Friday, November 21, 2008
The nerd who called the election
On election night, Nate Silver was right about nearly everything, says Stephanie Clifford in The New York Times. Silver, a 30-year-old statistics geek, is the Chicago-based creator of FiveThirtyEight.com, a blog on which he used a sophisticated blend of every poll available to forecast much of the 2008 election with uncanny accuracy. Silver correctly predicted that Barack Obama would win the popular vote over John McCain, 52 percent to 46 percent; he also called 49 of the 50 states’ results correctly. “From a marketing standpoint, I’d rather hedge a little bit more,” he says, “but we’re the ones who are bold enough to say what the polls translate into.” More than 5 million people visited his site on election night. Silver, a numbers wizard since he was a kid, started off using his talents to predict the performance of baseball teams and players. Silver turned to politics late last year after growing frustrated by prevailing poll analysis. “There is so much hyperventilation when a poll moves in one way or another,” he says. “People tend to look at polls that are outliers.” His methodology weights polls based on past accuracy and whether they tend to favor Republicans or Democrats. “It’s only when you take the polls into context,” he says, “that they tell you a story.”
Friday, November 7, 2008
The election: Could the polls be wrong?
Take heart, John McCain, said Bill Greener in Salon.com. Whatever the polls may say, this is still America, where miracles can happen—especially when your opponent is the first African-American to run for president. Polls are showing Barack Obama ahead in key battleground states, but in most of them, the Democrat is still not getting more than 50 percent of the vote. “If history is any guide,” Obama’s lead could well evaporate on Nov. 4. It won’t be because of the so-called Bradley effect, whereby voters tell pollsters they’re voting for a black candidate but let their racial animus surface in the privacy of the voting booth. Instead, we may find that virtually all the “undecided” voters actually had made up their minds to vote for McCain, giving him 5 percent to 8 percent more than polls show—and the presidency.
If the undecideds put McCain over the top, said Aaron Mishkin in The Weekly Standard, it won’t necessarily be because they’re racists. It’s the fear of being thought a racist that makes them reluctant to admit they don’t like Obama for perfectly valid reasons of policy and experience. The media keeps telling them that Obama is the future, and that anyone who doesn’t support him is either a bigot or a moron. So when these “undecideds” choose to disagree, political scientists may have a new phrase in their lexicon: “the Obama effect.”
If you analyze recent election results, said Andrew Romano in Newsweek.com, that theory “really doesn’t hold water.” In some elections, yes, undecided voters have broken disproportionately for a white candidate over a black candidate, but the reverse has also happened. More relevant, surely, is Obama’s record in the primaries, in which he went up against the white Hillary Clinton in election after election and actually “outperformed the polls by an average of 3.3 points over the course of the entire primary season.” Typical polling models simply don’t account for the unprecedented enthusiasm for Obama’s historic candidacy among black voters and people under 30. This country has come a long way over the past decade, said USA Today in an editorial. Some analysts are even speculating that Obama will benefit from a so-called reverse Bradley effect, by which some working-class whites who are furious at the GOP vote for Obama “while telling bigoted friends” and pollsters they’re for McCain.
Still, it would be naïve to write off the potential impact of racism in this election, said Michael Powell in The New York Times. White, working-class voters interviewed in small towns in Pennsylvania—a critical battleground state—frankly admitted they were alarmed by Obama. “Close friends, real close, tell me they can’t get past his race,” said union plumber Vince Pisano, 47, an Obama supporter. But there are also plenty of voters like Peggy Doffin, 79, who supported Hillary Clinton during the primary and didn’t much care for Obama. Then she listened to his convention speech. “Chills ran down my back,” Doffin says. The country’s economic meltdown finalized her decision, convincing her that the country needs a dramatic change in leadership. “Race just don’t matter to me anymore,” she says. Nor does it matter to enough voters to “flip this election,’’ said Frank Rich, also in the Times. With the nation’s economy and foreign policy in shambles, Republicans have nothing left to offer but coded appeals to “real Americans’’ that take the working class for easily manipulated dupes. “This seems to be the election year when voters are figuring that out.’’
If the undecideds put McCain over the top, said Aaron Mishkin in The Weekly Standard, it won’t necessarily be because they’re racists. It’s the fear of being thought a racist that makes them reluctant to admit they don’t like Obama for perfectly valid reasons of policy and experience. The media keeps telling them that Obama is the future, and that anyone who doesn’t support him is either a bigot or a moron. So when these “undecideds” choose to disagree, political scientists may have a new phrase in their lexicon: “the Obama effect.”
If you analyze recent election results, said Andrew Romano in Newsweek.com, that theory “really doesn’t hold water.” In some elections, yes, undecided voters have broken disproportionately for a white candidate over a black candidate, but the reverse has also happened. More relevant, surely, is Obama’s record in the primaries, in which he went up against the white Hillary Clinton in election after election and actually “outperformed the polls by an average of 3.3 points over the course of the entire primary season.” Typical polling models simply don’t account for the unprecedented enthusiasm for Obama’s historic candidacy among black voters and people under 30. This country has come a long way over the past decade, said USA Today in an editorial. Some analysts are even speculating that Obama will benefit from a so-called reverse Bradley effect, by which some working-class whites who are furious at the GOP vote for Obama “while telling bigoted friends” and pollsters they’re for McCain.
Still, it would be naïve to write off the potential impact of racism in this election, said Michael Powell in The New York Times. White, working-class voters interviewed in small towns in Pennsylvania—a critical battleground state—frankly admitted they were alarmed by Obama. “Close friends, real close, tell me they can’t get past his race,” said union plumber Vince Pisano, 47, an Obama supporter. But there are also plenty of voters like Peggy Doffin, 79, who supported Hillary Clinton during the primary and didn’t much care for Obama. Then she listened to his convention speech. “Chills ran down my back,” Doffin says. The country’s economic meltdown finalized her decision, convincing her that the country needs a dramatic change in leadership. “Race just don’t matter to me anymore,” she says. Nor does it matter to enough voters to “flip this election,’’ said Frank Rich, also in the Times. With the nation’s economy and foreign policy in shambles, Republicans have nothing left to offer but coded appeals to “real Americans’’ that take the working class for easily manipulated dupes. “This seems to be the election year when voters are figuring that out.’’
