Extended Phenotype

This blog is on hiatus...join me on Facebook

I realized today that I hadn't written anything here in months. There's a reason; basically the critical mass of my friends are all on Facebook and we talk to each other there. I invite you to join me there, if you're not already on....

Guest Post: What I'd Say to President-elect Obama If I Had the Chance

A friend (who we'll call EC) and I were talking about what I thought Obama should tell us later today, and she offered another perspective.  With permission, I'm reprinting her words to ensure that her perspective has an audience, too, however small (since I couldn't quite swing CNN airtime today...).

Here's what EC had to say:

-----

Sometime after my friend Mark and I talked today, I started
coming down with something.  I now have a high fever and I feel like I'm
going to collapse.  But still I toil on at my desk.

I toil on because I'm afraid to lose my job.  I toil on because I'm afraid
to lose my insurance.  I toil on, because I'm afraid for my daughter and
myself - that we will be without food, without access to health care,
without somewhere to live without this job.

I toil on, despite the fact this nation is a nation of taking chances,
despite the fact that I have a brain full of great business ideas that
should be launched.

I toil on, despite the fact that this nation was founded on bootstrapping
and the entrepreneurial spirit and starting things and shaking things up.

I toil on, because somewhere at home, my baby is playing or sleeping or
crying or pooping, or doing any number of the adorable things that she
does, secure in the knowledge that her bottle will always be full; secure
in the knowledge that we'll always be able to go to the doctor if we have
to.  Because I have good insurance at my job - even if the bacon isn't fat
here, it's still a slice, it's our slice, the slice that we need.

That's what I'd say to Obama.  Then I'd add:  universal health care would
help me to be able to take the entrepreneurial risks that made this
country what it is.  Without little people like me bootstrapping ourselves
into something bigger, we are nothing.

That's what I'd say.

If I had a chance.

An Open Letter to the President-elect On the Eve of Inauguration

President-elect Obama: 

I'm an ordinary citizen, perhaps a bit more politically involved than average, and a supporter of yours since the moment you gave that fateful speech in 2004.  You brought the possibility of idealism back to politics after its long slumber during my adulthood.  After a long and grueling primary campaign, during which skeptics daily doubted your ability to secure the nomination, and supporters like me mostly held their breath, you showed yourself to be a serious candidate for this job. 

And on the campaign trail, you confounded the pundits who said you couldn't talk about substance, and could only talk in platitudes and airy phrases.  But your mixture of idealism and pragmatism won the day, as did your competence in fundraising and running a campaign.

And now, you have the job. 

Early indications are that you fully understand the gravity of the situation.  Your speech at George Mason on the economy resonated with seriousness of purpose, and more than a few direct echoes of Frankin Delano Roosevelt's First Inaugural Address, given during the depths of the fiscal crisis as the Depression deepened. 

As an American and long-time supporter of your fitness for this job, I ask only a few things of you.

1.  Clearly and honestly explain the situation to your country.  Demand more of us, as we demand the world of you. 

2.  Be honest about your mistakes.  Don't fear the polls, and keep your eyes on how Americans traditionally behaved:  we admire people more when they can admit their mistakes and then go fix them, than we do any amount of skill in hiding the truth.

3.  Don't lose your principles.  You've got the toughest job on the planet as of noon tomorrow, and the temptation to use your power in ways you yourself deplore and have decried on the floor of the Senate and campaign trail will be overwhelming.  Don't give in.  I can't think of anybody I'd entrust more with this responsibility than perhaps Lincoln or FDR, and they're not available anymore. 

4.  Maintain your idealism, and keep creating it in all of us.  What will get us through the next four years successfully is to not let the idealism fade, especially in the face of all that will happen to us in the next year or two, economically.  We need to believe, and the economy needs us to believe, and we need each other to believe.  And we need you to keep helping us believe.

Do these things, Mr. President-elect, and you'll keep the hearts and minds of Americans.  And as we now know to our pain and chagrin, that bond of trust is critical, and has been missing for far too long between the People and their chosen representatives. 

