ideological warfare and bipartisanship has its place but in the final analysis, ideology should not be the deciding factor.

For example, if tax cuts work, then let's cut taxes and if spending works better, then let's spend instead but if both works to some degree, let's find a balance and do both; but do not praise or deride a solution for its ideological purity. The central tenet is that a post-partisan solution must be evaluated for its efficacy and relevance to needs at hand, not if it is necessarily right or wrong.

You've heard this concept before, albeit in vague rhetoric, something like 'there is no Red or Blue America, just the US of America.' This particular Obamaism implies that responsible governance should NOT be the following:

• Ideologically-pure like Mao Zedong's radicalism (read: Blue America) or George W Bush's childish 'good versus evil' stories from the Middle East (read: Red America)
• Nor ideologically-bound like bipartisan warfare in Washington (read: Blue or Red America)

Rather, responsible governance should be ideologically-free like Barack Obama's post-partisan pragmatism (read: the US of America), maybe.

This is dreamy stuff, all theoretical and a necessarily imperfect framework. The only thing I hope to accomplish with this post is prove that Obama's unspoken post-partisan decree is NOT a call for bipartisan politics. The mainstream media and politicians claim otherwise (1 2 3 4 5), but nothing can be further from the truth. Rather it is a call for a politics of pragmatism over ideological consideration, or a "change" from Bush's naked and inflexible ideological precepts. Unless, of course, if Obama really is an empty suit, in which case I have grossly overestimated him. Only time can tell, and in the meantime I reserve my judgment on the merits of post-partisanship.

So far in these posts, I still have not left the realm of rhetoric and wishful thinking; the larger question of reality and implementation remains. Namely, who makes the non-ideological judgment call on which solutions are efficacious or relevant? Even more vexing, how can a post-partisan ideal, as I outlined above, even be compatible with a democracy in which bipartisanship is an existential requirement? At first glance, these seem diametrically opposed but as I will argue, their coexistence may not be as "new" in American politics as one might think.

What does Obama really have up his sleeves? That is the subject of my next and final exploration (for now).

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Part 1: Obama's Post-Partisan Vision and the Unspoken Promise

President Obama is a man who understands the power of unspoken words. Although his powerful rhetoric seems to reveal so much on the surface, he is able to deftly veil his inner ideological core from unwanted eyes probing for weaknesses to exploit. Certainly his political enemies tried and repeatedly attacked him as an "empty suit" throughout the campaign for his hair-raising oratories. It didn't work because in the hands of a master politician like Obama, the power of unspoken words preempts controversy by defusing it before it becomes inflated. More to the point, unspoken words serve as a smoke screen behind which Obama can operate against political enemies who, much to their dismay, cannot reliably attack what they cannot see clearly.

None better exemplifies this approach than the notion of "post-partisan" politics, a term given to Obama by the media to characterize the spirit of "change" he promised to bring to Washington politics. The funny thing is, post-partisanship is a term that Obama never used himself, but yet it is becoming more mainstream by the day. But precisely because Obama left the term unspoken, he was free to flex his rhetorical muscles and stake out an ambiguous yet distinctly post-partisan position without ever being challenged about what it actually means. Obama can get away with this because he can charm a crowd of millions without breaking a sweat.

So instead of telling us what post-partisanship means, Obama only told us what it should NOT mean: Washington politics as we know it today.

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Obama did this for a very simple reason: to avoid big-time controversy. The standard thing for politicians to do is promise BI-partisanship, or the act of "reaching across the isle" and making deals with the opposition. Since this is what politicians are supposed to be doing anyway, bipartisanship is a relatively safe promise to make. But on the other hand, to promise POST-partisanship, something that implies doing something other than "reaching across the isle," is basically tantamount to turning the American political establishment on its head. This is precisely why Obama never uttered "post-partisanship."

Last time I checked, we live in a bipartisan democracy. The truth is, partisanship is an existential trait of our two-party democracy; polar opposition ensures balance in bipartisan Congressional agreements which contain ideological elements of both sides, otherwise it is not really democratic (i.e., pre-partisan). While too often does this political ideal result in watered-down or even incoherent legislation, it's a process of eternal compromise we as Americans implicitly agree to suffer. Bipartisan jockeying can get downright shameful and we may not like it, but somehow that's just how things here should work.

