The Volokh Conspiracy

Nate Silver — the fellow who built FiveThirtyEight.com into one of the more successful and sophisticated predictive electoral sites on the Web, and who was remarkably prescient in his electoral vote predictions in the 2008 Presidential election — has now cast his net over more profound and important prey: the world of international soccer. As soccer fans are well aware, the “official” rankings of the world’s national teams, prepared by FIFA, are, and have always been, absurd — widely discounted and often derided by serious fans everywhere. [A few years back, for example, the US team was ranked fourth (!!) in the world — and the current FIFA rankings have such oddities as Croatia at #8, USA at #11, and Switzerland at #13). Working with espn.com, Silver has devised the “Soccer Power Index” as a new predictive tool (just ahead, of course, of the 2010 World Cup in South Africa). Soccer’s a tough game to handicap in the best of circumstances, and I haven’t had much of a chance to study Silver’s lengthy explanations of his new algorithms — but Silver’s track record is too good to ignore, and if I were a betting man I’d certainly want to take a good long look at what he’s come up with. 

The cover of next week’s Newsweek features a picture of Sarah Palin, along with the headline “How do you solve a problem like Sarah?” The cover is one more example of the periodical’s positioning itself as the ideas journal for people who think that the New York Times’ in-house editorials are middle-of-road, but have too many big words. And of the magazine’s cultural disconnect from much of the United States.

To wit: “How do you solve a problem like Maria?” is an early song in The Sound of Music, which won the 1965 Academy Award for Best Picture. In the song, several nuns at an abbey in the Austrian mountains summarize the problems with the novice Maria (Julie Andrews): Maria is too physically active, athletic and outdoorsy. She is too expressive emotionally, particularly about her happiness. She is flighty, and late for everything except meals. She has a good heart, but does not listen well to advice from her elders, and she is highly self-directed: “How do you catch a cloud and pin it down?” The harsh nun, Berthe, calls Maria “a headache” and “a demon.” Newsweek’s subhead take’s Berthe’s role, calling Palin “bad news for the GOP–and everyone else too.”

The Mother Superior knows better: Maria is no bad-news demon. Rather, Maria is someone who lives the Good News, and whose talents, energy, and will-power are going to waste in the abbey. So she ships Maria off to a job outside the abbey–a job for which Maria is totally unprepared, and a job at which Maria’s predecessors have failed. After a rough start, Maria becomes a great success, due to her common sense, kind heart, wisdom, and readiness to defy convention. In the process, Maria also stands up to foreign totalitarian aggressors (winning the support of even her staunch critic Berthe), fortifies the nationalist sentiments of her country against those aggressors, and leads the people in her care to safety and freedom.

Ergo, the question “How do you solve a problem like Sarah?’ provides its own answer, at least to people who know the film from which the song comes: Make her the President of the United States.

I’m not arguing for or against Palin for President–just observing that, as is so often the case, the Palin-hating media are less clever than they think, and end up inadvertently making her stronger.

This week’s National Journal poll of political bloggers asked “Would Democrats be helped or hurt politically if Congress enacts health care reform legislation containing abortion restrictions similar to those passed by the House?” On the Left, 79% said “hurt,” while the Right was fairly closely split between “helped,” “hurt,” and “not much impact.” I voted for “hurt,” but thought it was a close call: “In pro-life districts, it’s a tremendous boon to Dems who voted for the Stupak amendment, proving to voters that the local Dems are not controlled by the party’s bicoastal pro-choice leaders. In pro-choice districts, however, Stupak’s effects on abortion coverage in private insurance may make a lot of people very unhappy. On the whole, a net loss for Dems because Stupak is a huge win for the pro-life side, which is a bad long-term sign for a party which, at the national level, is officially pro-choice.”

Question two was “In light of the off-year election results, what’s the bigger political priority for the Democratic/Republican Party right now?” Eighty-six percent of the Left said that motivating the base should be the biggest Democratic priority. Sixty-seven percent of the Right said that the biggest Republican priority should be winning independents. I volunteered the Republicans need to do both: “As C.S. Lewis once remarked about the faith vs. works debate: ‘It does seem to me like asking which blade in a pair of scissors is most necessary.’ Winning parties motivate their base and win independents — as McDonnell and Christie both did.”

In last week’s National Journal of political bloggers, one question asked: “If unemployment remains at roughly the current level, what impact will that have on the 2010 midterm elections?” One hundred percent of the Right, and 89 percent of the Left bloggers thought it would hurt Democrats, and most thought it would hurt them a lot. I agreed: “It’s easy to imagine the Republican campaign ads which show the Democratic charts predicting how bad unemployment would get without the stimulus — juxtaposed with how much worse unemployment actually got after the Democrats’ deficit spending spree was adopted.”

For the other question, both Left and Right reversed their positions from last June. Sixty-five percent of the Left now think it is “somewhat likely” that Congress will pass Cap & Trade. Sixty-five percent of the Right now thinks passage is “very” or “somewhat” unlikely. So both Left and Right have become more optimistic in the past few years. Objective proof that “hope” is on the rise.

I was in the minority of the Right who thought C/T somewhat likely: “The bill will see lots of ‘no’ votes from Blue Dogs and from other Democrats who represent energy-producing states. But there may be enough support from urban/suburban Republicans for something to pass.” Certainly a C/T bill that included lots of the ideas which John McCain has proposed, and which greatly cut back on the rent-sales that appear in the House-passed bill, the bill would be nearly unstoppable.

NY-23: Winning Democrat Bill Owens was A-rated by NRA (as was Hoffman).

Virginia: Either Deeds (B rating) or McDonnell (A) were sure to be a big improvement over outgoing Governor Kaine. Deeds lost the NRA endorsement by supporting closing of the (non-existent) “gun show loophole.” In the Attorney General race, Republican Ken Cuccinelli (A+) handily defeated a D-rated Democrat who advertised very aggressively on the gun show issue. Incumbent Lt. Gov. Bill Bolling (A+) trounced an F-rated challenger.

In the Virginia House of Delegates, five Republican challengers with A ratings ousted Democratic incumbents rated F,F,B,B,B. A C-rated Republican also unseated an F Democrat incumbent. The House of Delegates already had a fairly solid pro-Second Amendment majority, so the major change in Virginia is a new Governor who, like  former Governor and current Senator Mark Warner (Dem.), will sign rights-enhancing legislation passed by the legislature.

By far the most prominent gun control advocate on the ballot this year was Jon Corzine (F). This summer, Corzine twisted lots of legislative arms to win enactment of gun rationing (“one-handgun-a-month”), a silly law that is even sillier in New Jersey, where every handgun purchase requires advance permission from the local police chief. With Christie replacing Corzine, New Jersey gun owners can hope for benign neglect rather than active hostility. The  New Jersey Assembly appears to be unchanged.