The final battle for the ‘swing’ states
What happened
Buoyed by a substantial lead in the polls, Barack Obama this week returned to his original promise to introduce “a new kind of politics” in presenting the “closing argument” of his presidential campaign, while John McCain campaigned vigorously to close the gap. Speaking to enthusiastic crowds, including rallies of more than 100,000, Obama said that in just a few days, “you can put an end to the politics that would divide a nation just to win an election, that tries to pit region against region, that asks us to fear at a time when we need hope.” He said voters face a choice between a new approach to the economy and the “failed” economic policies supported by both President Bush and McCain, including deregulation and tax cuts for corporations and the wealthiest Americans.
McCain continued to hammer Obama for pursuing policies that smack of “socialism.” Referring to a just-discovered 2001 interview in which Obama spoke of “redistributive change,” McCain said his rival “is running to be redistributor in chief. It means taking your money and giving it to someone else.” With Democrats poised to pick up seats in both the Senate and the House, McCain also said a vote for him would avert the extremes of an undivided, Democratic government. “My opponent is working out the details with Speaker Pelosi and Sen. Reid of their plans to raise your taxes, increase spending, and concede defeat in Iraq,” he said.
National polls showed Obama with leads ranging from two to 12 points, and six points in the Realclearpolitics.com average. More important, Obama had comfortable leads in all the “blue” states won by John Kerry in 2004, and was also leading in such delegate-rich “red” states as Florida, Ohio, Virginia, and North Carolina. To reach the necessary 270 electoral votes, McCain will have to overcome Obama’s poll leads in every one of those red states, or take some combination of red states and Pennsylvania, where he was trailing by an average of 11 points. “Nothing is inevitable,” said McCain. “You’re going to be up very, very late on election night.”
What the editorials said
This should be an easy decision for Alaskans, said the Anchorage Daily News. For the first time in history, one of our own, Gov. Sarah Palin, is on a major party ticket. But while Palin has been a respectable governor, “putting her one 72-year-old heartbeat from the leadership of the free world is just too risky at this time.” She’s clearly not prepared to “juggle the demands of an economic meltdown, two deadly wars, and a deteriorating climate crisis.” Obama, on the other hand, has shown keen intelligence and prescient judgment, and will “return to the smart, bipartisan economic policies” of Bill Clinton’s administration.
Obama is certainly “the most inspirational campaigner in memory,” said The Tampa Tribune, but his “short tenure in the Senate has been unremarkable” and “consistently partisan.” His discredited liberal ideas would push America “toward a European-style social democracy,” and expose it to unprecedented dangers abroad. We can’t afford to gamble on “seductive promises.” McCain may not be the candidate “preferred in Europe and much of the Middle East,” but he has “a lifetime of useful experience,” proven toughness, and the knowledge that “economic growth comes from hard work and real investment,” not taxing the so-called rich.
What the columnists said
McCain’s itinerary this week, with trips to Florida and Ohio, shows how badly the odds are stacked against him, said E.J. Dionne in The Washington Post. Pleading for votes in states that were supposed to be safe “is a sign of the extent to which Obama has out-organized and out-strategized McCain.” To make matters worse, said David Frum, also in the Post, “McCain is losing in a way that threatens to take the entire Republican Party down with him.” His campaign has swung so far toward the angry Right that moderate Republicans could be thrown out of Congress by swing voters disgusted by how the GOP has “Palinized itself.”
Actually, McCain is doing better than anyone has a right to expect, said Byron York in National Review. His charismatic opponent has an enormous financial advantage, and McCain is running to succeed an unpopular president from his own party. Nonetheless, he was leading in this race until the financial crisis distracted Americans from his foreign policy expertise. It’s a sign of McCain’s drive and character that he still believes he can win. After all, “this is a man who has dodged death—real death, not political death—many times.”
McCain’s greatest obstacle is John McCain, said Paul Krugman in The New York Times. He claims to be a “maverick,” but that appears to be a personality trait denoting anger and impulsiveness, rather than some objection “to the way the country has been run the past eight years.” With no coherent ideas how to fix the broken economy, he’s based his campaign on “trivia,” shouting about ’60s radicals and socialism even after the financial crisis deepened. Obama started the year with vague platitudes, but when the banks crashed, he rose to the occasion by keeping his cool, calmly seeking the opinions and ideas of experts, and becoming knowledgeable quickly. “Americans have rediscovered the virtue of seriousness.” That’s why Obama will win.
What next?
Anticipating balloting challenges, technology problems, and possible chaos on Election Day, both campaigns are sending tens of thousands of lawyers to the battleground states to monitor polling places, assist voters, and rush to court with legal challenges if necessary. Democrats are sending 5,000 volunteer attorneys to Florida alone. “On Election Day I will be managing the largest law firm in the country,” said Charles Lichtman, who is in charge of the Democratic operation there. Sean Cairncross, who heads the Republican National Committee’s legal effort, said he would have enough lawyers “to respond to any contingency.”
Buoyed by a substantial lead in the polls, Barack Obama this week returned to his original promise to introduce “a new kind of politics” in presenting the “closing argument” of his presidential campaign, while John McCain campaigned vigorously to close the gap. Speaking to enthusiastic crowds, including rallies of more than 100,000, Obama said that in just a few days, “you can put an end to the politics that would divide a nation just to win an election, that tries to pit region against region, that asks us to fear at a time when we need hope.” He said voters face a choice between a new approach to the economy and the “failed” economic policies supported by both President Bush and McCain, including deregulation and tax cuts for corporations and the wealthiest Americans.
McCain continued to hammer Obama for pursuing policies that smack of “socialism.” Referring to a just-discovered 2001 interview in which Obama spoke of “redistributive change,” McCain said his rival “is running to be redistributor in chief. It means taking your money and giving it to someone else.” With Democrats poised to pick up seats in both the Senate and the House, McCain also said a vote for him would avert the extremes of an undivided, Democratic government. “My opponent is working out the details with Speaker Pelosi and Sen. Reid of their plans to raise your taxes, increase spending, and concede defeat in Iraq,” he said.