For too long we've had government of the people, without as much government by the people as we should have, and nowhere near enough government for the people. 

Please, Mr. President-elect, restore the balance.  Thank you.

What President-elect Obama Should Say In His First Inaugural

I’ve been thinking a great deal lately about what President-Elect Obama should say in his First Inaugural Address tomorrow. As with many Americans are in these difficult days, Franklin Delano Roosevelt has been occupying my thoughts as I think ahead to what the change in leadership will bring. As the depths of the economic crisis and the true scale of the “bailouts” and economic stimulus needed have become clear (but by no means completely known), the only American presidents who faced a “modern” economy in such deep crisis were Herbert Hoover and Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

And regardless of what you believe finally ended the Great Depression—whether you believe it was FDR’s New Deal and the buildup to WWII, or the natural regrowth of the economy creating demand which finally exceeded supply, or a bit of both—it is clear that Hoover’s response to economic crisis was tepid and grudging, and FDR promised firm, activist leadership in the face of crisis.

And that activism and energy played a major role in creating momentum and preventing loss of confidence among the banks and investors that require an intricate web of confidence. Confidence in each other’s ability to make good on loans or contracts. Confidence in the ability of business debtors that they will be able to maintain and grow their customer base. Confidence in the ability of those customers to keep their jobs and pay their bills and mortgages.

To the extent that confidence-building worked in the early 1930’s, it was largely FDR himself who managed to bolster the confidence and optimism of the people, while a new cabinet and executive branch filled with America’s best and brightest tried experiment after experiment, argument after argument, to give business and financial leaders the confidence that their investments in growth would be matched by each other’s consumption and slowly increasing spending by consumers.

The situation we face, as everyone seems to grasp somewhere deep within ourselves, is very similar, and requires the same careful husbandry of confidence and optimism in order to kickstart our economy. In preparing some fundraising remarks earlier this fall, I read the early speeches and fireside addresses by FDR. His First Inaugural speech is amazing, and every American who watched President-Elect Obama’s speech at George Mason last week on the economy was watching a modernization and an invocation of that fateful speech.

And my reading of FDR’s great speeches, which did so much to motivate and lead us out of panic and despair in the early days of 1933, led me to wonder what Obama should say to us in his First Inaugural next
week.

The following is my list of things Obama should tell the American people later today.

1. President-elect Obama should explain to us the intricate web of confidence that ties together our economy, and explain in terms that non-economists can understand how it works so that the people will be able to lend their informed support to the plans now being made in Washington. We do not understand the various bailouts and stimulus packages and how they actually lead to the desired result. Please clarify it, because it sounds like we only get one shot at this and we need to get it right.

2. Obama should make it clear that we are not abandoning the principles of commerce and trade, nor are we becoming “socialists” simply because we believe that some problems are bigger than private resources can solve. We’re all believers in free enterprise now, but sometimes the free enterprise system needs collective action and a concerted effort from everyone.

3. And he should make it clear that this ”help from everyone” to kickstart our economy really means that every American plays a crucial role. President-elect Obama should make a patriotic call to stimulate local and regional economic activity, and not just wait for the big multi-national corporations to recover. This will create jobs and get money and local loans flowing again, even if global trade and large, global companies take longer to stabilize.

4. The president-elect should make it clear that investment in America is the patriotic thing to do, and that rebuilding our economy not only helps us, and our children, but the world. Our humanitarian and democratic outreach to the world, our environmental concerns, and our ability to address problems elsewhere in addition to those at home, depends crucially on a healthy economy. America’s place in the world, and our ability to be a force for change and for good, depends on getting back to sound financial and business shape.

5. And he should outline the nature of his plan and promise a series of regular discussions with the American people, in the spirit of FDR’s fireside chats but with the full force of modern media and communications, to ensure that all of us understand the situation, how each measure is designed to work and how we intend to use our scarce resources wisely and avoid waste. And that we understand how we’re progressing, and where we still need work. Treat the people like partners in this enterprise, not “interest groups,” or “demographics” to be polled. Mobilize us for action, as FDR did, and we’ll respond in kind.