In sum: A bad night for advocates of gun show restrictions. Another fine night (as were election nights 2006 and 2008) for Democrats with A ratings from NRA. And good news for Second Amendment advocates in blue New Jersey and purple Virginia.

I think there are four obvious lessons to draw from tonight’s election returns:

1. For Conservative Republicans: The America people reject Barack Obama and obviously want true conservative leadership. The Governorships of two states have switched to the “R” category, showing a grassroots conservative movement that is alive and well. 

2. For Moderate Republicans: The American people obviously want old-fashioned economic conservatives who are moderate on social issues. McDonnell in Virginia and Christie in New Jersey won by downplaying social issues; Hoffman in New York-23 lost because he was too extreme.

3. For Moderate Democrats: The party out of power usually does well in off-year elections like this, and this year was no exception. But obviously there is no sign of any substantial shift in public opinion from the election of 2008.

4. For Liberal Democrats: NY-23 was the race to watch this year, given that right-wing extremists like Palin and Beck threw all their support behind Hoffman. But the district voters rejected the right-wing candidate, sending a Democrat to Congress for the first time in one hundred years. Obviously this shows that the American people reject right-wing extremism.

Obviously.

William Voegeli, a contributing editor at The Claremont Review of Books, has an excellent essay in Manhattan Journal comparing the economic performance of California and Texas.  (I believe a short opinion page version appeared recently in the LAT.)  Among other things, the article provides a good example for how a public choice analysis can be applied to show, in this case, capture of public revenues and the process of increasing public revenues by public employees in California.

The most interesting feature of the article, however, is that it does not start out from a position of hostility toward California and its high tax model.  On the contrary, it says that there is a tradeoff that different people will make differently with respect to high tax/ high public services jurisdictions and low tax/ low public services jurisdictions.  There is a perfectly good argument for the former as well as for the latter.

It’s true that many people are less sensitive to taxes and more concerned about public goods, and these consumer-voters will congregate in places with extensive services. But it’s also true, all things being equal, that everyone would rather pay lower than higher taxes. The high-benefit, high-tax model can work, but only if the high taxes actually purchase high benefits—that is, public goods that far surpass the quality of those available to people who pay low taxes.

I grew up in California and despite my Upper Upper NW DC address, will always count myself a Californian, product of its public schools and a proud graduate of UCLA.  I was a beneficiary of the high tax/ high benefits model, and gravitate toward it.  The problem, as Voegeli documents, is two fold.  First, California is today a high tax/ low benefits model, while Texas, even with relatively low taxes, has managed remarkably to catch up and even pass California in ways I would not have believed possible.  But Voegeli’s data, as I have discussed it with other Californians and Texans, seems to me pretty robust.  His conclusion?

“Twenty years ago, you could go to Texas, where they had very low taxes, and you would see the difference between there and California,” Joel Kotkin, executive editor of NewGeography.com and a presidential fellow at Chapman University in Southern California, told the Los Angeles Timesthis past March. “Today, you go to Texas, the roads are no worse, the public schools are not great but are better than or equal to ours, and their universities are good. The bargain between California’s government and the middle class is constantly being renegotiated to the disadvantage of the middle class.”

Similarly, the CEO of a manufacturing company in suburban Los Angeles told a Times reporter that his business suffered less from California’s high taxes than from its ineffectual services. As a result, the company pays “a fortune” to educate its employees, many of whom graduated from California public schools, “on basic things like writing and math skills.” According to a report issued earlier this year by McKinsey & Company, Texas students “are, on average, one to two years of learning ahead of California students of the same age,” though expenditures per public school student are 12 percent higher in California.

State and local government expenditures as a whole were 46.8 percent higher in California than in Texas in 2005–06—$10,070 per person compared with $6,858. And Texas not only spends its citizens’ dollars more effectively; it emphasizes priorities that are more broadly beneficial. In 2005-06, per-capita spending on transportation was 5.9 percent lower in California than in Texas, and highway expenditures in particular were 9.5 percent lower, a discovery both plausible and infuriating to any Los Angeles commuter losing the will to live while sitting in yet another freeway traffic jam.

What happened?  According to Voegeli, two things.  One is that scarce tax dollars in Texas are spent on priorities that have broad appeal, while California spends far more of its tax dollars on transfer payments to particular groups with political clout.  Second (and a subset of the first, really) is that the tax dollars in California go to public employees, public employee pensions, public sector unions — nominally to the service providers of the “high benefits” received in exchange for high taxes.  Voegeli reports that they soak up the additional revenue but provide increasingly poor services at an ever increasing cost.

In California, by contrast, more and more spending consists of either transfer payments to government dependents (as in welfare, health, housing, and community development programs) or generous payments to government employees and contractors (reflected in administrative costs, pensions, and general expenditures). Both kinds of spending weaken California’s appeal to consumer-voters, the first because redistributive transfer payments are the least publicly beneficial type of public good, and the second because the dues paid to Club California purchase benefits that, increasingly, are enjoyed by the staff instead of the members.

Californians have the best possible reason to believe that the state’s public sector is not holding up its end of the bargain: clear evidence that it used to do a better job. Bill Watkins, executive director of the Economic Forecast Project at the University of California at Santa Barbara, has calculated that once you adjust for population growth and inflation, the state government spent 26 percent more in 2007-08 than in 1997–98. Back then, “California had teachers. Prisoners were in jail. Health care was provided for those with the least resources.” Today, Watkins asks, “Are the roads 26 percent better? Are schools 26 percent better? What is 26 percent better?”

Watkins is not referring to the mythical golden past in which I grew up outside of LA; this is a mere decade ago.  But Voegeli observes that the task for California is inherently harder for it than for Texas; there is an asymmetry baked in:

If California doesn’t want to be Texas, it must find a way to be a better California. The easy thing about being Texas is that the government has a great deal of control over the part of its package deal that attracts consumer-voters—it must merely keep taxes low. California, on the other hand, must deliver on the high benefits promised in its sales pitch. It won’t be enough for its state and local governments to spend a lot of money; they have to spend it efficiently and effectively.

Agency capture of public institutions, their tax mechanisms and their benefits, is far from an unknown phenomenon.  But I have to say that the idea that California could ever be surpassed on any of the metrics above — education, liveability, transportation, quality of life, etc, — by Texas is ... shocking.