National polls showed Obama with leads ranging from two to 12 points, and six points in the Realclearpolitics.com average. More important, Obama had comfortable leads in all the “blue” states won by John Kerry in 2004, and was also leading in such delegate-rich “red” states as Florida, Ohio, Virginia, and North Carolina. To reach the necessary 270 electoral votes, McCain will have to overcome Obama’s poll leads in every one of those red states, or take some combination of red states and Pennsylvania, where he was trailing by an average of 11 points. “Nothing is inevitable,” said McCain. “You’re going to be up very, very late on election night.”
What the editorials said
This should be an easy decision for Alaskans, said the Anchorage Daily News. For the first time in history, one of our own, Gov. Sarah Palin, is on a major party ticket. But while Palin has been a respectable governor, “putting her one 72-year-old heartbeat from the leadership of the free world is just too risky at this time.” She’s clearly not prepared to “juggle the demands of an economic meltdown, two deadly wars, and a deteriorating climate crisis.” Obama, on the other hand, has shown keen intelligence and prescient judgment, and will “return to the smart, bipartisan economic policies” of Bill Clinton’s administration.
Obama is certainly “the most inspirational campaigner in memory,” said The Tampa Tribune, but his “short tenure in the Senate has been unremarkable” and “consistently partisan.” His discredited liberal ideas would push America “toward a European-style social democracy,” and expose it to unprecedented dangers abroad. We can’t afford to gamble on “seductive promises.” McCain may not be the candidate “preferred in Europe and much of the Middle East,” but he has “a lifetime of useful experience,” proven toughness, and the knowledge that “economic growth comes from hard work and real investment,” not taxing the so-called rich.
What the columnists said
McCain’s itinerary this week, with trips to Florida and Ohio, shows how badly the odds are stacked against him, said E.J. Dionne in The Washington Post. Pleading for votes in states that were supposed to be safe “is a sign of the extent to which Obama has out-organized and out-strategized McCain.” To make matters worse, said David Frum, also in the Post, “McCain is losing in a way that threatens to take the entire Republican Party down with him.” His campaign has swung so far toward the angry Right that moderate Republicans could be thrown out of Congress by swing voters disgusted by how the GOP has “Palinized itself.”
Actually, McCain is doing better than anyone has a right to expect, said Byron York in National Review. His charismatic opponent has an enormous financial advantage, and McCain is running to succeed an unpopular president from his own party. Nonetheless, he was leading in this race until the financial crisis distracted Americans from his foreign policy expertise. It’s a sign of McCain’s drive and character that he still believes he can win. After all, “this is a man who has dodged death—real death, not political death—many times.”
McCain’s greatest obstacle is John McCain, said Paul Krugman in The New York Times. He claims to be a “maverick,” but that appears to be a personality trait denoting anger and impulsiveness, rather than some objection “to the way the country has been run the past eight years.” With no coherent ideas how to fix the broken economy, he’s based his campaign on “trivia,” shouting about ’60s radicals and socialism even after the financial crisis deepened. Obama started the year with vague platitudes, but when the banks crashed, he rose to the occasion by keeping his cool, calmly seeking the opinions and ideas of experts, and becoming knowledgeable quickly. “Americans have rediscovered the virtue of seriousness.” That’s why Obama will win.
What next?
Anticipating balloting challenges, technology problems, and possible chaos on Election Day, both campaigns are sending tens of thousands of lawyers to the battleground states to monitor polling places, assist voters, and rush to court with legal challenges if necessary. Democrats are sending 5,000 volunteer attorneys to Florida alone. “On Election Day I will be managing the largest law firm in the country,” said Charles Lichtman, who is in charge of the Democratic operation there. Sean Cairncross, who heads the Republican National Committee’s legal effort, said he would have enough lawyers “to respond to any contingency.”
Job cuts heighten recession fears
Signs of dramatic slowdown in the U.S. economy multiplied this week, with big employers announcing major job cuts and the consumer confidence index hitting an all-time low. Appliance maker Whirlpool said it would eliminate 5,000 jobs, Chrysler laid off 4,300 white-collar employees, and Goldman Sachs and Xerox said they would cut thousands of positions. Publishers Gannett, McGraw-Hill, Time Inc., and Tribune Co., announced staff cuts totalling thousands of jobs.
The Federal Reserve this week slashed its key overnight lending rate by half a percentage point, to 1 percent, in a bid to stir the economy. Expectations of a rate reduction sparked a roaring stock market rally, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average climbing almost 900 points in one day. But veteran investors expect the optimism to rapidly dissipate. “We’ve seen these big rallies before,” said Richard Sparks of Schaeffer’s Investment Research. “This is a significant bounce in an overall down trend.”
The tottering economy poses a major challenge to the next
president—and a “unique opportunity,” said Mahlon Apgar and Stephen Sorett in the Baltimore Sun. The new president can lift employment and strengthen America with much-needed investments in roads, bridges, mass transit, and other public-works projects. “Infrastructure revitalization offers a path out of panic, into recovery, and toward sustainable growth.”
The last thing the U.S. needs is another giant government program, said Steve Forbes in Forbes. Ronald Reagan inherited a stagnant, inflation-riddled economy when he became president, in 1981. Instead of trusting Washington to lead the recovery, he let business do it, by cutting taxes, easing regulations, and investing in national defense. “The American economy came booming back, and the U.S. won the Cold War.”
Government has failed to lift the economy, said The New York Times in an editorial, because it has “failed to deal effectively with the root cause of the financial crisis: unaffordable mortgages.” But Sheila Bair, head of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., has come forward with “a workable plan.” She has proposed a streamlined process for modifying troubled loans and keeping people in their homes. Mortgage servicers, which handle collections and foreclosures for lenders, would be given a financial incentive to make mortgages affordable. That beats “the ad hoc anti-foreclosure efforts of the past year.”
The Federal Reserve this week slashed its key overnight lending rate by half a percentage point, to 1 percent, in a bid to stir the economy. Expectations of a rate reduction sparked a roaring stock market rally, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average climbing almost 900 points in one day. But veteran investors expect the optimism to rapidly dissipate. “We’ve seen these big rallies before,” said Richard Sparks of Schaeffer’s Investment Research. “This is a significant bounce in an overall down trend.”