6. And finally, President-elect Obama should call upon us all to temporarily put aside the issues that divide us in other ways; social issues, differences in economic approach, and issues of ideology. Not because these aren’t central to our political life and deserve democratic debate and discussion, but because right now, as in the 1930’s and 1940’s, we have serious issues that we need to come together and solve, with one voice, as one people.

And that is what I think President-elect Obama should say to the American people

Thoughts on the Anniversary of Carl Sagan's Death, part 3

It's become an annual tradition of sorts for me to commemorate Carl Sagan's death, which occurred eight years ago today. I celebrate his life and the contribute he made to my past, present, and future, and to all of us through his writing, his scientific career, and most especially through Cosmos, and the Pale Blue Dot. 

I listen, as I often do throughout the year, to his words in Pale Blue Dot, either as he spoke them or in one of the many tributes which have circulated online. 

This year I believe we have cause for optimism as the public profile of science seems to rise in prominence from its recent lows during the Bush Administration.  President-elect Obama has nominated Steven Chu and and John Holdren to cabinet and key staff positions within his team, putting real scientific experience into high-level policy and administrative positions.  Of course, Chu and Holdren face massive and entrenched opposition to real movement on climate change, stem cell research, and a host of other issues.  And the incoming administration as a whole is hamstrung by a global economic crisis.  But our hope in the return of science and expertise to the White House is not a false hope, because as the song goes, hope is never false. 

Despite hope, as Carl Sagan often reminded us, most realms of culture are not self- or error-correcting by nature.   Common sense, religion, and politics are realms in which hopeful belief, unsupported supposition, benign ignorance, and outright self-deception can lie uncorrected for years, centuries, or millenia.  It takes a specific type of thinking, a specific type of argument, self-applied standards of evidence, and the willingness to be wrong in order to escape, however briefly, the spectrum from blind faith through outright self-deception.  But it does happen, as Carl wrote:

"In science it often happens that scientists say, “You know that’s a really good argument; my position is mistaken,” and then they actually change their minds and you never hear that old view from them again. They really do it. It doesn’t happen as often as it should, because scientists are human and change is sometimes painful. But it happens every day. I cannot recall the last time something like that happened in politics or religion."

Whether it really will transpire that some of the good aspects of science will merge with politics in the upcoming administration, whether Obama will have time, will, or support for informed policy-making, or the political will and capital to spend in making informed policy-making into the law of the land, remains to be seen.

But hope is never false, and Carl Sagan would have loved to see the return of expertise and science to a place of respect and potentially even power in our public discourse.  Sagan was also fond of saying that "science is a collaborative enterprise, spanning the generations.  When it permits us to see the far side of some new horizon, we think of those who came before, seeing for them as well."

As we move into the next few years, those who care about expertise, evidence, and rationality in policy and public deliberation will have to see for Sagan, who sadly left us well before he should.  Well before we stopped needing his voice, saying so clearly what many of us need to hear.

Election hangover...

Happy Thanksgiving to all!

I'm sitting drinking coffee in what will be one of the last completely quiet moments for the next few days.  In a couple of hours friends and family will start arriving for two days of Thanksgiving food and fun.  In a few minutes I'll start preparing a few things, even though we're going to Steps tonight for Madden's island Thanksgiving and saving the "big" traditional dinner at my place for tomorrow.

But for now, the coffee is hot and strong, and the mountains of the Canadian coast range are visible to the north, with hints of blue sky to the west past Speiden Island.  It's a perfect autumn morning in the Northwest, at least from my perspective, and I'm thrilled to be home to enjoy it.  It's been a whirlwind few weeks since the election and it's not going to get any less busy between now and Christmas. 

I bought a cider press this fall and have plenty of apples from C's orchard here on the island, and many more from Rebecca Moore's terrific farm (Blue Moon Farm) on Waldron Island. I still have plenty left to press, but the cider thus far is sweet, deeply flavored, but with great tartness and acidity.  I've frozen a gallon already and hope to press-gang my friends into helping me squeeze more this weekend. 

I'll write more soon, but I just wanted to say Happy Thanksgiving to everyone reading out there.  Enjoy the day with friends and family!