(Note — and before everyone gets all p-o’d in the comments.  I do freely admit and guilty as charged that I feel pretty much about my home state as every Texan I’ve ever known feels about Texas, so no need to abuse me in the comments.  And I will also say that if I were able to move back to California today, and not have to worry about gainful employment as a law professor, I would move to ... Carson City, Nevada, just below the Nevada side of Tahoe, on Highway 395 in the Eastern Sierra Nevada corridor, and have two-thirds the benefits of California (the mountains and the desert, minus the Pacific and the California coastal foothills) without the taxes.  I’m headed out to give a talk at Stanford Law School next week, and while terrifically excited to go talk about robots and war and grateful for the invite, I have serious regrets about not being able stay just long enough to drive over the Sierras.)

This week’s National Journal poll of political bloggers asked “What will be the top two issues in the midterm elections?” Enormous majorities on both the Left and the Right picked “Economy/jobs” as the expected top issue. On the Left, “health care reform” came in second, far ahead of the third-place “deficit/big government.” The issues of Afghanistan and Cap & Trade were very far behind. The picks on the Right were similar, expect that “deficit/government” was the choice for 2d place, with health care in third.

I wrote: “All these will be big, but the ballooning deficit and the unemployment rate will probably be of interest to the largest number of voters. Afghanistan/cap-and-trade/health care will probably motivate lots of base activists from both sides.”

The second question was “On balance, does the White House’s decision to take on Fox News help or hurt President Obama?” Eighty-seven percent of the Left, but only 18% of the Right thought it helped. I was among them: “It turns out that all those folks with ‘dissent is patriotic’ bumper stickers who worried about the president trying to shut down criticism were just a little ahead of their time. Obama’s stature is diminished in the short run, but Fox’s reporting is so harmful to the WH (Van Jones, Anita Dunn, etc.) that they may have figured some short-term cost is worth it if they can convince the more pliant folks in the MSM not to follow up those stories.”

The Fat Acceptance Movement may have a new hero. Tubby Republican nominee Chris Christie is now pushing back against imperially thin Democratic Governor Jon Corzine’s campaign theme making fun of Christie’s heft. Christie criticizes Corzine for his recent, implausible, assertions that Corzine never raised the weight issue: “If you’re going to do it, at least man up and say I’m fat...Afterwards he wusses out and says ‘no, no, no. I didn’t mean that I don’t know what you’re talking about.’ Man up. If you say I’m fat, I’m fat. Let’s go. Let’s talk about it.” Asked if a governor needs to set a good example, Christie retorts, “I am setting an example...We have to spur our economy. Dunkin Donuts, International House of Pancakes, those people need to work too.”

Smart move by Christie, since his sense of humor about himself softens his prosecutorial image (which independent candidate Chris Daggett has exploited in TV commercials) as an angry guy whose solution to everything is putting somebody in prison. For the still-undecided voters (a group which tends to be ill-informed about politics), Christie’s quips show him as a guy who knows who he is, and who does not take himself overly seriously, who admits his own weaknesses, and who has a sense of humor.

During Tuesday’s lunch program at CNBC, anchor Bill Griffith asked who was behind the demonstrations at the American Bankers Association meetings in Chicago. The answer is clear: SEIU and a coalition of organizations, many of which are related with ACORN or that have commonly partnered with ACORN over the years. 

A few weeks ago, I was solicited to participate in today’s demonstration by a robocall. (My guess is that I was selected because I am a registered Democrat –- perhaps also because I live in a zip code with a large African-American population and a history of ACORN-related organizing.) 

Given the option of endorsing the effort or learning more, I chose learning more. The robocall then revealed that I was being solicited by the SEIU Illinois Council. 

The phone call then directed me to a website run by a coalition that included several organizations related to ACORN or run by former ACORN officials. (In Illinois, for example, ACORN mostly shut down in 2008, with many of its members moving over to Action Now.) The head of SEIU Illinois Council (the group that took credit for my robocall) is Tom Balanoff, the labor leader who was so close to Obama that he was chosen as Blagojevich’s go-between in Blagojevich’s effort to shake down the Obama team. One of the improper proposals that Blagojevich floated was a job at Change to Win, another of the organizations that is sponsoring today’s demonstrations against bankers. Another sponsor is Citizen Action, the organization that received a large, suspicious payment from the Obama campaign. 

A week after the phone call, I received a letter in the mail that began:

Dear Voter:

Thank you for agreeing to join the thousands of people from around the country to tell the American Bankers Association—Enough is Enough!

Note that I did NOT agree to join and I did NOT give SEIU my address, but they probably got it from the voters list. (Given how they misrecorded my preferences, I hope that SEIU is not one of the groups that the Census has hired to record information on people for the 2010 Census.)

So who is behind today’s anti-banker demonstrations? It’s the usual suspects: primarily SEIU, other ACORN affiliated organizations, and groups that traditionally partnered with ACORN in its campaigns against banks.

Yet because of the closeness of the usual suspects to the Obama campaign and the Obama Administration, the more interesting question is: Did the White House put SEIU and other ACORN-related groups up to this? Given that ACORN and its partners have been demonstrating against banks for over a decade, I think that the answer is very probably “No.”

More at Malkin.

The Wall Street Journal has a new story from over the weekend on Democratic proposals, in Congress and the administration and from outside groups, to impose a tax on financial transactions (John D. McKinnon, Democrats Weigh Tax on Financial Transactions, WSJ, October 10, 2009):

Taxing financial transactions on Wall Street is gathering support in high places.

With federal budget deficits soaring, policy makers and other advocates are eyeing the huge sums that could be raised as a way to cover the costs of new initiatives.

Labor unions, in particular the AFL-CIO, have proposed a financial-transactions tax as a way to defray costs of a health-care overhaul. Lawmakers have discussed a similar fee as a way to cover the cost of future financial oversight. Liberal advocates are pushing the tax to pay for new stimulus spending.

Financial transactions taxes, whether on the US domestic level or the often-proposed international “Tobin tax,” are sometimes described simply as broad based revenue raisers, and sometimes described as ways of deliberately slowing down the movement and flow of capital.  As a revenue raiser, one current proposal operates this way:

This week, the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute floated the idea of a national transaction tax that would raise $100 billion to $150 billion a year. The tax, at a rate of 0.1% to 0.25% of the value of the trade, would be levied on all financial transactions such as stock trades, but not on consumer transactions such as with credit cards.

The money would be used initially to pay for temporary aid to states, hiring incentives for public– and private-sector employers and school construction money.

