by Carl Ballard — ,
– This is a horrible story, but it did get respectable news organizations to say “Pussy Riot.”
– On the one hand, I don’t care about the Republicans on a junket in the Sea of Galilee boozing it up and skinny dipping. On the other hand, if it were a bunch of Democrats.
– Pro life
by Carl Ballard — ,
[I’m reading and doing some metacommentary on Mitt Romney’s book. Enjoy, or skip over it: it’s a free country.]
I don’t know if Mitt Romney still thinks global warming is a thing. But whenever his ghost writer ghost wrote this chapter, they acknowledged at least that public opinion moved in that direction. This is good, and hopefully he still believes it. But since half of my notes in the margins in these sections are about how maybe he could look into global warming, I wish he’d have stated it earlier instead of almost at the end. But, I’m getting ahead of myself.
Now we’re at the section “Common Causes?” and the question mark is because even Romney isn’t sure he can get anything useful out of the bare sketches he wrote about nations and empires collapsing. He starts off saying that both cultural and economic isolation lead to the collapse of empires. “China, Spain, Britain, and the Ottomans expressly or effectively retreated behind barriers to foreign trade, each convinced that competition had made them weaker. Their retreat from the marketplace of ideas and their retreat from the marketplace of goods inevitably led to their retreat from the pinnacle of leadership.”
(a) I think we can all agree that Britain was best known for its economic isolation. Who doesn’t remember that stirring line, “Rule Britannia, Britannia, stay home because the waves might be choppy”? (b) There’s no evidence in this book to suggest that empires that isolated themselves did it because they were losing ground or if they had already lost ground and their isolationism was a way to stave off/slow down the process.
“This is a lesson that shouldn’t be lost on us. When we face challenge, there will always be cries for protection”. I know: those cries of we shouldn’t have to compete with prepubescent girls paid almost nothing for factory work. Don’t they know that they’re the ones destroying the country?
“They will be heartfelt and not entirely illogical. Foreign competition will seem unfair — after all, if foreign products and services are more desirable to consumers, it must be due to some form of advantage. And if one’s competitor has an advantage, that doesn’t feel fair.” So what if it actually isn’t fair? It’s tough to quantify how much of China’s advantage is due to unfair things like child labor, shit environmental laws, currency manipulation, intellectual property theft, and trade barriers, and how much is due to fair competition. But calls to not have to compete with those unfair things aren’t in and of themselves shutting down legit trade or calls to close off all ties.
“The only successful way to overcome foreign advantage, however, is to create an advantage of one’s own — to innovate.” There’s no evidence that you can’t innovate and have certain trade restrictions. The US had plenty of trade barriers for most of our history, and we did a fine job innovating. In large measure it helped build our manufacturing base. China is doing the same thing now and out competing us at the moment.
It goes on like this, but you get the point. Moving on to the next reason for failure:
Some of these failed powers were weakened as well by wealth and spending that exceeded their own production–in other words, by easy money. The spoils of Ottoman pillage, the gold the Spanish stole from the Americas, the tribute the Portuguese exacted from trade–all allowed each of those nations to live well in excess of their productivity. In the same way that inherited wealth can lead descendents to profligate spending and economic ruin, easy money weakened these nations’ willingness to work and invest.
Totally. People who inherited their wealth don’t know what hard work is. Excellent point, Mitt Romney. Then I’m not sure if it’s the same point or bad transitions, but culture in general makes a difference in collapse of empires. Finally we can learn from this outline of failure to avoid “the same path that has led to the great decline in the past.” His prescription is don’t save industries that were once successful and avoid protectionism.
And we’re on to “Why Nations Fiddle as they Burn” the story of Nero Mitt Romney explaining with hindsight how he would have saved various places. He has a paragraph about Spain that doesn’t really say anything new. Then because he hadn’t mentioned the Dutch up to this point, he talks about them. “The Dutch also suffered from unearned wealth. Their trade monopolies, underinvestment in productive industry, and cultural decay led this condition to be called ‘Dutch disease.’ Lack of vision, lack of awareness, is an integral part of the malady.” I think Dutch disease is generally shifting from industrialization to a resource based economy. The parts about culture and trade monopoly seem out of place to me.