Were Obama to have come forth outright with the decree that we should not be bipartisan as the term post-partisan would suggest, there would be an uproar. Instead of calling him a socialist, the GOP would have branded him a dictator and that moniker might have actually worked. But because of the power of unspoken words, Obama masterfully defused a potentially damaging controversy and instead ended up compelling a lot of people to imagine "something new" without prompting them to wonder what that actually means. To fill the intellectual void, both Washington and the mainstream media stepped in to put their stamp on post-partisanship, the former being politicians hoping to gain a political edge and the latter being journalists hoping for snappy headlines. From what I can tell, neither have yet got the definition quite right (1 2 3 4), save for a few that are on the right track (1 2).

This is exactly what Obama wanted, a smoke screen behind which he can operate against an entrenched culture of ideological warfare in Washington and, as the indomitable Rush Limbaugh would say, the "drive-by" media feeding Americans woefully biased information. Indeed, if we are to give Obama the benefit of the doubt that he is not just an "empty suit" canvassing for votes, then the power of unspoken words is the only means by which anyone can hope to "change" the incumbent political environment. For now, President Obama holds the cards and has secured a position of power where he can reveal them at a time of his choosing and no other's.

A lot of people are satisfied to just "watch and see" how Obama will conduct himself in the coming years but personally, I feel the promise of post-partisanship is too significant to let others define it for me. As such, this post is the first installment in a series that will explore in turn the contrast between post-partisan and bipartisan politics, at least in my theory; how post-partisan politics can be even compatible with a bipartisan democracy such as ours; and how we can judge the genuineness of Obama's professed post-partisan presidency when partisan gridlock in Washington is all we have in recent memory to use as reference. Stay tuned!

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Bonus Time! The Party on Wall Street Isn't Over JUST Yet

Despite having run the economy into the ground, bankers still know exactly how important they are. Ironically, the TARP bailout has all but reinforced their self-importance instead of slapping them on the wrist. Why? Wall Street understands that we need them more than they need us.

It's 3:30am, the party isn't over yet. They know they can get their huge bonuses today for precisely the same reason they've always deserved disgustingly huge bonuses.

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Ever since manufacturing left our shores for China with its smokey factories, almost two-thirds of our national GDP has come from the service sector. While Wall Street does not comprise the majority of the service sector, they do provide the lifeblood for the majority of its activities: credit for consumption. Our retail industry is the envy of the world not because of how many Fortune 500 retail companies we have, but because Americans on the whole can seemingly buy anything they want whenever they want without worrying about saving a penny. If you find yourself stranded overseas but want the latest toy from Apple, or the latest and greatest from Nintendo? Just import it from the indomitable USA; we'll always have it before anyone else.

Only the magic loom of Wall Street could have made this post-industrial feat possible. Whether it's in the form of 12 month 0% APR credit cards, hedging to give us the world's greatest wealth concentrated in the form of the NYSE casino, or leveraging sub-prime mortgages to give us straw in the form of gold, it's always been Wall Street that enriched all of us. Not to mention our big retail outlets probably couldn't have made payroll consistently without Wall Street's magic either.

Their good bonuses are our good fortunes in turn, as it were.

Although we are now in economic free fall, this long-held tenet in the American political economy has not changed. Not yet. But before it does change (and it will), Wall Street is going to hoard every last bit of bonus money they can because they can. It makes no difference to them whether their bonuses are comprised of tax money from their fellow citizens or deposits from far off Asian savers, and why should it? They deserve their bonuses because they gave us our lifestyle, albeit one that eventually drove us into the ground. But what's that got to do with them? Nothing. After all, they're just mere bankers merely doing their job.

Of course Wall Street knew they would be bailed out. Banks like Wells Fargo or Bank of America probably acquired absolutely toxic waste dumps like Wachovia or Merrill Lynch just so they can strengthen their case as a TARP recipient. Congress knew that; they're not stupid, and that's why they're smart enough to know they have to bail out the banks to protect the American Dream. Or what's left of it, anyway, and if only for a little longer.

The party isn't over yet but it's about 3:45am and ticking, and all poor Obama can do is play the angry father role to appease the common man. While Wall Street won't have the biggest bonuses this year, it's good enough for sixth place overall. Not bad for last call. But for me, in spite of all the doom and gloom of 4am, kicking out a bunch of disgustingly rich bankers onto the merciless streets of unemployment would hardly be the worse thing imaginable today.