The tottering economy poses a major challenge to the next
president—and a “unique opportunity,” said Mahlon Apgar and Stephen Sorett in the Baltimore Sun. The new president can lift employment and strengthen America with much-needed investments in roads, bridges, mass transit, and other public-works projects. “Infrastructure revitalization offers a path out of panic, into recovery, and toward sustainable growth.”
The last thing the U.S. needs is another giant government program, said Steve Forbes in Forbes. Ronald Reagan inherited a stagnant, inflation-riddled economy when he became president, in 1981. Instead of trusting Washington to lead the recovery, he let business do it, by cutting taxes, easing regulations, and investing in national defense. “The American economy came booming back, and the U.S. won the Cold War.”
Government has failed to lift the economy, said The New York Times in an editorial, because it has “failed to deal effectively with the root cause of the financial crisis: unaffordable mortgages.” But Sheila Bair, head of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., has come forward with “a workable plan.” She has proposed a streamlined process for modifying troubled loans and keeping people in their homes. Mortgage servicers, which handle collections and foreclosures for lenders, would be given a financial incentive to make mortgages affordable. That beats “the ad hoc anti-foreclosure efforts of the past year.”
Sen. Stevens guilty of corruption
Sen. Ted Stevens of Alaska, the longest-serving Republican senator in history, was convicted this week of seven felony corruption charges. The federal jury in Washington, D.C., found that Stevens, 84, failed to report $250,000 worth of gifts, including home renovations paid for by a top business executive. Stevens claimed he never wanted the gifts and couldn’t keep track of them. “We have lots of things in our house that don’t belong to us,” he testified. After the verdict, Stevens denounced the “unconscionable” conduct of prosecutors and said he would appeal.
Top Republicans, including John McCain and Stevens’ fellow Alaskan Sarah Palin, called for his resignation. But Stevens, locked in a tight race with Anchorage Mayor Mark Begich, vowed to stand for re-election Nov. 4. “In another state, he would be toast,” said political analyst Charlie Cook. “In Alaska, you gotta make him a significant underdog.”
Stevens’ power was vast and, we now see, corrupting, said Michael Carey in the Los Angeles Times. “The best word to describe it is ‘imperial.’” The list of Alaska projects he sponsored with federal funds is so lengthy “no one can recite it anymore. The money has a generic name: ‘Stevens money.’” Yet he proved unable “to separate his personal life from his professional life.” When this enormously powerful figure suggested he was unable to turn away a tide of gifts, the jury, rightfully, “did not believe him.”
Republicans could soon pay a high price for Stevens’ “dishonor,” said The Philadelphia Inquirer in an editorial. Stevens’ political vulnerability is threatening “his party’s position in the Senate,” where Democrats could be on the verge of “winning a filibuster-proof 60 seats.” Alaska has long been the “reddest of red states.” Not anymore.
One way or the other, Stevens must go, said The New York Times. If he won’t resign “or if Alaska’s voters won’t do the right thing” and vote him out, then “the Senate must act as quickly as it can” to expel him. As John McCain said, Stevens has “broken his trust with the people.”
Top Republicans, including John McCain and Stevens’ fellow Alaskan Sarah Palin, called for his resignation. But Stevens, locked in a tight race with Anchorage Mayor Mark Begich, vowed to stand for re-election Nov. 4. “In another state, he would be toast,” said political analyst Charlie Cook. “In Alaska, you gotta make him a significant underdog.”
Stevens’ power was vast and, we now see, corrupting, said Michael Carey in the Los Angeles Times. “The best word to describe it is ‘imperial.’” The list of Alaska projects he sponsored with federal funds is so lengthy “no one can recite it anymore. The money has a generic name: ‘Stevens money.’” Yet he proved unable “to separate his personal life from his professional life.” When this enormously powerful figure suggested he was unable to turn away a tide of gifts, the jury, rightfully, “did not believe him.”
Republicans could soon pay a high price for Stevens’ “dishonor,” said The Philadelphia Inquirer in an editorial. Stevens’ political vulnerability is threatening “his party’s position in the Senate,” where Democrats could be on the verge of “winning a filibuster-proof 60 seats.” Alaska has long been the “reddest of red states.” Not anymore.
One way or the other, Stevens must go, said The New York Times. If he won’t resign “or if Alaska’s voters won’t do the right thing” and vote him out, then “the Senate must act as quickly as it can” to expel him. As John McCain said, Stevens has “broken his trust with the people.”
Greenspan: The Oracle’s mea culpa
If there were any lingering doubts that free-market capitalism is dead, said The Dallas Morning News in an editorial, they were “blown to smithereens” last week by Alan Greenspan’s appearance on Capitol Hill. Greenspan, revered as the Oracle during his two-decade-long tenure as chairman of the Federal Reserve, came to Congress a humbled man, admitting sheepishly that there was “a flaw” in his economic philosophy. He’d spent his life, Greenspan testified, convinced that markets, and societies, work best when not fettered by government meddling and regulation. In the grip of this quasi-religious belief, Greenspan kept interest rates extremely low in the early part of this decade, creating a monstrous housing bubble, and opposed all attempts to regulate the trading of exotic financial instruments, such as the mortgage-backed securities at the heart of the current crisis. “I made a mistake,” Greenspan conceded, saying that the worldwide collapse of banks and financial institutions had left him “in a state of shocked disbelief.”
Greenspan still doesn’t get it, said Tim Rutten in the Los Angeles Times. His error, he told Congress, was assuming that the “self-interest of organizations, specifically banks,” would keep them from engaging in stupid and corrupt financial trading. The flaw in this theory, as any kindergartner could have explained, is that a bank is a building, not a person. The fateful decisions to buy and sell billions of dollars of dubious derivatives were taken not by banks but by people who work at banks, whose rational self-interest told them accurately that with a little fancy paperwork they could retire at 29 and move to Tahiti. These executives and traders had no loyalty to the companies that employed them, nor did they care about long-term consequences of their wheeling and dealing. That was obvious to nearly everyone—everyone, that is, without Greenspan’s “ideological blindness.”