This leads to a discussion of other countries that have the problems generally actually associated with “Dutch disease.” The countries who have oil wealth in particular. He tries to shoehorn the Ottoman empire into that, but it doesn’t really work. Then to us:
Our own lack of vision led to the collapse of our financial markets and our economy. It precipitated a global recession, triggered the loss of $12 trillion of our citizen’s net worth and dealt a sharp blow to freedom. We simply did not see the so-called subprime home mortgages, liar loans, and nonliquified loans had the potential to cause such destruction. I know some believe that “the powers that be” saw it all along–that the greed of Wall Street tycoons, for example, was the root cause. But I believe a lack of vision played every bit as big a role.
I agree that it wasn’t a conspiracy. Too many people lost too much money. But, we were sold for decades before the crash that these sorts of investments were American innovation. That they were part of a new ownership society. It wasn’t a lack of vision, it was a lack of oversight, and common sense with a too far reaching vision. Also, if you think nobody saw the collapse, I’d recommend The Big Short. There’s no mention of who specifically Romney would blame for lacking vision, maybe because he wants largely to go back to the policies that he says lack vision.
However, lack of vision is the exception when it comes to the decline of great powers. In most cases, there were warnings. Farsighted Ottomans warned that adherence to religious dogma and reliance on oversized bureaucracy would doom the empire.
If only Mitt Romney were in charge of the Ottoman Empire, things would have turned out differently. There are several other examples of empires not having far reaching visions of the future. Here’s where my notes say “global warming” a bunch when he says things like “we seize on the opinion of someone who tells us what we want to hear” rather than face hard truths or look to large scale change.
It goes on for several pages, but I want to mention his calling out the media’s problem reporting on the Iraq war. Now you might think getting into pointless wars would be part of why empires decline. Finding enemies to rally against instead of using that energy to solve our actual problems. Perhaps things like Friedman Units where were promised everything would turn around in 6 months every 6 months? Point is: media criticism leading up to and during the Iraq war is a target rich case study for the decline of nations. Guess what Romney’s example was?
The media elite similarly took the early view that Iraq was a hopeless quagmire. There was often thereafter a perceptible snickering in the coverage, especially when the surge was unveiled. Then, when the surge actually worked, the media coverage of Iraq noticeably fell off.
Yeah, that’s the problem. The media didn’t cheer lead enough. Christ on the Cross. Anyway, now were to an unlabeled section about countries that turn things around. He mentions the emperors after Nero without saying why they were “Five Good Emperors.” The Ottoman apparently staved off their decline for a while. He says “after an eleven-year civil war” but doesn’t put it in the context of his previous Ottoman musings. And Churchill.
Then he talks about the Clinton era as a time of decline for America. Because peace and prosperity: ick. Then 9/11 and “America changed course” without mentioning why a decade stuck in Afghanistan is good for America. He has four reasons some countries can turn things around and why some can’t:
“The first is the occurrence of a catastrophic event that is alarming enough to spur action but not so large that it dooms the nation.” He mentions Sputnik and Pearl Harbor. I guess America was in decline before Sputnik? I don’t know.
“The second catalyst is the presence of a great leader.” He says they should be persuasive and a great statesman. Then without expanding on those qualities, he just lists a bunch of leaders.
“A third condition is national consensus.” He says usually national consensus comes from the top, but sometimes it’s from the bottom. “Lech Walesa galvanized a movement that brought down the Iron Curtain first in Poland and then across Eastern Europe.” Great, but not exactly how nations stay strong. And then he fucks with me: “Scientists, concerned citizens and* the world media succeeded in convincing the public that global warming is a real and present danger.” I haven’t finished the book, or the presidential campaign, but I look forward to his addressing global warming head on.
“The final conducive condition for turnaround is when a nation enjoys deep, broad-based national strength.” This seems like question begging to me. Why are nations able to stay strong? Because of their national strength!
There’s another small section, but it’s just recapping and setting up the next chapter, so we’ll end this here.
by Carl Ballard — ,
I’m a bit surprised that the National Organization for Marriage hasn’t come through (first point) with their promise of a huge pile of money to people who primary Republicans who voted for the marriage equality bill. They both advance, but having lost almost 2-1 in the primary, it’s tough to make the case that the general will be anything different. Maybe NOM wanted to spend the money in the general election so it’s a force multiplier for their opposition to R-74.
The National Organization for Marriage, the D.C.-based anti-gay marriage group, pledged to donate $250,000 to any Republican primary candidate that stepped up to run against a Republican in Washington State who “crosses the party platform and votes for gay marriage.”