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Are You Wii-Fit to Run? I'm Not

I have this nagging suspicion that running in place in Wii Fit might actually be more strenuous than actual running around. Now, I disclose that I'm terrifically out of shape, but surely I should be able to run around for six minutes before collapsing in a fit of exhaustion more or less completely drenched!

I realize I'm not comparing apples to apples, but please entertain my conceit. Could it be that, while running in place, you actually run faster than you actually would in real life because there is no real reference to which to you may judge your pacing?

Perhaps "running" in place is actually closer to a brisk sprint speed in real life?

I may just be trying to moralize my fitness to be unfit, so feel free to call me out on this. But if you do, you had better be fit yourself, and I would ask that you join me for a two player Wii Fit run to prove yourself. Scared aren't ya?? ^_~

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2007-08 NY Giants: Loose Threads, and a Tapestry of the Lost Post Season

You may consider this post therapeutic, a catharsis of sorts. With the Super Bowl fast approaching, it's high time for me to reconcile the 2008 Giants and let go of what could surely have been. Throughout the football season, the Giants showcased themselves as a team more tightly-knit than most others in 2008. As I asserted in my previous post, they were standard bearers who proved their mettle in tough regular reason play.

But like every other team in the NFL, the tapestry of the Giants had loose threads dangling from its seams, and at season's end we find ourselves asking: by tugging at just a few of these loose threads, is it possible the entire tapestry of a team can become unraveled?

Like most things in life, just one tug at the right loose thread can be all that's needed, and there is little argument that the tapestry of the Giants indeed became unraveled as the playoffs approached. In a vain attempt to explain to myself how they managed to disintegrate (yet again), I realized you can't look just at the loose threads (Plaxico, Jacobs, Osi, etc) without also considering the tapestry into which they were woven. Otherwise, you would know 'how' the Giants collapsed, but you wouldn't know WHY 'how' happened. In any case, here are the results of my inquiry, if you would hear them.

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If you're still searching for answers as to why the Giants are sitting this Super Bowl out, look no further than to the 2007 Giants of Super Bowl lore. That's where you'll find our lost post season of 2008. Everything the Giants were in 2008 was an extension of that magical post season run, and ironically that is the basis on which their tapestry became unraveled.

With that said, let's connect the dots.

In 2007, the Giants limped into the playoffs not expected by anyone to beat anybody. You really can't blame anyone for taking that position. Although our defensive prowess was never in doubt, no one is going to pick you if they think you can't score enough points to keep up. In a year when Tom Brady played the way he did, how was anyone to substantiate faith in the Giants?

There were doubts abound. Our receiving corps was not particularly distinguished, although Plaxico Burress is a noted playmaker and well-accounted for by opposing defenses. On the other hand, our prowess on the ground was well-documented and respected. But while a good running game is necessary to win championships, it alone does not (witness the Titans, Panthers, Falcons, Ravens, and Giants of 2008). At that point in time, Eli Manning's effectiveness was constantly doubted and criticized, and his ability to utilize the Giants' potent ground attack was in question.

Yet, by learning to use such strengths and wits as they had about them, the 2007 Giants perfected themselves at the right time and found a way to win out in an indomitable blaze of glory. They used a perfect combination of good coaching, sound fundamentals, and consistent execution. The end result was a compact playbook that relies primarily on balanced team play, a successful formula achieved through the fragile management of a flat talent pool. And by flat, I don't mean the Giants' talent level was low, just relatively underpowered and undistinguished. This is a point underscored poignantly by the record number of Pro Bowlers the Giants nurtured in 2007, namely one defensive end by the name of Osi Umenyiora, a statistic unprecedented for any Super Bowl champ.

2007 ran into 2008, nothing about the Giants changed nor should they have. As any reasonable ball club would have done, the tapestry of the 2008 Giants was woven around the winning formula as pioneered by the 2007 post season Giants. They doubled down on their reliance on balanced team play and got a very memorable 2008 campaign out of it. We achieved success; the 2007-08 tapestry was working great and why shouldn't it? It was fully vetted by fortitude, confidence and most of all, stealing Super Bowl rings from the 18-1 Patriots (HA!). The Giants learned their lessons well, namely in just how perfect an imperfect team can be (themselves) but more importantly, that perfection is incidental.