“We are in a difficult time right now, so people are looking at every opportunity to gain some revenue to fund” new initiatives, said Rep. Stephen Lynch (D., Mass.), a member of the House Financial Services Committee. “Because I was one of the first to suggest using this to fund [new] regulatory infrastructure, folks have come to me and said, ‘That’s a good idea; I’ve got a better one: Why don’t we use it for stimulus or especially health care?’”

One Democratic aide said the idea is under consideration among House leadership, though the discussions are preliminary.

It does sound like a dandy, relatively hidden revenue raiser — one that could generate vast sums of money relatively unnoticed, at least among ultimate ordinary consumers and taxpayers, who will not notice the long-term, collective hit to their pension funds and retirement funds which, anyway, they often do not directly manage.  However, taxing at the front end is generally considered more distorting than taxing at the back end, and a tax on simply engaging in transactions themselves is almost certainly more distorting, other things being equal, than a tax on the final net economic transaction.  Certainly less transparent to those who ultimately bear the tax.  And of course there are many questions of where the incidence of tax falls — after all, a huge percentage of these transactions involve people’s retirement funds, long term savings, pension plans, including those of the unions.  It is not just a bunch of plutocrats sitting around trading their stocks and bonds.

Hence a bit of bait and switch — when that point is raised, then the defense is offered that, well, after all, it is independently a good thing to slow down and make more expensive capital market transactions.  Capital flows too quickly and too fluidly as is, on this view; it needs to be slowed down, for its own sake, quite apart from the revenue raising.  The sand in the wheels of commerce is a good thing because the flow of funds is, if not precisely too efficient, then too volatile.  This was an argument heard particularly in the 1990s with respect to the global capital markets, around the various currency crises, the Mexican peso crisis of the early 1990s or the Asian crisis of the later 90s.  Of course, another bit of bait and switch was going on in those arguments as well — many of the Tobin tax supporters presented this as a desirable distortion of incentives, but actually were interested in the revenue, proposed as a way of funding international organizations starting with the UN.

Sometimes the transactions tax is coupled with the idea of exempting transactions that favor holding for some period of time — an anti-volatility, anti-rapid-turnover kind of rule; sometimes it is suggested that this will spare long-term retirement savings from the burden of the tax.  The problem is that the distortionary effects are not easily separated that way; the effects of economic distortion are not the same as the question of who pays the direct transaction tax.  The economic distortions are far less about whether I pay such taxes on my relatively infrequent trades in my retirement account and much more about whether the market as a whole is less efficient and so reduces the long run growth and value of my retirement account indirectly, irrespective of whether I, individually and directly, pay much in the way of the transactions taxes.

According to the article, leading Democrats such as Barney Frank are open to the idea.  The revenue needs, it seems, will be insatiable, and the distortions something like the indirect, hard to pin down, long-run effects of inflation.  But in the case of a domestic US transactions tax, of course there is something else to worry about.  There is no reason why financial transactions have to remain in American markets.  Other than efficiency, liquidity, depth, interconnectedness among financial markets, security, relatively good corporate and regulatory governance, transparency, low transaction costs, the neutral application of the rule of law to all comers.  Yes, the United States offers all those things, but it does not have a monopoly of them, obviously.  London offers all of that.  So do other places — mainland China does not, as yet, but Singapore does, and other places in the world.

Hard as it might be to imagine financial market transactions migrating from the US elsewhere, it has happened to many financial centers in the past and can happen to the US in the future.  The US has huge accumulated advantages in these areas, many of which are social, institutional, and political-legal cultural benefits that seem immutable and free-standing.   On the other hand, automotive Detroit seemed immutable and free-standing and the beneficiary of all those advantages for decades and decades — its political class decided to eat its seed corn, so to speak, and even once it was obvious where it was heading, decided to go with the flow and double-down the bet on ‘other taxpayers’ money’.  Maybe it will (continue to) work out for the best for the UAW and its labor allies, at the expense of the rest, but there are limits to even what the current administration can do for it.

This is not a declinist prediction.  It doesn’t have to be this way.  It is, rather, to observe that for the US now, actions to promote US decline are decisions taken today by the political class.  Decline-inducing decisions include making the US less attractive as a capital market center and leader, making transactions more expensive in order to favor current spending.

Does a complex welfare state need taxes?  Sure.  Transparent, widely shared, everybody pays something and everyone can see what they pay, so that everyone has a stake in the extent of taxing and spending, as visible and little distortionary as possible.  Thus almost the opposite direction to where the US tax code has drifted since the 1986 reform and even more so to where current proposals aim to go.  They tend to increase the rent-seeking possibilities of the political class and its ability to ‘get the juice’ from economic actors who must navigate the artificial shoals of regulations that aim to benefit particular constituencies and particular politicians.  VAT taxes flunk the transparency requirement, as do turnover taxes of this kind.  That is, of course, one reason why politicians love them.

Obama’s Nobel Prize brought to mind a vaguely remembered line in a novel by Thomas Bernhard (I think it was Wittgenstein’s Nephew but only because that is the only novel of his I remember reading) to the effect that nothing is as humiliating as being given a prize.  Bernhard was famously splenetic, as were the anti-heroes of his novels, but that line stuck in my head because it had the ring of truth.  Virtually everyone with any sense recognizes that Obama’s prize was an embarrassment, including Obama himself:

I do not feel that I deserve to be in the company of so many of the transformative figures who have been honored by this prize, men and women who’ve inspired me and inspired the entire world through their courageous pursuit of peace.

It’s one thing to be modest about one’s accomplishments, but few people who win prizes actually say they don’t deserve them.  In doing so, one casts doubt on the judgment of the prize committee and hence the merits of the other prize winners—which can only come across as a monstrous act of ingratitude—and diminishes oneself as well.  But Obama had no alternative; he could not claim that he deserved the prize because no one outside the prize committee believes that his accomplishments compare with those who have won it.  To accept the prize without qualification would come across as megalomania of the first order.  (Just imagine the ridicule and incomprehension that would have greeted any suggestion that Obama deserved the prize if it had been made by anyone prior to the announcement of the award.)

Obama did not reject the prize, of course.  His equivocal response—accepting the prize but declaring that he does not deserve to be in the company of the people who did deserve it, and treating it as a “call to action”—was bizarre in literal terms, but was politically a reasonable effort to squirm out of the dilemma imposed on him by the unworldly Norwegian politicians who put him to the choice of ingratitude or megalomania.

Few of us deserve prizes of any sort but we’re also spared the humiliation of having to announce our unworthiness to the world.  In Obama’s case, a further complication is that he is the president of the United States and, both in official and popular mythology, he’s a great and world-historical figure.  Just, by his own concession, not as great as Al Gore, Jimmy Carter, or Jody Williams, it turns out.