[…]
Litzow does not have a Republican challenger, but Walsh does—staunch gay-marriage opponent Mary Edwards. While Walsh has raised $62,000, including big donations from gay rights advocates such as Lambda Legal board member Eric Nilson ($900) from Cleveland, Ohio, Edwards has raised $3,633—and no check from NOM.
Obviously a primary challenge means something different in Washington than elsewhere, and their goal was to unseat Walsh not to make a show of it in August. But by starting so late (if they start at all) they’ve made that difficult.
Not that I’m complaining. I’d rather the seat go to a Democrat, but if there are intramural fights between the Republicans, I’d rather it go to ones who are at least decent people in this one area.
by Carl Ballard — ,
For fuck’s sake, the Libertarian Party.
Today the Libertarian Party of Washington State filed suit (PDF) to have Romney’s name removed from the November ballot:
The suit seeks an order declaring that the Washington State Republican Party is “minor party” for purposes of the 2012 general election and directing the Secretary of State to issue ballots for the November election that do not contain the printed name of any Republican Party nominee.
The only statewide race in the last even numbered year was Cantwell in 2010, and the GOP didn’t endorse because they wanted to wait it out. So fine, they might technically be a minor party and thus too late to nominate someone. But really, fuck that.
This isn’t the sort of thing that needs suing over. The injustice here would be if the Libertarians won their suit and Romney wasn’t on the ballot. He’ll be the nominee of the Republican party, and if people are dumb enough to vote for him, they deserve the right to do so.
by Carl Ballard — ,
– The Greenwood food bank is running low.
– There are a lot of questions about the Chicks for Rob button. Not the least is how it got through whatever campaign bureaucracy there should be to stop this sort of thing.
– The supposedly liberal Seattle City Council can’t even support the tiniest bit of campaign finance reform. O’Brien’s proposal isn’t perfect, but it’s better than the status quo.
– RIP Johnny Pesky
by Carl Ballard — ,
King Felix pitches a perfect game. At Safeco. On a glorious afternoon for baseball. Sad to say, I missed it at work, and didn’t know until after.*
I know it’s a meaningless thing. A W is a W, and how you get there won’t change the standings. And the Mariners’ season is still shot. But there is something magical. Especially with Felix. He’s home grown. I have a friend who went to Tacoma specifically to see him pitch a year before he broke into the majors. And since he’s been up, it always felt like it was just a matter of time before at least a no-no; he has been that good.
* For serious, someone text me or someone I work with if this is going on. Like in the 7th.
by Carl Ballard — ,
There was a shooting at the Family Research Council this morning. A security guard was shot and is in the hospital. Like these LGBT organizations, I don’t know if it was politically motivated. Still, when anything like this happens to a political organization, you have to assume their politics was part of what made them a target.
I condemn political violence of any stripe, and I hope the guard makes a full recovery. I’m saddened that we live in a country where this sort of thing is common. I don’t agree with anything the Family Research Council stands for, but nobody deserves this for their political beliefs. Nobody.
by Carl Ballard — ,
The story of Romney claiming bipartisan cred for Paul Ryan over the fact that he once wrote a policy paper with Ron Wyden is strange on a few levels. First, what? It’s not a bipartisan accomplishment to write a paper. A bipartisan accomplishment would be turning that paper into actual legislation. And Wyden handled that pretty well.
Governor Romney is talking nonsense. Bipartisanship requires that you not make up the facts.
I did not “co-lead a piece of legislation.” I wrote a policy paper on options for Medicare. Several months after the paper came out I spoke and voted against the Medicare provisions in the Ryan budget.
I mean Romney had to know that Wyden would respond. And that he’d do it in a partisan manner. It’s sloppy campaigning.
The other thing is he didn’t pick him as the VP nominee for his bipartisanship. Ryan is a partisan ideologue on budget issues and on social issues. He fires up the base. He gives them something to vote for instead of just against Obama.
by Carl Ballard — ,
– RIP Kathi Goertzen.
– The financial impact of November’s initiatives.
– I’m not the only one who noticed that Mitt Romney’s shitty book is shitty.
– may the masses vote like their Medicare depends on it!