Those were important lessons. The talent pool of the 2008 Giants remained flat but thanks to the 2007 Giants, they now knew how to transcend inherent limitations in their roster by fully utilizing it in a particular way. They had found a perfect winning formula for an imperfect team that all teams covet, and hence the 2008 tapestry was woven.

But for all the success they enjoyed this season as a result, perhaps even the founding weavers in the Giants organization could not foresee just how precariously imperfect their tapestry was until it was too late. So precarious, as I will argue here, that even one fateful tug at the right loose thread can lead to a full-bodied unraveling.

Plaxico Burress happened, and with him one of the Giants' scarce offensive talent spikes was lost for December, and perhaps forever. One man, one loose thread, and the tapestry of reliance on balanced team play began to unravel. I do not speak to the defense because they were always stout enough to save our butts, but the offense failed utterly. They could not score and they didn't. In the final five game stretch, we managed just three passing touchdowns (only one of any consequence--against the Panthers); it's hardly fitting for the high-powered Giants. This might be considered good for the pitiful Cleveland Browns, who went six games without a single touchdown altogether.

Without Plax, the Giants' receiving corps was reduced to mediocrity relative to our high-powered playoff peers and did not scare anyone. Their vaunted running game also became much less effective, barely cracking 100 yards a game as was routine throughout the season. This latter stigma was doubtless precipitated by the intermittent loss of Brandon Jacobs, unsurprisingly another loose thread in the Giants tapestry; the only surprising thing was that he was not injured much earlier. In any case, this all culminated in our thorough beating at the hands of a hungry Eagles team in January, but it certainly didn't happen overnight. It all took one month.

We went from 10 wins to 1 loss with Plax on the field to 2-4 with him in handcuffs. That's a drop from a 91% win percentage to 33%. Capable teams took the time and adjusted their schemes to find new ways to pressure cook the Giants' offense and it worked. Suddenly their once-indomitable offensive line was forced to block in ways they hadn't had to all season long and wondered why the holes/gaps didn't open/close. At a time when season-long wear and tear begin to take its toll, the Giants' defense, one predicated on speedy power rushing, got consistently gassed because the offense couldn't stay on the field. Or else the defense became demoralized because no matter how well they played, the offense could not score enough points to stay in the game. Remember how inept the defense made the Eagles look in the first half of their playoff meeting? In that game, they really only gave up 11 of the 23 points scored against us, and the offense still couldn't get it done.

Opposing defensive coaches probably had a lot of fun scheming against a Plaxico-free Giants team. I know I would have. Eli Manning's audibles were off or ineffective, probably because he was seeing coverages he hadn't seen all season long or worse, coverages that he thought he had seen before but really hadn't. The play action pass was completely neutralized because the pass could not set up the run and thereby, the run could not set up the play action pass. This is a critical staple of offensive success for any team subscribing foremost to the philosophy of balanced team play, and it was something Eli and the Giants excelled at executing. The play action pass simply disappeared from the playbook.

To reiterate: all this didn't happen overnight, it took exactly one month for the 2008 Giants to unravel. Yes, we lost a star player, but I wasn't the only Giants fan out there who was frustrated by the complete lack of game plan adjustment for Plax's loss. All they did was throw Domenik Hixon to the dogs, unproductively so I might add.

In hindsight, however, I came to realize that there wasn't much anyone could have done. The tapestry was already ripped; the Plax loose thread was able to unravel the Giants precisely because the team tapestry allowed it to.

By December, the offense without Plax was showing serious cracks and Kevin Gilbride, our offensive coordinator, seemed to have done very little about them. I came across many Giants fans in the blogosphere who would love to smite him or cast him out or something. But I don't think there was very much he could have done. As I've argued here, the dynamism of the Giants offense was willingly and pre-meditatively restricted into a playbook built upon personnel balance, experience, and execution. As such, the 2008 Giants playbook was limited by a fragile balance of responsibility between their key playmakers, as evidenced by their heavy use of the play action pass; frankly, it was not a deep playbook that explored the full playmaking possibilities at every position. I suppose you can say that the Giants ran out of operable plays to run when Plax bowed out. However, this was THE implicit caveat for weaving the 2007 post season Giants into the 2008 tapestry, and I believe it was a strategic risk the coaches chose to take. After all, they did win a Super Bowl with this strategy.