It's Election Day...

I haven't gone to bed yet, feeling a bit of insomnia tonight.  It's November 4th, and in a few hours the polls will open back east.  The impression that a starter's gun will go off and kick off voting is a bit of an illusion; many, including myself, voted days or weeks ago.  But the sensation of pent-up energy and release persists, because despite early voting and absentee ballots it really all does come down to today. 

Unless something very inexplicable is wrong with the polls (not exit polls, the national and state polls), there's every chance that in sixteen hours we'll be seeing the United States of America elect its first African-American president, and by extension its first president who wasn't a white male.  At the same time we're also possibly electing a direct successor to Franklin Delano Roosevelt, in the sense that we're electing a Democrat in the face of a widening and deepening economic crisis and recession-threatening-depression.   

I'll have more to say when and if this happens, but suffice it to say that tonight  might witness the civil rights movement unify with New Deal economic policy in a way that has not occurred since Lyndon Johnson's "Great Society." 

This is a tall order, and none of us know whether Barack Obama can lead us towards something as significant as that.  The signs are improving.  At this point, however, all we can do is hope. 

Tomorrow, there will be much to think about, and much to participate in, and much to do.   In the coming weeks after the election I hope to elaborate on what I think it will take. Today,  I'll hold my breath with the rest of the country and await our collective democratic decision as a free society. 

But there's more than just hope here.  I feel something stronger coming on, when I talk to people.  Obama's will not be an ordinary presidency, just as it has not been an ordinary campaign. 

And later today, we make that possibility real. 

Congratulations, Democrats!

No, I'm not congratulating us on victory, it's too soon for that.  But before we head into tomorrow, I wanted to stop and reflect on how well we've done as a party this year. 

From historic candidacies to a bitter and hard-fought nomination battle, record fundraising and organizing, to effective use of the media, we've done well.  Democrats did not fall apart after the bitter and divisive nomination fight between Sen. Clinton and Sen. Obama, as many predicted.  Apart from a very small minority, the party as a whole put the battle behind us and unified behind our candidate. 

But the thing I'm most proud of -- whatever happens tomorrow -- is how hard we've fought and how well Sen. Obama has campaigned.  We've contributed and volunteered in record numbers, and the Obama campaign has used this unprecedented war chest to force the Republican Party to use their resources to defend their "safe" ground. 

I was tickled pink to learn that the Obama campaign was putting the heat on in Arizona last week; nobody really thinks Obama is competitive there, but it's close enough that the strategy forced Sen. McCain to spend resources badly needed in true "swing" states in order not to lose his home state.  And everywhere else in the country, the Republicans are on the defensive, trying desperately to prevent tomorrow from becoming a 1932-style rout and realignment. 

So whatever happens tomorrow, and I'm not making any predictions, I'm proud of Democrats this year.  We finally got inspired, and got mad, and it shows.  We're fighting like the scrappy champions of the middle and lower classes that we should be.   Onward to Inauguration Day!

Liberalism, Capitalism, and the Bailout Plan

The historical parallels between today's financial crisis and the breakdown of banks and credit markets in 1933 are difficult to escape, from where we sit today.  Unlike the autumn of 1932, however, the "old order" is not spent and broken, but continues to urge continuation of the failed policies which led us to the current position.  House Republicans today, unlike 1932-33, are working against the extraordinary measures required in order to stabilize the financial basis of our economy.  But in both cases, the rhetoric is the same:  a bailout plan indicates that Democrats and the Administration lack faith in free markets and leap eagerly toward socialism at the first sign of crisis. 

Such rhetoric is misguided at best, and downright duplicitous at worst.  But it arises because we're a month away from Election Day, and Congress is listening to constituents who oppose "bailing out Wall Street."  I leave it to others, far better equipped than I, to defend the bailout bill itself.  I simply note that I support the bill and additional measures needed to ensure that we do not doom ourselves to repeat history simply because we don't remember the lessons of 1932-1933 clearly enough. 