– Fast moving wild fire in Eastern Washington
– Denied religious freedom at Chick-fil-A.
by Carl Ballard — ,
The shootings at Texas A&M today come after a long line of this shit. Auorra, Cafe Racer. The list goes on and on. And those are only the ones that gain large scale attention. There are plenty of other acts of gun violence that don’t get reported, or don’t get reported outside the region where they happen.
Of course there are other reasons that these sorts of things happen. And we should work to deal with all of them. But one of those reasons, that we never deal with, that we’re going in the wrong direction on, is the country is awash in guns.
People will point to the Second Amendment when any attempt at gun control no matter how minimum is raised. Now, I think the Second Amendment was intended to be about well regulated militias, hence the first clause. But even if you think it’s about private ownership of all firearms, surely this wasn’t what Madison intended when he wrote it. Surely they didn’t mean that these sorts of shootings should be inevitable as they are common. I don’t know what the solution is, but I can’t imagine the Constitution makes it intractable.
by Carl Ballard — ,
– Phyllis Schlafly lies about Obama as night remains dark.
– I’d have mentioned this last week if I wasn’t on vacation, but my endorsements went 2 for 2 in the primary.
– Oh, Romney has a VP selection.
– In a twist, Ryan isn’t the deficit hawk he claims to be.
– The fact that Democrats have oppo research on him proves he’s great.
– Shaun has a good question about the vetting process.
by Carl Ballard — ,
[I’m on vacation this week, but I’m reading and doing some metacommentary on Mitt Romney’s book. Enjoy, or skip over it: it’s a free country.]
Another short one today. Just to let you know that the Chinese and British Empires fell. Since the last one was just called “The Ottomans” these two subchapters are simply a summary in a few words. Consistency is the hobgoblin of good writing, someone must have told him.
The subchapter “The Great Wall” has the advantage of just being about China and not some random collection of China like empires as the Ottoman section was. Of course since the unofficial name of this chapter is Mitt Romney paraphrases the Wikipedia Entries on the Printing Press and since that’s actually a legit thing to write for China, it gets several mentions in this short but still rambling section.
Advances in astronomy, physics, chemistry, meteorology, seismology, engineering, and mathematics came to the West from China. In the first century, China was the first to manufacture paper–a huge improvement over papyrus or and parchment. They published the first book, and they invented moveable type around 1041–four hundred years before a German named Johannes Gutenberg developed similar technology.
Several more paragraphs about how China was number one a thousand years ago. They had the best weapons and the best ships. “And then China declined” is a paragraph in itself. Useful. Useful information. Very specific. But is there more information about printing presses* is what I’d like to know.
The Chinese rejected not only all things foreign but even technology that they had devised themselves. For the Ottomans the Qur’an contained everything that life required; for the Chinese, it was their ancient culture that was to be revered and sustained, even at the cost of abandoning innovations like the printing press.
So, like, when Romney says in the intro how we need to go back to how the founding generation left America for us, I guess he’s imitating the Chinese who failed. I don’t know. The point is people getting stuck on something from the past will get them in trouble. Now we’re at The Sun Sets on the British Empire.
“England is just a small island.” Well, England is part of an island that also has Scotland and Wales. It’s not that small of an island. The UK also has part of another island, and some other possessions around the globe. It’s complex. You know what it doesn’t matter.
“With few exceptions, it doesn’t make things that people in the rest of the world want to buy.” I really like their fruit and nut bars. The ones Cadbury sell in the US are fine, but it’s not the same. Seriously, if you’re ever in the UK or Ireland, bring me back some. I’m not kidding about this, people who know me and are reading this. Also, they have a thriving culture. Some of the best comedy and drama get exported all around the globe.
“And if it hadn’t been separated from the continent by water, it almost certainly would have been lost to Hitler’s ambitions.” Yeah, I’m sure they would have planned their defenses the exact same way if there was a land bridge between Portsmouth and Normandy. Also, would history have been the same up to the war? Would this land have a lot of people on it? Would it be fertile land? I guess what I’m saying is the British Channel was kind of part of their defenses, and both sides in that war would have acted differently if it hadn’t been there.
“Yet only two lifetimes ago, Britain ruled the largest and wealthiest empire in the history of humankind. Britain controlled a quarter of the earth’s land and a quarter of the earth’s population.” And now they’re still a great country. Their empire pushed many of my ancestors here. People were boarded up and sent to Canada or Australia. And nonwhite people fared much worse. While the British Empire eventually went to the right side of things like the slave trade and moved toward democracy, it was still brutal for the people who lived under it.