Moreover, I suspect that when an offense relies heavily on a quarterback's pre-snap decisions, the influence of an offensive coordinator on the sideline is somewhat diminished, headset or no headset. As we know, a big part of the Giants offense is predicated on Eli's pre-snap adjustments, something that did not change much in December. Now, I'm not criticizing the Giants' faith in Eli, as I believe he has deftly proven his quarterbacking smarts and should be trusted as the Giants have done. But when the parameters in his offense changed as quickly as a gunshot to Plax's stupid thigh, there is little he can do for all his football IQ prowess. Maybe even brother Peyton couldn't have pulled the Giants out of this one. Or maybe he could have.. ? Peyton with the league's top ranked running game would be.....

::slap::

In any case, Gilbride knew he couldn't just draw up a new playbook in December and expect it to work miracles. Slants, screens, flares, draws, checkdowns? Sorry, not in 2008. I'm not trying to be a Gilbride apologist, but it's my belief that he could not overcome structural limitations that were imposed by the 2007-08 Giants tapestry. And it is precisely from this tapestry that hung all the loose threads I've spoken of thus far.

It was a systemic issue. Plaxico Burress may have been 'how' the Giants collapsed, but it was the overall strategy of the 2008 Giants that allowed him to have a ripple effect throughout the team. In other words, there was nothing anyone could have done to prevent the December collapse, that is unless Derrick Ward could run 200+ yards in every game like he did against the Panthers. By the way, it was Ward's outlier performance that squeaked us by that game to secure the #1 NFC playoff seed. Lucky!

(Ward is now a free agent, and I think we're going to keep Jacobs and part ways with Ward. This will be a painful loss for the Giants offense because Bradshaw is not quite as versatile yet. Jacobs definitely won't be the one catching passes out of the backfield.)

Anyway, this is why loose threads such as the loss of Plax and Jacobs had the power to singularly unravel the entire tapestry of the 2008 Giants. You can blame the unraveling on the loose threads if you want, but by association you would also have to blame the winning formula as pioneered by the 2007 Giants, the one that directed us so well for much of the 2008 campaign. If you're a true fan, I bet you're not quite willing to do that. We doubled down on an imperfect winning formula that we perfected but went bust at the end, but not before forging a memorable 2008 regular season.

If you want to find our lost post season of 2008, put in a tape of the 2007 playoffs. Pick any game; you will recognize a lot of what you saw all season long, certainly more than you would have recognized in the recent Eagles debacle. For the Giants, December 31st 2008 should have turned into January 1st 2007. This is the only way I could make sense of this season and be at peace.

As to the future..

If Coughlin chooses to reelect the incumbent 2007-08 Giants tapestry, there's a lot already there for us to build on for 2009, but issues remain. We need to get a repentant Plax back or else draft/trade for an equivalent talent (how about Kenny Britt???), preferably one without man-child issues. We should start addressing the speed limit on our linebacking corps, and we can definitely use better depth at lineman on both sides of the ball. Install cybernetic implants in Jacobs' long ass legs and pair him with a better developed Bradshaw, keep sure-hands Boss involved, and consolidate the replenished secondary.

But most of all, we need to hire new coaches and coordinators who truly understand the tapestry of the Giants as I've laid out in this post. Even if they decide to ax it and build a new team identity, they nevertheless have to understand who we've been in order to facilitate who we will be. To do otherwise would be to utterly waste the lessons wrought from the 2007-08 tapestry and probably spiral us back into the throes of mediocrity.

This responsibility falls squarely on Tom Coughlin and I'm pretty confident he can make the right choices. I should send him a letter to make sure..

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George W Bush? Fail, but There's More

I don't think the subject of this post requires a preamble but if you want one, Reuters can help.

Although his presidency doesn't expire for another week, I've long been done reflecting on Bush the man as we've known him for eight memorable years. I suspect many of you have as well, if for nothing else than to turn the page sooner than fate allows. Even the media got a clue and avoided Bush stories like the plague, instead plastering on every Obama story whether it was newsworthy or not. Anyway, this should be the last week we'll have to experience a substantive Bush newsflash, even if the repercussions of his presidency will be with us a long, long time.

At least this should be the last time I have to think on Bush directly, and I'm thankful for it. My bag is foreign policy, so you can imagine just how thankful I am.