On the New York Times Caucus blog, John Harwood revealed that the Obama Administration is considering “a new package of tax cuts and other job creation measures.”

Privately, Mr. Obama’s economic advisers are sifting options for a new package of tax cuts and other job creation measures to be unveiled in next year’s State of the Union address — or earlier if pressure for action becomes irresistible.

On CNBC at about 1:01 ET, John Harwood explained his cryptic comments by saying that among the proposals being considered are “tax credits for new hires.”

Imagine you are a small businessperson thinking about adding an employee. Should you hire now — or wait until next February to see if you can get a tax credit for hiring that person.

If employers become like American car buyers waiting for the next round of industry rebates or government give-aways, then the employment picture will deteriorate further.

It’s not hard to see how to promote employment: lower FICA taxes for everyone — immediately.

The Obama UN speeches and appearances last week have caused some comment among conservatives along the lines of President Obama simply wanting the US to be ‘one among the guys’ of nations.  Andrew Ferguson picks up this notion in his Weekly Standard commentary this week, and it’s been around other places, too, including Richard Fernandez and other commentators.  I think it’s basically right, and is one of the basic motivations behind Obama administration proclamations of of “multilateralism.”  Multilateralism — well, I suspect a number of the world’s leaders (even if not their peoples so far), both our enemies and our friends, are drawing the correct conclusion that, to the Obama administration, it means ... to lay down the burdens, mouth the same words as everyone else, and quit having to bear the costs of providing the essentials of the global security system.  Go along, get along.  Iran might force a change of direction, but quite possibly not.

I’ve been talking about this for quite a while, in alas unread academic papers that languish in backwaters of the internet (SSRN, I mean), so you’ll just have to forgive me for quoting myself.  Note to everyone:  As with all my prose, the full papers are well worth reading.  Also a review-essay on the history of the United Nations that appeared in an excellent literary review, La Revista de Libros which, while very well circulated and the publisher of some of the finest literary prose in the contemporary Spanish language, does, however, publish out of Madrid and in Spanish:

Be wary, O Europe, above all, of liberal internationalist Americans bearing gifts of multilateralism.  An America that does not assert, rudely and brusquely, its own interests and views first through Nato and elsewhere, an America that sings sweet songs of multilateral interdependence is, surely, a superpower that has decided to simply go along with what everyone else does, which is another way of saying it has tired of supporting the free riders, which is another way of saying that it, too, says one thing but might do another, and what it might do is not show up when the big battalions are finally needed.

Prudent Europeans fear and do not trust, above all, an America that does not put its own interests first and carry the rest along in train.  Re-read Raymond Aron.  Europe will soon enough face an Iranian nuclear weapon along with its massive dependence upon Russian natural gas, even as its military strength declines yearly – hourly – and in important respects it is today at least arguably more dependent on the American security guarantee, not less, than at any time since 1990.

The broader point being that for all the talk about UN collective security, the reason anyone even talks about it is that it is, for much of the world, a fifth wheel on a broad, US security guarantee.  If you are European states, you can talk about UN collective security because you don’t need it and it isn’t truly your security guarantor.

Continue reading ‘They Made a Multilateralism and Called It Peace’ »

I have been surprised at some of the criticism of President Obama for going to Copenhagen to lobby for the Olympics. Few commentators bother noting that, had Obama NOT gone to Copenhagen, many would have been blamed him for Chicago’s losing its bid. 

Most of us would have quite reasonably — though erroneously — attributed at least Chicago’s elimination on the first ballot (if not necessarily its defeat) to his not attending.

And some critics might have called him arrogant for just “phoning it in” and assuming that merely sending the First Lady was all that was needed to wow the world. 

I read with great interest Eugene’s post below on the Obama administration, free speech, and human rights. As it happens, I’m trying to finish up a manuscript on the UN and “values” at this very moment, and so alas don’t have time to comment more than a few paragraphs about this. Here are a couple of observations that I don’t propose to defend here; I throw them out unsupported, and I’ll try to go back and add something else later.  Many of them are about the intellectual community of international law, which I take as relevant here in part because Eugene is trying to sort out what various international law experts say is or is not the import of the free speech drafts in the UN Human Rights Council; I think it matters to have a sense, even if it’s just my personal and idiosyncratic one, of the baseline of international law experts.  (I don’t promise that I have re-read this closely despite some aggressive characterizations here; I’m simply out of time.)

This whole process of “engagement” on an issue like free speech by the US at the HRC or anywhere else in the international system is a mistake from the beginning.  Among the many reasons is, first, that a process like that of the HRC is designed to lead to consensus, which in practice will mean some kind of compromise. But the whole point of freedom of speech under the First Amendment is that it is not open to compromise, and certainly not in the sense of elaborating standards from the outside for a sovereign people who govern themselves under a constitution.

Even to “engage” in the process, as a consequence, leads to tears no matter where it goes.  A compromise on the issue will inevitably mean that the first amendment is weakened in its substantive American understanding.  If the US engages in the process, however, but then does not accept the result, then it is understandably accused of negotiating in bad faith.

But that’s the consequence of a policy of “always, or nearly always, engage” with the UN or with international institutions.  There are certain institutions in which the US should always engage; the Security Council is one of them.  There are certain institutions or processes with which it should never engage and actively seek to undermine; Durban I and II come to mind.  The HRC is another institution with which engagement is a mistake, and an obvious one.  The decision to engage or not engage is one that by itself is an exercise in political capital.  I admit to finding unpersuasive the position of some (HRW made these arguments around Durban, but it is a fairly common trope) that

• (a) the US should always engage with UN institutions because engagement is an important symbolic act that shows US commitment to international institutions and
• (b) the US should not be concerned about always engaging with institutions or processes at the UN, because these are “merely” symbolic processes and one can always walk out, because as a realist matter no one can “make” the US do anything it doesn’t want.

This is looking to have it both ways.  Which is it to be?  Does symbolic engagement matter or doesn’t it? Continue reading ‘Globally Managing American Speech?’ »

Though I am a Chicagoan who is rooting for Rio — not Chicago — to win the 2016 Olympic bid, I think the criticism of President Obama for flying to Copenhagen to lobby the Olympic Selection Committee is silly. A modern president is working at least 16 hours most days (Reagan being the only exception I’m aware of). Whatever Obama’s strengths and shortcomings might be, loafing is not one of them. 

I think this travel criticism of Obama is about as ridiculous as the grief that George W. Bush used to get for going to his ranch in Texas for most of August.

The idea that you can’t travel and work used to be more common than it is today — and it reflected an earlier period when it was often impossible to do so.