So Romney says the British had the industrial revolution and it paid for the best navy in ever. “But maintaining leadership proved more difficult than achieving it” because they have a class system. They weren’t able to go beyond the status quo. No mention on how come their class system didn’t stop the industrial revolution in the first place. Then they had to pay for World War Two, so now they aren’t an empire. No mention if life is better for the average Briton now that they don’t have to pay to maintain an empire. Personally, I’d rather have the BBC and universal health care than know that the queen was also in charge of India. But that’s not my decision to make.
That’s the decline of the British Empire for you. I’m not sure who this book is written for. I doubt that Romney knows either. These brief overviews don’t tell us enough to learn anything. Anyone who picks up the book of a presidential candidate surely knows the barest outlines of past empires. Yet he felt the need to include three (or 5 if you include Spain and Portugal). Is it just he thinks nobody will actually read it, and it seems more presidential to have written something so he pulled an all nighter and wrote the damn thing once?
We’ve got half of this chapter to go, and I’m not writing for the weekends. So I think I’ll just do it sometime next week. I had fun writing these, so I’ll probably continue even after that. Not every day, because that’s brutal if I’m writing other things. Would you guys be interested in a half a chapter a week or so? Maybe make it a Wednesday thing?
by Carl Ballard — ,
[I’m on vacation this week, but I’m reading and doing some metacommentary on Mitt Romney’s book. Enjoy, or skip over it: it’s a free country.]
Today we join Mitt Romney’s ghost writer to see Why Nations Decline. First a general commentary that nations decline and then several examples. Then he’ll have a couple annoying sections trying to tie it together. Because I’m on vacation, I’m only going to deal with the intro and the “Ottomans” section that deals with the Ottoman Empire, and somewhat surprisingly Spain and Portugal. So the intro.
America is the best, and it looks like we’ll never decline but other countries used to think that about themselves and “they’ve all been surpassed.” Of course since Romney talking about nations, what we need here is a corporate metaphor.
This kind of collapse is not unique to nations. We’ve witnessed business powerhouses lose their lead to upstarts. United Airlines was upstaged by Southwest.* Sears and Kmart were passed by Wal-Mart. Western Union and AT&T watched Verizon speed by. And look at General Motors: it was once the undisputed automotive heavyweight, the champion here and around the world. No More.
Romney worked for someone who had a mathematical model of why corporations with a head start have an advantage. But that didn’t work out. Then he remembers he’s writing a book about nations, so:
Why is it that the great fail? It’s a question America must ask, not only because we are the world’s leading nation, but because of the continuation of our lead has been called into question
So now we’re on the section called “The Ottomans” that’s also about Spain and Portugal (I know I say this like 50 times in this short for this series post, but it’s that strange). But at least it starts with the Ottoman Empire. Well, mostly it’s about him learning about the Ottoman empire in school.
But after that intro of Romney coloring in maps we learn that, the empire was great for centuries until “Christian Europeans won the Battle of Lepanto in 1571 and decimated the Ottoman navy. Rebellion and war were overwhelming.”
First off, The Ottoman Empire lasted until the end of the First World War, so the collapse didn’t really happen in 1571. A long decline would be interesting to write about. Especially if you’re worried about America being a power in the future, but not the preeminent one. But instead it’s a paragraph of mostly meaningless cliche as to why.
Highly beneficial global trade routes that had traditionally passed through Ottoman territory had been abandoned for Ocean passages, and the empire’s revenues dropped accordingly. More important, while Europe** embarked on the early stages of manufacturing, the Ottomans did not; they were confident that their pillaged wealth would sustain them indefinitely. The Ottomans’ growing isolation from the dynamic world of manufacture and trade was reinforced by the conviction that their holy scriptures provided all the knowledge that was necessary; foreign technology was infidel technology. The Empire banned the printing press for half a century.
And that’s all you need to know about the decline, er collapse, of the Ottoman Empire. In chapter of case studies of why empires and nations fail, there’s more about coloring in maps in high school than there is about his first case study. These I’m-a-deep-thinker-make-me-president books are sure serious business when they come from Republicans.