Instead, my goal here is to examine the basics of the "free markets" argument used by Senator Bunning and others.  Far from creeping socialism, today's bailout plan is action in the best traditions of a commercial republic and market liberalism, as brought into the 20th century by Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal.

Among the most persistent narratives in modern politics is the idea that liberalism lost its way in the early 20th century, betrayed its roots and principles, and was supplanted by the welfare state philosophy that now bears its name. "True liberals," as the narrative runs, decry the socialism of the New Deal, and keep the flame of limited government, free markets, and individual liberty alive as libertarians and small-government conservatives. Variants of this story drove the tax revolts of the late 1970's and the "Reagan Revolution," as well as contemporary efforts such as Grover Norquist's anti-tax crusade. Democrats and Republicans alike seem to accept this narrative, which has come to structure much of the current attack on New Deal-era social programs and progressive politics in general.  Senator Bunning, and others in the House, make use of this argument in opposing the current plan. 

The "lost liberalism" narrative derives, in part, from twentieth century commentators like Joseph Schumpeter and Milton Friedman. In particular, Friedman set up the "dilemma" of modern liberalism by placing liberty and equality at odds:

The [classical] liberal will therefore distinguish sharply between equality of rights and equality of opportunity, on the one hand, and material equality or equality of outcome on the other...At this point, equality comes sharply into conflict with freedom; one must choose. One cannot be both an egalitarian, in this sense, and a [classical] liberal.

But is this true? Progressive liberals should consider the possibility that the "lost liberalism" narrative is an oversimplified history, verging on myth. If the dominant narrative is a myth, or fails at the very least to capture the whole truth about "classical" and "modern" liberalism, then the attack on New Deal liberalism by small-government conservatives loses much of its moral force and intellectual basis.  As does opposition to the current bailout plan, if the plan is properly structured.

We might start disassembling the "lost liberalism" narrative by noting a significant difference between the richness of classical liberal writers versus the narrowness and relative aridity of "modern classicals" such as Friedman and Friedrich Hayek. Hayek, in his Constitution of Liberty, defines liberalism as an anti-statist philosophy incorporating limited government and exclusively protecting so-called "negative" rights -- protections afforded citizens against government action. Yet we find classical theorists far more balanced in their view towards state power. Montesquieu, in The Spirit of the Laws, imagined that sovereign state power was crucial to guaranteeing freedom from traditional forms of oppression, including private injustice among citizens. No less a capitalist icon than Adam Smith agreed, as did James Madison when he wrote in Federalist No. 51:

It is of great importance in a republic not only to guard the society against the oppression of its rulers, but to guard one part of society against the injustice of the other part.

Classical liberals were concerned about more than individual liberty from government power; at the core of liberalism is a concern about concentrated power -- any power -- and its effects on human freedom. This concern naturally causes liberals to favor limited government and the rule of law, but it should also keep liberals from treating private economic power as "natural" and beyond concern. The latter concern, however, is explicitly off limits in the narrow version of liberalism on offer by modern libertarians and would-be inheritors of the liberal tradition.

In defending the narrowing of liberalism to protection of private property and free markets, "modern classical" liberals draw upon the deep defense of property and the market offered by Madison and others. Yet the defense of private property offered by Hume, Locke, and others is far from absolute, despite the modern libertarian rhetoric to the contrary. Locke, for example, wrote that "In Governments the Laws regulate the right of property, and the possession of land is determined by positive constitutions." (Two Treatises on Government, vol. II, 50). Madison's defense of private property also displayed large doses of pragmatism; if property owners are not protected from fellow citizens as well as the government, they will not willingly cooperate in self-rule (Federalist No. 10). Nor does the "market" fare any better in comparisons between classical and modern writers. Neither Locke nor even Adam Smith fetishized the market to the degree seen in Friedman's Capitalism and Freedom. If anything, the emergence of commercial markets and free trade were seen as a means of redistributing wealth away from landed aristocracies and systems of primogeniture which virtually guaranteed noble monopolies on land and wealth.