I remember one December night in 1972 going to visit my (then future) wife’s maternal grandparents, the Ackermans, who lived on a farm between Freeport, IL (population about 30,000) and Rockford, IL (population about 140,000). 

They were both of German farm stock (Grandma Ackerman’s maiden name was also Ackerman, which means “farmer”), and German was the language used in their home in the 1920s. 

They worked long and hard on the farm and did little else. In the early 1970s, they had not been to Rockford, which was about 15 miles away, for several decades, and they had not been to Freeport, less than 10 miles away, for at least 5 years. They hated daylight savings time because (as Grandma Ackerman explained to me) it was bad for their cows.

That night, when their TV showed the face of Richard Nixon (whom I disliked), I asked Grandma Ackerman what she thought of him. She answered, “I guess that Nixon guy is OK, but every time I see him, he’s getting into a helicopter or walking off a plane. I wish he’d stay in one place and do a little work.”

In Grandma Ackerman’s world, someone who traveled a lot was neglecting his chores. In the world that Obama inhabits, however, travel is not a serious impediment to performing most of his duties. 

And if nonetheless Obama’s critics are correct and it slows down his legislative agenda, that wouldn’t be all bad, would it?

LA TIMES BLOG:

More than two years after Dan Rather filed a $70-million lawsuit against CBS for breach of contract and fraud, a New York Supreme Court appellate division has tossed out his claim.

The ruling, handed down today, dismissed Rather’s claims that CBS News broke his contract and committed fraud by sidelining him in the wake of a controversial story he reported about President George W. Bush’s Vietnam-era service in the Texas Air Guard. 

Here is much of the opinion:

CATTERSON, J.

This action asserting breach of contract and related tort claims arises out of a September 8, 2004 broadcast that plaintiff Dan Rather narrated on the CBS 60 Minutes II television program about then President George W. Bush’s service in the Texas Air National Guard. Rather alleges that CBS disavowed the broadcast after it was attacked by Bush supporters, and fraudulently induced him to apologize personally for the broadcast on national television as well as to remain silent as to his belief that the broadcast was true. Rather alleges that, following President Bush’s re-election, CBS informed him that he would be removed as anchor of the CBS Evening News. Rather claims that although his employment agreement required that, in the event he was removed as anchor, CBS would make him a regular correspondent on 60 Minutes or immediately pay all amounts due under the agreement and release him to work elsewhere, CBS kept him on the payroll while denying him the opportunity to cover important news stories until May 2006 when it terminated his contract, effective June 2006.

Rather commenced this action against CBS Corporation, Viacom Inc., and individual defendants Leslie Moonves, Sumner Redstone and Andrew Heyward in September 2007. He asserted, inter alia, claims of breach of contract and breach of fiduciary duty against CBS; claims of fraud against CBS and the individual defendants and a claim of tortious inducement of breach of contract against Viacom and the individual defendants.

Now, Rather appeals and defendants CBS Corporation and Viacom Inc. cross-appeal from orders entered by Supreme Court on April 11, 2008 and September 25, 2008, which granted defendants’ motion to dismiss the claims for fraud, breach of the implied covenant of good faith and fair dealing and tortious interference with contract, and denied defendants’ motion to dismiss the claims for breach of contract and breach of fiduciary duty.

For the reasons set forth below, this Court finds that the motion court erred in denying the defendants’ motion to dismiss the claims for breach of contract and breach of fiduciary duty, and [*3]therefore we find the complaint must be dismissed in its entirety. . . . 

At the outset, we find that Supreme Court erred in declining to dismiss Rather’s breach of contract claim against CBS. Rather alleges that he delivered his last broadcast as anchor of the CBS Evening News on March 9, 2005, and that, since he was only nominally assigned to 60 Minutes II and then 60 Minutes, he should have received the remainder of his compensation under the agreement in March 2005. Rather claims that, in effect, CBS “warehoused” him, and that, when he was finally terminated and paid in June 2006, CBS did not compensate him for the 15 months “when he could have worked elsewhere.” This claim attempts to gloss over the fact that Rather continued to be compensated at his normal CBS salary of approximately $6 million a year until June 2006 when the compensation was accelerated upon termination, consistent with his contract.

Contractually, CBS was under no obligation to “use [Rather’s] services or to broadcast any program” so long as it continued to pay him the applicable compensation. This “pay or play” provision of the original 1979 employment agreement was specifically reaffirmed in the 2002 Amendment to the employment agreement.

That Amendment also provided, in subparagraph 1(g), that if CBS removed Rather as anchor or co-anchor of the CBS Evening News and failed to assign him as a correspondent on 60 Minutes II or another mutually agreed upon position, the agreement would be terminated, Rather would be free to seek employment elsewhere, and CBS would pay him immediately the remainder of his weekly compensation through November 25, 2006.

We agree that subparagraph 1(g) must be read together with the subparagraph 1(f), which provided that if CBS removed Rather from the CBS Evening News, it would assign him to 60 Minutes II “as a full-time Correspondent,” and if 60 Minutes II were canceled, it would assign him to 60 Minutes as a correspondent “to perform services on a regular basis.” However, this construction does not render any language of the agreement inoperative, since, consistent with the “pay or play” clause, neither subparagraph 1(g) nor 1(f) requires that CBS actually use Rather’s services or broadcast any programs on which he appears, but simply retains the option of accelerating the payment of his compensation under the agreement if he is not assigned to [*4]either program.

It is clear that subparagraph 1(g) applies only to a situation where CBS removed Rather as anchor of CBS Evening News and then failed to assign him “as a Correspondent on 60 Minutes II.” The amended complaint alleges that when Rather no longer performed anchor duties at CBS, he was assigned to 60 Minutes II. Thus, Rather implicitly concedes that CBS fully complied with subparagraph 1(g).

Supreme Court erred in finding that subparagraph 1(g) modified the “pay or play” provision when it ignored the initial prefatory clause to the rest of that subparagraph, which states “[e]xcept as otherwise specified in this Agreement.” As the defendants correctly assert, the seven words are crucial because they require subparagraph 1(g) to be read together with the “pay or play” provision, and thus, subparagraph 1(g) cannot modify the “pay or play” provision to mean that CBS must utilize Rather in accordance with some specific standard by featuring him in a sufficient number or types of broadcasts. As the defendants aptly observed, “the notion that a network would cede to a reporter editorial authority to decide what stories will be aired is absurd.”