But even though the Ottoman case study is over, the section continues with Spain and Portugal. I think the point here is that they were all closed societies based on pillage. But the title is “The Ottomans” not “Empires Based on Pillage Eventually Run Out Of Shit To Pillage” or something with less swearing. So Spain and Portugal. It’s only 2 paragraphs, so I don’t want to quote too much, but I totally am going to:
“Like the Ottomans, the Spanish and Portuguese achieved wealth through plunder, and their empires fell for remarkably similar reasons.” So they plundered the rest of the world, and took the resources but didn’t build anything with them. England, France, and Germany were making things, but Spain and Portugal were buying them. And, I think Romney just found the Wikipedia entry on when the printing press was introduced to various countries, because that comes up again.
The Protestant Reformation to the north had spawned not only dissent and skepticism but also literacy and innovation. Spain and Portugal isolated themselves from such heresy. Portugal placed strict controls on printing presses. The Spanish crown banned scientific works by Protestant authors. They banned study abroad in any non-Catholic country. Spain went so far as to impose the death penalty on anyone who imported an unauthorized foreign book. Like the Ottomans, Spanish and Portuguese isolation became complete. They eschewed the manufacture and trade of goods that was sweeping the rest of Europe, and they closed their borders to outside thought.
So the guy who exported, piece by piece, American manufacturing is saying stopping making things is a problem. Ugh this book.
OK, tomorrow China, Britain, and maybe Romney’s conclusions if I’m up for it.
by Carl Ballard — ,
[I’m on vacation this week, but I’m reading and doing some metacommentary on Mitt Romney’s book. Enjoy, or skip over it: it’s a free country.]
We’re at Mitt Romney explains the West, China, Russia and Jihad like you’re 12 and super interested in what a corporation is. It’s a subsection called “Four strategies to Achieve World Power.” So corporations pursue different strategies. Apple had to “appeal to a different segment of customers and win those buyers” than Microsoft. And guess what, it’s not just corporations that compete with each other! It’s also countries.
Countries, like businesses, need strategies to survive and prosper. A nation’s strategy should be designed to propel it beyond its competitors and to increase the security and prosperity of its citizens. While there are as many strategies as there are countries on the global map, there are four specific approaches to geopolitics that have been embraced by various major players on the world stage. We must recognize and understand these if we are to be fully aware of the challenges ahead.
So three things. First, “global map,” that’s how you want to phrase it? Second, not everything is a business metaphor. We understand that countries compete without needing to start out in the business world. Finally, countries and corporations do very different things, so the metaphor only works so well. We expect much more cooperation between countries than between corporations, for example.
I don’t know why he has written like this, but he lays out these strategies one by one instead of saying what they are and then expanding on it like a person who wasn’t used to hiding the ball all of their life might write it. I’m just going to say his 4 strategies outlined are the West with our free markets and free people, the Chinese model of freeish markets and not free people, the Russian model of “authoritarian rule … based on energy,” and the final one is jihad, like Iran has embraced.
The first is the West. He devotes all of two paragraphs to how free markets and free people work. I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt here that it’s because he assumes the reader knows about how those work, and not because he doesn’t know anything. But I’m going to quote the second paragraph in full here:
While the nations that pursue this “American” strategy are collectively referred to as the West, not all of them do so in a uniform manner.* Sweden and several other European nations, for example, place a far heavier governmental hand on free enterprise than does The United States. Citizens are highly taxed to provide not only a very substantial safety net but also a relatively comfortable lifestyle. Business and employment are highly regulated. Despite the differences among Western nations, economic freedom and political freedom are at the core.
So, when in the intro Obama lowered taxes (but Romney insists he raised them) and enacted a few regulations (but fewer than under the first few years of President Bush) it was because he hates free enterprise. But Sweden makes the cut as part of our Western ideals.
Anyway, we’re on to China. Their strategy is based on “free enterprise” but also “authoritarian rule.” According to Romney, “The conflict is so apparent that many Western observers have predicted that as China’s economy and trade develop, the country will trend toward democracy and freedom” as if there have never been authoritarian rulers of a country with markets before.
If you like several rambling pages, then this is the section for you. It’s not just the government, when Romney goes to China, the people “seemed much more interested in pursuing the lessons of American-style free enterprise than they were in promoting American-style freedom.” And the Olympics were a success. China saw the lesson from the fall of the Soviet Union and when “its fellow travelers like North Korea and Cuba collapsed.” Those certainly are bad regimes that do bad things to their people, but those are like the only examples of communist countries that try to remain communist and haven’t collapsed. There are so many examples, and North Korea and Cuba are examples of collapse?