That’s a bit too harsh, said Zachary Karabell in Huffingtonpost.com. Unlike the parade of Wall Street execs who’ve told Congress that the destruction of their companies just wasn’t their fault, Greenspan was “genuinely contrite” and at least “took responsibility for his mistakes.” In fact, there was actually something “sad and noble” about Greenspan’s testimony, as if, at 82, he was delivering one last lesson for the world—not about interest rates or housing bubbles, but about the danger all of us face when we allow our ideas to harden into ideologies that we don’t dare question.
Greenspan still doesn’t get it, said Tim Rutten in the Los Angeles Times. His error, he told Congress, was assuming that the “self-interest of organizations, specifically banks,” would keep them from engaging in stupid and corrupt financial trading. The flaw in this theory, as any kindergartner could have explained, is that a bank is a building, not a person. The fateful decisions to buy and sell billions of dollars of dubious derivatives were taken not by banks but by people who work at banks, whose rational self-interest told them accurately that with a little fancy paperwork they could retire at 29 and move to Tahiti. These executives and traders had no loyalty to the companies that employed them, nor did they care about long-term consequences of their wheeling and dealing. That was obvious to nearly everyone—everyone, that is, without Greenspan’s “ideological blindness.”
That’s a bit too harsh, said Zachary Karabell in Huffingtonpost.com. Unlike the parade of Wall Street execs who’ve told Congress that the destruction of their companies just wasn’t their fault, Greenspan was “genuinely contrite” and at least “took responsibility for his mistakes.” In fact, there was actually something “sad and noble” about Greenspan’s testimony, as if, at 82, he was delivering one last lesson for the world—not about interest rates or housing bubbles, but about the danger all of us face when we allow our ideas to harden into ideologies that we don’t dare question.
Palin: A public rift with McCain
Has Sarah Palin gone off the reservation? asked Ben Smith in Politico.com. In the final weeks of the presidential campaign, the Republican vice presidential nominee is visibly putting distance between herself and John McCain’s campaign organization, voicing public disagreement with the decisions to give up on Michigan and not make use of Barack Obama’s connection to his former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright. To the horror of campaign “minders,” the Alaska governor walked over to reporters on a tarmac one day last week and answered impromptu questions, as if simply to prove she could do it. Palin has also let it be known that she’s blaming McCain’s aides for undermining her “just folks” image by buying her a $150,000 wardrobe. Incredibly, McCain aides are firing back, telling reporters that Palin is “going rogue,” and accusing her of letting her popularity with the party’s base go to her head. “She is playing for her own future,” one McCain advisor told CNN. “She is a diva. She takes no advice from anyone.”
There’s only one explanation for this rift, said Andrew Romano in Newsweek.com. Palin is “making plans for 2012.” She’s clearly more interested in her own image than in helping McCain win. By moving to his right, and publicly taking hard-line conservative positions on such issues as Rev. Wright, gay marriage, and abortion, she seems to be telling conservatives, “Don’t blame me if this guy loses.” If, however, McCain does lose, Palin would immediately emerge as a favorite for the 2012 nomination. That’s how it may look today, said Michael Medved in Townhall.com, but vice presidential nominees on losing tickets end up being seen as … well, losers. John Edwards, Joe Lieberman, and Dan Quayle all mounted presidential bids after their respective losses—and all “failed miserably.” If McCain does lose, “many Republicans will blame Palin,” and it’s hard to imagine the fractured party rallying around her as some kind of savior.
Win, lose, or draw, Sarah Palin isn’t going away, said Gerald F. Seib in The Wall Street Journal. Independents and Democrats may view her as unprepared and unqualified, but among the GOP base, she’s already wildly popular: Three-quarters of Republicans have a positive opinion of her. Politicians usually have to work for decades to attain the name recognition and “star power” that Palin has achieved in just seven weeks. Hers is “one of the more amazing political stories of our times,” and whatever happens on Nov. 4, that story isn’t over.
There’s only one explanation for this rift, said Andrew Romano in Newsweek.com. Palin is “making plans for 2012.” She’s clearly more interested in her own image than in helping McCain win. By moving to his right, and publicly taking hard-line conservative positions on such issues as Rev. Wright, gay marriage, and abortion, she seems to be telling conservatives, “Don’t blame me if this guy loses.” If, however, McCain does lose, Palin would immediately emerge as a favorite for the 2012 nomination. That’s how it may look today, said Michael Medved in Townhall.com, but vice presidential nominees on losing tickets end up being seen as … well, losers. John Edwards, Joe Lieberman, and Dan Quayle all mounted presidential bids after their respective losses—and all “failed miserably.” If McCain does lose, “many Republicans will blame Palin,” and it’s hard to imagine the fractured party rallying around her as some kind of savior.
Win, lose, or draw, Sarah Palin isn’t going away, said Gerald F. Seib in The Wall Street Journal. Independents and Democrats may view her as unprepared and unqualified, but among the GOP base, she’s already wildly popular: Three-quarters of Republicans have a positive opinion of her. Politicians usually have to work for decades to attain the name recognition and “star power” that Palin has achieved in just seven weeks. Hers is “one of the more amazing political stories of our times,” and whatever happens on Nov. 4, that story isn’t over.
Gay marriage: Armageddon in California
If history points to a turning point in the cultural war over same-sex marriage, said Laurie Goodstein in The New York Times, it will probably be next week’s vote on California’s Proposition 8. The ballot amendment would reverse a California Supreme Court ruling in May that legalized gay marriage, leading to thousands of “exultant” gay weddings. Although similar amendments are before voters in Arizona and Florida, religious conservatives view California, with its reputation for setting national trends, as a potential bulwark against a rising tide. So gay-marriage opponents from across the country are pouring “time, talent, and millions of dollars” into California, with some saying this fight is more important than the presidential election. “This vote on whether we stop the gay marriage juggernaut in California,’’ said Charles W. Colson, a prominent evangelical, “is Armageddon.”
Armageddon might be stating it a little strongly, said Pastor Rick J. Cole in The Sacramento Bee, but gay marriage is not a positive development for society. The primary purpose of marriage is to provide a loving, secure, and healthy environment for children, and children need the balance of “male and female guidance in their life.” Why should society endorse some strange new experiment in which kids conceived through artificial insemination are raised by two mommies or two daddies? Marriage is not a private act, said Maggie Gallagher in Realclearpolitics.com. It is a “shared social ideal.” So if government determines there is no difference between gay unions and traditional marriages, the effects will ripple through society. Public schools will teach our kids that homosexuality is normal—and that any religion that disagrees is bigoted and wrong.