Rather’s claim for lost business opportunities due to CBS’s failure to release him to seek other employment is insufficiently supported. Since, according to Rather’s own allegations, an immediate result of the September 8, 2004 broadcast was criticism that he was biased against Bush, it would be speculative to conclude that any action taken by CBS would have alone substantially affected his market value at that time. Rather’s claim for damages for loss of reputation arising from the alleged breach of contract is not actionable. Dember Constr. Corp. v. Staten Is. Mall, 56 A.D.2d 768, 392 N.Y.S.2d 299 (1st Dept. 1977).

Rather’s cause of action for breach of fiduciary duty must also be dismissed. Supreme Court held that the issue of “whether a fiduciary duty has been created in the course of the long relationship between Rather and CBS is really a question of fact.” Previously, the court determined that “the length of [Rather’s] contractual relationship with [CBS], and the nature of the service that [Rather] performed under his contracts” created an issue of fact that could not be resolved on motion. This was error.

Rather claims that his “four-decade history” with CBS constituted a “special relationship that imposed fiduciary duties upon CBS toward [Rather].” The law in this Department, and indeed enunciated in every reported appellate-division-level case, is that employment relationships do not create fiduciary relationships. Simply put, “[the employer] did not owe plaintiff, as employee, a fiduciary duty.” . . . 

We affirm dismissal of Rather’s fraud claims against CBS and the individual defendants although we find that Supreme Court erred in its rationale for the dismissal as it also erred in rejecting the defendants’ other challenges to the fraud claim. . . . 

Rather alleges that various misrepresentations ( e.g., promises to publicly defend his reputation and to conduct an independent investigation into the 2004 broadcast, and assurances that CBS intended to use his talents fully and to extend his contract, which was due to expire on November 25, 2006) induced him to remain silent about his role in the broadcast and to remain with CBS, where he was allegedly “warehoused” until the completion of his contract. As a result, he alleges he suffered money and reputation damages. Relying on Rather’s well-footnoted appellate brief, this Court was already cognizant of his argument that, following the completion of his CBS contract, his compensation at HDNet was less than the $4 million a year established as an approximate market rate for comparable journalists. However, for reasons set forth here, this information was not required for our analysis, and the lack of it was not the reason for affirming dismissal. . . . 

Rather’s claim that, but for CBS’ fraud, he could have had more remunerative employment than that which he ultimately obtained at HDNet is unavailing. “[T]he loss of an alternative contractual bargain [...] cannot serve as a basis for fraud or misrepresentation damages because the loss of the bargain was undeterminable and speculative.’” Lama, 88 N.Y.2d at 422, [further citation omitted].

Rather claims, based on his value and the value of similar professionals in the industry, that he would have been paid $4 million annually from 2005 through 2010. However, while claiming that he had an “agreement-in-principle” with CBS in the summer of 2004 to extend his contract, he alleges in the amended complaint that he had an unwritten “proposal” that “contemplated” a contract extension, and the terms of the proposal were compensation of $4 million for the first 19 months and $2 million annually thereafter. Rather admits that, the broadcast and its aftermath aside, CBS was already contemplating that he would step down from the anchor position in 2006 and assume a reduced role. . . .

Even if Rather pled pecuniary loss sufficiently to satisfy the Lama standard, his claim would nonetheless fail. Although allegations that defendants made statements to the general public, for example, that they falsely blamed Rather for alleged errors in the broadcast, may constitute a defamation claim [citations omitted], they are time-barred. Furthermore, Rather’s claim of under-use merely recasts his breach of contract claim in terms of fraud. . . .

Even if Rather had alleged “a breach of duty which is collateral or extraneous to the contract between the parties” Krantz v Chateau Stores of Canada . . . , he failed to adequately allege damages.

To the extent Rather claims that he should have been released from the agreement earlier to pursue other opportunities, this claim is duplicative of his breach of contract claim. . . . Similarly, Rather’s claim for breach of the implied covenant of good faith and fair dealing was properly dismissed by Supreme Court for being duplicative of his breach of contract claim. . . . 

Finally, Supreme Court properly dismissed the claim of tortious interference with a contract as against CBS and Viacom. First, CBS asserts correctly that Viacom is not a proper party to this action. . . . Second, as to the claim against CBS, the court correctly applied the economic interest doctrine to dismiss this claim against the corporate defendant. . . . Rather’s bare allegations of malice do not suffice to bring the claim under an exception to the economic interest rule. . . . Since on appeal, Rather has not addressed his argument as to this cause of action to the individual defendants, we deem the argument abandoned. In any event, there is no particularized pleading of allegations that the acts committed by the individual corporate employees were either beyond the scope of their employment or motivated by their desire for personal gain. . . . 

Accordingly, the judgment of the Supreme Court, New York County (Ira Gammerman, J.H.O.), entered April 14, 2008, should be modified, on the law, to grant the motion to dismiss the causes of action for breach of contract and breach of fiduciary duty, and otherwise affirmed, with costs. Judgment, same court and J.H.O., entered September 30, 2008, dismissing the amended complaint as against Viacom, Inc. and dismissing the causes of action for fraud and tortious interference with contract as against CBS Corporation, and bringing up for review an order, same court and J.H.O., entered September 23, 2008, which granted CBS and Viacom’s motion to the extent it sought to dismiss the causes of action for fraud and tortious interference with contract and denied the motion to the extent it sought to dismiss the cause of action for breach of fiduciary duty, should be modified, on the law, to dismiss the remaining causes of action against CBS, and otherwise affirmed, with costs. Plaintiff’s appeals from the aforesaid orders should be dismissed, without costs, as subsumed in the appeals from the respective judgments. The Clerk is directed to enter judgment in favor of [*9]defendant CBS dismissing the amended complaint as against it.

All concur.

[UPDATE: Note that Rather was still claiming that the false CBS story was true. I have not seen anything yet on whether Rather will appeal to the New York Court of Appeals, but it won’t surprise me if he does.]

When I was running university film societies in the 1970s and early 1980s, I considered Roman Polanski’s Chinatown the best film made in the 1970s. I don’t know what I would think today because I haven’t seen it for three decades. And I still consider Rosemary’s Baby one of the best horror movies ever made.

I mention this because good artists are not necessarily good people and bad people are not necessarily bad artists. 

The first writer I encountered who explored this issue was George Orwell in his essay on Dali. The essay is also memorable because its second sentence contains one of Orwell’s most resonant ideas: “any life when viewed from the inside is simply a series of defeats.” 

Notes on Dali

George Orwell

Autobiography is only to be trusted when it reveals something disgraceful. A man who gives a good account of himself is probably lying, since any life when viewed from the inside is simply a series of defeats. However, even the most flagrantly dishonest book (Frank Harris’s autobiographical writings are an example) can without intending it give a true picture of its author. Dali’s recently published Life [The Secret Life of Salvador Dali (The Dial Press, 1942)] comes under this heading. Some of the incidents in it are flatly incredible, others have been rearranged and romanticised, and not merely the humiliation but the persistent ordinariness of everyday life has been cut out. Dali is even by his own diagnosis narcissistic, and his autobiography is simply a strip-tease act conducted in pink limelight. But as a record of fantasy, of the perversion of instinct that has been made possible by the machine age, it has great value.