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For both good and ill, Bush's character has been remarkably consistent throughout. Like the prototypical American, he is a high risk high reward kind of guy, the sort of president who requires a whole lot of political capital up front and operates by spending it in huge chunks. That's all fine, all the great presidents probably do that. But the problem with Bush is, he doesn't seem to understand how to earn that capital without resorting to brash politicking and frankly, he doesn't understand how to spend it strategically either. He got away with that approach on domestic issues up to a point, but he never stood a chance on the world stage once our political capital reserves got burned up. That happened fairly quickly after our engineering venture in the Middle East got underway.

What struck me most of all about his mostly inept foreign policy is that he seemed to react to things that weren't quite there, or things perhaps he wanted to actually be there. More often than not, either it turned out there was no there there, or in reality there was actually something else there there. I call this the preemptive reactionary syndrome, and it seems to be a weakness that the world caught on to real fast after it became all too apparent. It's entirely plausible someone, whether friend or foe, would preemptively plant something in Bush's mind just for him to react to in order to advance their own agenda.

Even if Iran really isn't weaponizing plutonium, they already know Bush is going to act as if they are. Moreover, it's easy for them to surmise specific actions he might take, because Bush is like an open book whose rhetoric is so idealistically removed from harsh realities that it constrains his choice of actions irrevocably. Under this condition, certainly Ahmadinejad was not afraid to pit his wits against Bush, and it's arguable Iran has gained both political and geopolitical capital from that confrontation. At the presidential level, politicians are about as savvy as they come and for savvy politicians, knowing what your opposition is thinking is tantamount to stealing a commanding advantage. That's a dangerous disadvantage that I simply cannot tolerate from my president in these dangerous and changing times.

It's a deathly glaring weakness that I don't expect in Obama. Despite his imminently accessible rhetorical stylings, Obama deftly disguises the true depth of his idealistic core, something that Bush nakedly paraded throughout his presidency as if he still needed votes or something. Haven't you ever felt that although Obama seems to reveals so much in his rhetoric and writings, he still exudes a certain veiled mystery nonetheless? It's this masterful simultaneous disguising and revealing of his inner mind that earned Obama frightful labels from political enemies like the socialist moniker which, in its absurdity, he was actually able to turn around and use to his advantage. It suggests that Obama subscribes to a brand of political subtlety at least one level beyond what Bush demonstrated through his sophisticated campaign style of governance. That's what my gut tells me, and it's given me a certain hope for competent leadership I couldn't feel for a long time

Actually I kind of have a grudging respect for Bush. Quite frankly, if I were him I would have probably hung myself dead by now after having looked the goat so profoundly so many times. Instead, over the years this man has had to carry his goat baggage all around the country and world at large, forced to take himself seriously when much of the actions taken on the basis of his rhetoric has proven anathema to reality (exhibit shoes). His ability to do that is not just savvy politicking, it's the mark of a real man who would stay true to his course in spite of anything or anyone who opposes him (for better or worse). Of course I know this trait is prerequisite to high office, but the magnitude of his worst blunders is so large and sustained that I can't help but admire his handling of himself. After all, I suppose there was a reason why he was twice elected. I can't help but think if another president had Bush's character but actually wasn't Bush, he might have turned out a successful presidency.

Sadly that wasn't the case. It's easy to blame Bush for everything, but to do so would be to miss the big picture. No one man or even administration could have accomplished the spectacle of failures that Bush has. Rather, it was as if Bush and company represented a certain archetype of Americanism that is no longer effective in our country or applicable to today's changing world, and it was the culmination of this particular cultural bias that failed Bush and all of us in turn. That is my belief (Paul Krugman explores this subject in some depth).

I may be stating the obvious, and nothing affirms that more than the pasting Bush's party candidate got in the electoral college in 2008. Speaking of which, don't let people write the election off by saying it was a referendum on Bush any less than those who said it was a referendum on Obama, and even less than the people who suggest an African American could not have been elected if it weren't for Bush. They don't know what they're talking about. The election was bigger than Bush and Obama, namely the respective biases in American culture that culminate in their world views.

In any case, the whole Bush episode has reminded me of one thing that's intrinsically beautiful about our nation: through grey skies come blue and through darkness come light, the promise of democracy in so many words. Our course has the potential to be fundamentally recharted if the need be great enough, and certainly that fact has contributed mightily to the longevity of the United States. I do not speculate on our future successes, but perhaps we can credit Bush for playing his part in forcing us to reflect on our weaknesses that have probably been incubating for a long, long time.

Well anyway, farewell Bush, thanks for doing all that you could have done. Here he is in his final press conference addressing the subject of this post.

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