If gay marriage continues, said Randy Triezenberg in The Sacramento Bee, we’ll be teaching our children only that “marriage is important”—society’s way of recognizing, and supporting, loving partners who commit to each other. How is that a threat to marriage? Let’s not forget that 60 years ago, interracial marriage was also considered a “sin” by religious conservatives, and it was illegal in many states. Norms change. Institutions evolve. My views evolved, too, said Ruben Navarette Jr. in The San Diego Union-Tribune, after “a gay family member helped me see that the issue wasn’t as complicated as I was making it.” Look at it this way: More than 11,000 gays have already married in California, and so have thousands more in Massachusetts and Connecticut. And guess what? “Civilization has not crumbled.”
Armageddon might be stating it a little strongly, said Pastor Rick J. Cole in The Sacramento Bee, but gay marriage is not a positive development for society. The primary purpose of marriage is to provide a loving, secure, and healthy environment for children, and children need the balance of “male and female guidance in their life.” Why should society endorse some strange new experiment in which kids conceived through artificial insemination are raised by two mommies or two daddies? Marriage is not a private act, said Maggie Gallagher in Realclearpolitics.com. It is a “shared social ideal.” So if government determines there is no difference between gay unions and traditional marriages, the effects will ripple through society. Public schools will teach our kids that homosexuality is normal—and that any religion that disagrees is bigoted and wrong.
If gay marriage continues, said Randy Triezenberg in The Sacramento Bee, we’ll be teaching our children only that “marriage is important”—society’s way of recognizing, and supporting, loving partners who commit to each other. How is that a threat to marriage? Let’s not forget that 60 years ago, interracial marriage was also considered a “sin” by religious conservatives, and it was illegal in many states. Norms change. Institutions evolve. My views evolved, too, said Ruben Navarette Jr. in The San Diego Union-Tribune, after “a gay family member helped me see that the issue wasn’t as complicated as I was making it.” Look at it this way: More than 11,000 gays have already married in California, and so have thousands more in Massachusetts and Connecticut. And guess what? “Civilization has not crumbled.”
Biden: Will the world ‘test’ Obama?
It may be the “most remarkable thing a vice presidential candidate has ever said about the top of his ticket,” said Jack Kelly in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. During a fundraiser in Seattle last week, Democratic vice presidential hopeful Joseph Biden actually raised the specter of America’s enemies taking advantage of an inexperienced President Obama by triggering a crisis. “Mark my words,” Biden declared, “it will not be six months before the world tests Barack Obama like they did John Kennedy. Watch, we’re going to have an international crisis, a generated crisis, to test the mettle of this guy.” Did Biden just admit what John McCain has been saying all along: That the 47-year-old first-term senator’s lack of experience is, well, dangerous?
It’s impossible to read Biden’s “stunning admission” any other way, said Pete Hegseth in National Review. As chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, “he is experienced enough to know that projecting weakness on the international stage invites aggression.” He also must realize that Obama’s constant emphasis on “engagement” with sworn enemies is a clear signal that he will be “a more accommodating, and weaker, foe.” So consider yourself warned by the No. 2 Democrat: “Unfriendly regimes and networks—from oil-rich dictators to radical Islamists—will seek to exploit a tepid American foreign policy.” Too bad the press largely ignored Biden’s astonishing comments, said Kirsten Powers in the New York Post. The thinking, apparently, is that the gaffe-prone Biden often says silly things, so who cares? “Needless to say, if Sarah Palin said this about a McCain administration, the media world would be exploding.”
Perhaps so, said the Roanoke, Va., Times in an editorial, but the truth is that whoever wins on Nov. 4 will be “tested.” We live in extremely dangerous times, with two wars, a global terrorism threat, a resurgent Russia, and Iran and North Korea moving to become nuclear powers. “Voters should be asking themselves which candidate is demonstrating the calm leadership they would want the president to display during a crisis.” The campaign has answered that question, as Obama has stayed cool and focused while McCain has impulsively bounced from message to message and tactic to tactic. While Republicans were quick to seize on the first part of Biden’s remark, said Matthew Lee in the Associated Press, they conveniently ignored how he completed it: “They’re going to find out,” Biden said, “this guy’s got steel in his spine.”
It’s impossible to read Biden’s “stunning admission” any other way, said Pete Hegseth in National Review. As chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, “he is experienced enough to know that projecting weakness on the international stage invites aggression.” He also must realize that Obama’s constant emphasis on “engagement” with sworn enemies is a clear signal that he will be “a more accommodating, and weaker, foe.” So consider yourself warned by the No. 2 Democrat: “Unfriendly regimes and networks—from oil-rich dictators to radical Islamists—will seek to exploit a tepid American foreign policy.” Too bad the press largely ignored Biden’s astonishing comments, said Kirsten Powers in the New York Post. The thinking, apparently, is that the gaffe-prone Biden often says silly things, so who cares? “Needless to say, if Sarah Palin said this about a McCain administration, the media world would be exploding.”
Perhaps so, said the Roanoke, Va., Times in an editorial, but the truth is that whoever wins on Nov. 4 will be “tested.” We live in extremely dangerous times, with two wars, a global terrorism threat, a resurgent Russia, and Iran and North Korea moving to become nuclear powers. “Voters should be asking themselves which candidate is demonstrating the calm leadership they would want the president to display during a crisis.” The campaign has answered that question, as Obama has stayed cool and focused while McCain has impulsively bounced from message to message and tactic to tactic. While Republicans were quick to seize on the first part of Biden’s remark, said Matthew Lee in the Associated Press, they conveniently ignored how he completed it: “They’re going to find out,” Biden said, “this guy’s got steel in his spine.”
The hype - and hope - of clean coal
Both John McCain and Barack Obama have expressed support for a new type of coal-burning technology that would reduce its impact on the environment. Is clean coal really possible?
What is clean coal?