Here, then, are some of the episodes in Dali’s life, from his earliest years onward. Which of them are true and which are imaginary hardly matters: the point is that this is the kind of thing that Dali would have liked to do.

When he is six years old there is some excitement over the appearance of Halley’s comet:

* Suddenly one of my father’s office clerks appeared in the drawing-room doorway and announced that the comet could be seen from the terrace.... While crossing the hall I caught sight of my little three-year-old sister crawling unobtrusively through a doorway. I stopped, hesitated a second, then gave her a terrible kick in the head as though it had been a ball, and continued running, carried away with a ‘delirious joy’ induced by this savage act. But my father, who was behind me, caught me and led me down in to his office, where I remained as a punishment till dinner-time.” 

A year earlier than this Dali had “suddenly, as most of my ideas occur,” flung another little boy off a suspension bridge. Several other incidents of the same kind are recorded, including (this was when he was twenty-nine years old) knocking down and trampling on a girl “until they had to tear her, bleeding, out of my reach.”

When he is about five he gets hold of a wounded bat which he puts into a tin pail. Next morning he finds that the bat is almost dead and is covered with ants which are devouring it. He puts it in his mouth, ants and all, and bites it almost in half.

When he is an adolescent a girl falls desperately in love with him. He kisses and caresses her so as to excite her as much as possible, but refuses to go further. He resolves to keep this up for five years (he calls it his “five-year plan”), enjoying her humiliation and the sense of power it gives him. He frequently tells her that at the end of the five years he will desert her, and when the time comes he does so.

. . . When he first meets his future wife, Gala, he is greatly tempted to push her off a precipice. He is aware that there is something that she wants him to do to her, and after their first kiss the confession is made:

* I threw back Gala’s head, pulling it by the hair, and trembling with complete hysteria, I commanded: “Now tell me what you want me to do with you! But tell me slowly, looking me in the eye, with the crudest, the most ferociously erotic words that can make both of us feel the greatest shame!”

* Then Gala, transforming the last glimmer of her expression of pleasure into the hard light of her own tyranny, answered: “I want you to kill me!”

He is somewhat disappointed by this demand, since it is merely what he wanted to do already. He contemplates throwing her off the bell-tower of the Cathedral of Toledo, but refrains from doing so.

. . . Of course, in this long book of 400 quarto pages there is more than I have indicated, but I do not think that I have given an unfair account of his moral atmosphere and mental scenery. It is a book that stinks. If it were possible for a book to give a physical stink off its pages, this one would — a thought that might please Dali, who before wooing his future wife for the first time rubbed himself all over with an ointment made of goat’s dung boiled up in fish glue. But against this has to be set the fact that Dali is a draughtsman of very exceptional gifts. He is also, to judge by the minuteness and the sureness of his drawings, a very hard worker. He is an exhibitionist and a careerist, but he is not a fraud. He has fifty times more talent than most of the people who would denounce his morals and jeer at his paintings. And these two sets of facts, taken together, raise a question which for lack of any basis of agreement seldom gets a real discussion.

The point is that you have here a direct, unmistakable assault on sanity and decency; and even — since some of Dali’s pictures would tend to poison the imagination like a pornographic postcard — on life itself. What Dali has done and what he has imagined is debatable, but in his outlook, his character, the bedrock decency of a human being does not exist. He is as anti-social as a flea. Clearly, such people are undesirable, and a society in which they can flourish has something wrong with it. . . . 

But if you talk to the kind of person who can see Dali’s merits, the response that you get is not as a rule very much better. If you say that Dali, though a brilliant draughtsman, is a dirty little scoundrel, you are looked upon as a savage. If you say that you don’t like rotting corpses, and that people who do like rotting corpses are mentally diseased, it is assumed that you lack the æsthetic sense. Since “Mannequin rotting in a taxicab” is a good composition. And between these two fallacies there is no middle position, but we seldom hear much about it. On the one side Kulturbolschewismus: on the other (though the phrase itself is out of fashion) “Art for Art’s sake.” Obscenity is a very difficult question to discuss honestly. People are too frightened either of seeming to be shocked or of seeming not to be shocked, to be able to define the relationship between art and morals.

It will be seen that what the defenders of Dali are claiming is a kind of benefit of clergy. The artist is to be exempt from the moral laws that are binding on ordinary people. Just pronounce the magic word “Art,” and everything is O.K.: kicking little girls in the head is O.K. . . . It is also O.K. that Dali should batten on France for years and then scuttle off like rat as soon as France is in danger. So long as you can paint well enough to pass the test, all shall be forgiven you.

One can see how false this is if one extends it to cover ordinary crime. In an age like our own, when the artist is an altogether exceptional person, he must be allowed a certain amount of irresponsibility, just as a pregnant woman is. Still, no one would say that a pregnant woman should be allowed to commit murder, nor would anyone make such a claim for the artist, however gifted. If Shakespeare returned to the earth to-morrow, and if it were found that his favourite recreation was raping little girls in railway carriages, we should not tell him to go ahead with it on the ground that he might write another King Lear. 

This week’s National Journal poll of political bloggers asked “What is the most likely outcome of President Obama’s health care reform initiative?” Ninety-three percent of the Left and 82 percent of the Right expected either “major” or “scaled back” legislation to be enacted in 2009. The Left was roughly split between major and scaled back. I was part of the only 12% on the Right who expect some major. I wrote: “‘Scaled back’ in the sense of no public option. The legislation will still impose huge, and mostly harmful, changes on American health care.”

The second question asked for a grade on President Obama’s foreign policy so far. The Left gave him a B, while the Right awarded a D-.  I voted for D, and explained: “From Poland to Israel to Iran to Honduras, the President has made it clear that it is safer to be America’s enemy than its friend. His crackdown on the pro-democracy government in Honduras for obeying the Honduran Constitution, and his active support for Zelaya, who is trying to become another Castro/Chavez, is despicable. Obama is much more popular than Bush among Belgians and many other Western Europeans, but Obama has been unable to translate that popularity into any results for American diplomacy.”

[Note to commenters: It appears to me that comments have to be specifically approved before they become visible. There are several comments which I have “approved”, but which are not displaying. I don’t know what the problem is. Presumably we eventually figure out how to use WordPress. ]