And in the latter example we see liberalism in its original historical context. The Founders were using the power of republican government and commercial trade to assault ancient tyrannies. Markets were good because they opened the economy to all citizens, regardless of station or inheritance. Limited government was good because it prevented the abuses of public power seen in aristocratic societies and absolute monarchies. Redistribution, in those days, was considered a fine goal if it meant redistributing wealth from those who had wielded it as power for centuries.

As the influence of the ancient tyrannies on political thinkers waned, new threats became uppermost in the mind of many liberals. The development of social democracy and outright socialism in Europe caused a hardening of laissez-faire commitments among late nineteenth century liberal theorists. It is possible to trace much of the "modern classical" view of liberalism, and the liberalism characteristic of European political parties, to this era. Yet liberals in America continued to respond in innovative ways to new threats. In particular, the American experience of capitalist monopolies in the Gilded Age caused a resurgence of the ancient concern over the tyranny of unchecked private power. Rapid industrialization and rapid immigration-led population growth resulted in massive shifts in income disparities, of a type never before seen in America. The former reality of small business, family ownership, and individual effort were replaced within several generations by massive corporations, concentrations of private wealth and power, and the typical abuses seen in their pursuit. And liberalism did not stand still. One sees reactions to abuses of private power beginning with the Populist movements after the Civil War, continuing in the Progressive Era and achieving real power during the New Deal. The result, as we see today, is twofold.

Regulatory capitalism is designed to provide protection against the enormous distortions that concentrated economic power can create in the market. And welfare liberalism aims to provide a decent minimum to those who are the losers in what has become the only economic game in town. Both were designed to preserve a liberal, market-based society, from a new kind of aristocracy on the one hand, and from popular revolt on the other.  Both are also designed, as we see today, to prevent collapse of basic institutions and infrastructure -- such as banks -- from abuses or mistakes of the private individuals who run them.  Such protection isn't designed to protect the individuals who run our financial institutions, but to protect the customers, investors, and other businesses who rely upon "Wall Street" in order to maintain the rest of our commerce, markets, and economy.  We are in the current mess, as most folks now agree, precisely because regulatory capitalism has been systematically gutted by Senator Bunning and "free market fundamentalists" over the last 40 years. 

I began this essay by pointing out that the New Deal is often portrayed as the moment where classical, or "true" liberalism was lost in America. My aim has been to show that if the New Deal is a departure from anything, it is a departure only from modern free-market fundamentalism, or of the extreme laissez-faire version of liberalism popular among elites in the Gilded Age. Progressives own a proud, and yes, liberal narrative stretching from John Locke through James Madison to Franklin Roosevelt. And I suggest that if we hope to seize control of the modern political narrative, we start by reclaiming our past, and stamping out the notion that liberalism took a detour in 1932.

For the essence of liberalism, and especially progressive liberalism, is not private property, representative government, markets, or any specific scheme of rights. Each is merely a method for reaching a goal, and each method has been crucial at various points in our history. None should be considered uppermost, but neither should any be considered obsolete. The essence of liberalism is the search for a politics in which liberty and equality are sufficently balanced so as to avoid the danger of the many absolutisms which threaten us, whether public or private. For only by avoiding absolutism in all its forms can we achieve, preserve, and defend the liberty and security to which we aspire.

We can start this conceptual revolution by helping support the current efforts of Democrats and the Administration to stabilize and support our financial institutions.  And by doing so using the rhetoric and arguments provided by one of our greatest presidents, Franklin Delano Roosevelt.  I recommend sharing the texts of FDR's First Inaugural Address and his nomination acceptance speech, given as the Depression and banking crisis deepened and the nation slid towards chaos and revolt.  Roosevelt's words, promising action and a "New Deal for the American  people," are more relevant today than at any other time since the dark days of 1932-1933.  Share them with friends.  Read more about the plan to stabilize the financial sector, and consider the parallels to 1932-1933 carefully.  And then contact your Senators and Representatives and let them know you stand ready to defend our country in the best traditions of both capitalism and liberalism.

(several portions of this essay are derived from a previous post on the now-unavailable Progressive Commons website; given the current crisis I felt it was time to revise that argument and highlight its relevance to the current crisis)