An oxymoron—for now, at least. The idea of clean coal is immensely appealing—especially on the political stump—because coal is relatively cheap, and America has so much of it. (As it happens, two of the biggest coal-producing states, Pennsylvania and Ohio, are “swing” states in this election.) At current consumption rates, the U.S. has enough coal to last more than 250 years. Coal, unfortunately, is the most carbon-intensive fuel we use. Worldwide, burning coal produces nearly 40 percent of carbon dioxide emissions, the chief contributor to global warming. The coal and electric power industries often use the phrase “clean coal” to refer to existing technologies that have taken the majority of sulfur dioxide, carbon monoxide, and nitrogen oxide out of emissions from coal-powered electric plants. But while smokestack scrubbers and other clean-coal applications have addressed the 20th-century threat of acid rain, they offer little defense against the 21st-century threat of climate change. That’s why some entrepreneurs and scientists are touting a new kind of clean-coal technology.
What is the new technology?
It’s called carbon capture and storage, or CCS. In theory, CCS could reduce CO2 emissions by as much as 90 percent. Essentially, the process involves capturing a plant’s carbon emissions before they escape into the atmosphere and then storing them where they can do no harm. But even proponents don’t expect the process to be commercially viable for at least a decade. And the development of storage facilities—and the means to transport CO2 to them—is enormously challenging. No such infrastructure currently exists.
Where would the CO2 be stored?
Scientists are researching a variety of options, from injecting large quantities of CO2 underground into depleted oil fields to burying it in sandstone beneath the North Sea. One study estimates that 300 years’ worth of emissions from Pennsylvania’s 79 coal-fired electricity plants could be stored in the state’s saline formations. Some geologists have even suggested that the gas could be injected into volcanic basalt, a common rock found beneath an 85,000-square-mile expanse of Western states; scientists theorize that the CO2’s interaction with basalt could turn the CO2 into a harmless mineral. No matter what form it took, CO2 storage would be daunting. The U.S. produces nearly 2 billion tons of CO2 annually from coal-fired plants, and questions remain about how stable the CO2 would be underground. Any leakage, of course, would defeat the whole purpose of storage.
Are there other obstacles?
Yes. Not only would it cost billions of dollars to build such plants, but the process of capturing carbon is itself incredibly energy-intensive, so it would dramatically lower the productivity of the power plants that use it. Proponents say the technology is viable—it just needs investment and a strong push from the federal government. “We’re not technologically ready to build all the infrastructure now,” says engineer Howard Herzog of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, “but we know enough to start.”
Why isn’t clean-coal technology more advanced?
The desire for cheap power has trumped all other concerns. As a result, utilities and power companies have had little incentive to take on the cost of engineering and building new, state-of-the-art plants that would make environmentalists happy. Only a dozen coal-fired plants have been built in the U.S. since 1990, and none is “clean.” The picture is even less encouraging abroad. To provide electricity for their rapidly growing middle classes, China is powering up new coal plants at the rate of one a week, and India is not far behind. Neither country is deeply concerned about CO2 emissions, and the new plants remain a long way from “clean.” The same is true of new plants coming on line in Italy, Germany, Great Britain, and the Czech Republic.
Can existing coal-fired plants be turned green?
That appears to be extremely unlikely. Newer, so-called supercritical coal plants convert coal to energy about a third more efficiently than older plants do. But they still produce enormous amounts of CO2 emissions. And even if CCS technologies advance at a rapid pace, it won’t be easy or cheap to retrofit even the most recently built plants to capture their carbon emissions. That’s why many environmentalists and climate-change experts favor investment in other alternative energy technologies, such as wind and solar, rather than increasing the world’s reliance on coal. “Building new coal-fired plants is ill-conceived,” said James Hansen of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies. “We need a moratorium on coal now.”
So is clean coal a mere pipe dream?
Not necessarily. With many technologies competing to lead the way to a green future, and no obvious winner emerging, clean coal remains in the mix. Coal is not only cheap but plentiful. So figuring out how to make it clean would be quite a boon. By 2030, the nation’s electricity consumption will grow 40 percent, the U.S. Energy Information Administration estimates. Unless that demand is significantly constrained, the power will have to come from somewhere. “There is no silver bullet here,” said James Rogers, chief executive of Duke Energy. “What we need is more like silver buckshot, a lot of things working together.”
An inauspicious beginning
In 2003, the Bush administration launched a public-private consortium called FutureGen to create a first-generation commercial-scale CCS plant. Plans called for a 275-megawatt coal plant that would produce energy from gasified coal and then pump the plant’s CO2 emissions thousands of feet below ground into rock formations. The Department of Energy agreed to provide three-quarters of the estimated $1.8 billion cost. But because of its technical complexity and environmental sensitivity, progress on the project was slow. It took four years just to find a site for the plant, in Mattoon, Ill., and by then, building costs had risen sharply. Earlier this year, citing the mounting costs, the DOE announced it was pulling out of the project. The episode did little to reassure clean-coal skeptics. “It may not work in the end,” said Jeffrey Sachs, director of Columbia University’s Earth Institute. “And if it is not viable, the situation, with respect to climate change, is much more dire.”
What is clean coal?
An oxymoron—for now, at least. The idea of clean coal is immensely appealing—especially on the political stump—because coal is relatively cheap, and America has so much of it. (As it happens, two of the biggest coal-producing states, Pennsylvania and Ohio, are “swing” states in this election.) At current consumption rates, the U.S. has enough coal to last more than 250 years. Coal, unfortunately, is the most carbon-intensive fuel we use. Worldwide, burning coal produces nearly 40 percent of carbon dioxide emissions, the chief contributor to global warming. The coal and electric power industries often use the phrase “clean coal” to refer to existing technologies that have taken the majority of sulfur dioxide, carbon monoxide, and nitrogen oxide out of emissions from coal-powered electric plants. But while smokestack scrubbers and other clean-coal applications have addressed the 20th-century threat of acid rain, they offer little defense against the 21st-century threat of climate change. That’s why some entrepreneurs and scientists are touting a new kind of clean-coal technology.
What is the new technology?
It’s called carbon capture and storage, or CCS. In theory, CCS could reduce CO2 emissions by as much as 90 percent. Essentially, the process involves capturing a plant’s carbon emissions before they escape into the atmosphere and then storing them where they can do no harm. But even proponents don’t expect the process to be commercially viable for at least a decade. And the development of storage facilities—and the means to transport CO2 to them—is enormously challenging. No such infrastructure currently exists.
Where would the CO2 be stored?
Scientists are researching a variety of options, from injecting large quantities of CO2 underground into depleted oil fields to burying it in sandstone beneath the North Sea. One study estimates that 300 years’ worth of emissions from Pennsylvania’s 79 coal-fired electricity plants could be stored in the state’s saline formations. Some geologists have even suggested that the gas could be injected into volcanic basalt, a common rock found beneath an 85,000-square-mile expanse of Western states; scientists theorize that the CO2’s interaction with basalt could turn the CO2 into a harmless mineral. No matter what form it took, CO2 storage would be daunting. The U.S. produces nearly 2 billion tons of CO2 annually from coal-fired plants, and questions remain about how stable the CO2 would be underground. Any leakage, of course, would defeat the whole purpose of storage.
Are there other obstacles?
Yes. Not only would it cost billions of dollars to build such plants, but the process of capturing carbon is itself incredibly energy-intensive, so it would dramatically lower the productivity of the power plants that use it. Proponents say the technology is viable—it just needs investment and a strong push from the federal government. “We’re not technologically ready to build all the infrastructure now,” says engineer Howard Herzog of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, “but we know enough to start.”
Why isn’t clean-coal technology more advanced?
The desire for cheap power has trumped all other concerns. As a result, utilities and power companies have had little incentive to take on the cost of engineering and building new, state-of-the-art plants that would make environmentalists happy. Only a dozen coal-fired plants have been built in the U.S. since 1990, and none is “clean.” The picture is even less encouraging abroad. To provide electricity for their rapidly growing middle classes, China is powering up new coal plants at the rate of one a week, and India is not far behind. Neither country is deeply concerned about CO2 emissions, and the new plants remain a long way from “clean.” The same is true of new plants coming on line in Italy, Germany, Great Britain, and the Czech Republic.
Can existing coal-fired plants be turned green?
That appears to be extremely unlikely. Newer, so-called supercritical coal plants convert coal to energy about a third more efficiently than older plants do. But they still produce enormous amounts of CO2 emissions. And even if CCS technologies advance at a rapid pace, it won’t be easy or cheap to retrofit even the most recently built plants to capture their carbon emissions. That’s why many environmentalists and climate-change experts favor investment in other alternative energy technologies, such as wind and solar, rather than increasing the world’s reliance on coal. “Building new coal-fired plants is ill-conceived,” said James Hansen of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies. “We need a moratorium on coal now.”
So is clean coal a mere pipe dream?
Not necessarily. With many technologies competing to lead the way to a green future, and no obvious winner emerging, clean coal remains in the mix. Coal is not only cheap but plentiful. So figuring out how to make it clean would be quite a boon. By 2030, the nation’s electricity consumption will grow 40 percent, the U.S. Energy Information Administration estimates. Unless that demand is significantly constrained, the power will have to come from somewhere. “There is no silver bullet here,” said James Rogers, chief executive of Duke Energy. “What we need is more like silver buckshot, a lot of things working together.”
An inauspicious beginning
In 2003, the Bush administration launched a public-private consortium called FutureGen to create a first-generation commercial-scale CCS plant. Plans called for a 275-megawatt coal plant that would produce energy from gasified coal and then pump the plant’s CO2 emissions thousands of feet below ground into rock formations. The Department of Energy agreed to provide three-quarters of the estimated $1.8 billion cost. But because of its technical complexity and environmental sensitivity, progress on the project was slow. It took four years just to find a site for the plant, in Mattoon, Ill., and by then, building costs had risen sharply. Earlier this year, citing the mounting costs, the DOE announced it was pulling out of the project. The episode did little to reassure clean-coal skeptics. “It may not work in the end,” said Jeffrey Sachs, director of Columbia University’s Earth Institute. “And if it is not viable, the situation, with respect to climate change, is much more dire.”
Wednesday, November 5, 2008
Can conservatism recover?
"Let's face it: We Republicans are now, by any reasonable measurement, deep in the political wilderness," said U.S. Rep. Jeff Flake of Arizona in The Washington Post. But conservatives can bounce back if we admit the "folly" of the budget-busting Bush administration and return to the bedrock principles of "limited government" and expanded economic freedom. "America loves a chastened and repentant sinner."
Republicans have clearly lost their way, said USA Today in an editorial, and not just by "spending with abandon and gambling heavily on an ill-conceived war." The GOP was defeated in this election partly because so many of its candidates substituted "fear-mongering" for sound policy proposals on the campaign trail. "If they are to find their way back, Republicans need more ideas and fewer attacks."
Conservative ideas still resonate deeply with the American people, said former House majority leader Tom DeLay in The Washington Times. “We are still a center-right nation" where the majority still favors "conservative approaches to taxes, spending, regulation, foreign policy, and traditional values.” All the GOP needs now is “a new, 21st-century political coalition" to remind people of that fact and restore faith in "actual conservatives."
See, liberals, conservatives are down but far from out, said Thomas Frank in The Wall Street Journal. Democrats shouldn't fool themselves that the culture wars are over, and "that stupid bankers sank conservatism for good. This movement will be back, and the biggest fights are yet to come."
Republicans have clearly lost their way, said USA Today in an editorial, and not just by "spending with abandon and gambling heavily on an ill-conceived war." The GOP was defeated in this election partly because so many of its candidates substituted "fear-mongering" for sound policy proposals on the campaign trail. "If they are to find their way back, Republicans need more ideas and fewer attacks."
Conservative ideas still resonate deeply with the American people, said former House majority leader Tom DeLay in The Washington Times. “We are still a center-right nation" where the majority still favors "conservative approaches to taxes, spending, regulation, foreign policy, and traditional values.” All the GOP needs now is “a new, 21st-century political coalition" to remind people of that fact and restore faith in "actual conservatives."
See, liberals, conservatives are down but far from out, said Thomas Frank in The Wall Street Journal. Democrats shouldn't fool themselves that the culture wars are over, and "that stupid bankers sank conservatism for good. This movement will be back, and the biggest fights are yet to come."
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