And even having learned the lessons, the Chinese markets aren’t like Western markets: Businesses are state owned and operated, the rule of law hasn’t been established. The “tainted products from dog food to infant formula” get out. And intellectual property isn’t enforced. “China brazenly sells sensitive technologies to Iran and buys oil from genocidal Sudan, and it vigorously defends these nations against international sanction.” It seems like the modern GOP wouldn’t mind more crap in your dog food and infant formula if it meant the government didn’t tell people to get it out.
And there is another way in which Chinese enterprise is distinguished from other economic systems around the world: it is winning. China is fast becoming the world’s factory, successfully capturing the lion’s share of world manufacturing for a growing list of products. The country is no longer content to make only toys and trinkets.
Not discussed are things like currency manipulation and import controls. Those sorts of things are what America used to build our manufacturing base, and it’s what they’re using to build theirs now. I’m not saying we should retaliate in kind to that sort of thing, but it seems to me at least as important to their success as the fact that they sell technology to rogue states.
Anyway, on to Russia, whose strategy is to have energy resources:
Russia is pursuing a third global strategy. Like China, it favors authoritarian rule, but Russia’s economic strategy is primarily based on energy. By controlling people and energy, Russia aims to reassert itself as a global superpower.
They have oil and gas. It’s part of their economy and they manipulate the pipelines, etc. for political gain. But it’s not the entirety of their economy. And when Romney says their strategy is energy, and then he says things like “Russia also relies on the strength of its science and technology sectors” it makes me think it’s not a reliance on energy in the same way that Saudi Arabia is true of. So they have a more mixed strategy, and since they have a lot of energy resources, they were able to use them.
Romney also thinks that they’re driven by anti-Americanism: “anything that diminishes America pleases him [Putin], both because it weakens a competing power and because it gratifies his personal animus for the United States.” Mittens barely understands that they might have a foreign policy in Iran and North Korea beyond simply the opposite of what America wants. Finally Romney complains that “President Barrack Obama’s decision to walk away from our missile defense program in Poland and the Czech Republic was a huge concession to Putin” without noting that the technology didn’t work. It’s not much of a missile defense if it doesn’t defend against missiles.
And the final of the 4 strategies is violent jihad. “Though this strategy is formally embraced by only one country–Iran–it animates many foreign leaders and some of the most infamous names on the planet, among them Osama bin Laden, Ayman Al-Zawahiri, and Mullah Omar.”
There are only a few paragraphs about it here (don’t worry, there’s more to come in a later chapter). They all want a global caliphate, even though some just want “independence for Chechnya.”
These are the four strategies for world leadership that are in competition today. Only one is founded on freedom. Only one. Think of what that means. Only if American and the West succeed–if our economic and military strength endure–can we be confident that our children and grandchildren will be free. A strong America is good for peace, and is essential for the spread of freedom. Our superpower status and our leadership in the world, however, are not inevitable.
Then there’s a section on how freedom is great. And I agree with it for the most part. The only thing that I’ll mention because it’s strange is this: “The New Hampshire license plate reads LIVE FREE OR DIE, reminiscent of patriot Patrick Henry’s famous entreaty. There are those who insist that New Hampshire’s motto isn’t politically correct. But most Americans envy the Granite Staters their motto and believe, as I do, that this is the American resolve.”
For serous, dude: Nobody thinks they shouldn’t have that motto. I don’t even know what it means that a motto isn’t politically correct. That motto is great. Who complained to you about their license plate? “There are those”? Fuck you, there aren’t people who said that. That said, nobody is envious of a license plate. If they were, they could move to have their state change their plates.
And now we’re at the section “A Change in Foreign Policy” where he complains about Obama’s foreign policy. So he talks about the foreign policy consensus that emerged at the beginning of the Cold War. He talks about Truman remaking American foreign policy. And because it’s been like 15 pages since he mentioned a British Prime Minister, he says, “Truman and his team believed, as Winston Churchill did, that the hope of the world depended on the strength and will of the United States.”
Truman helped usher in all sorts of organizations to promote peace and to prevent another devastating war: “the United Nations, the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, the GATT (later WTO), and NATO, among others.” Now there are many liberals who oppose some of those things, especially the ones that harm people economically. But it wasn’t Obama whose UN Ambassador wanted to take 10 stories off the UN. So if you’re asking yourself what party is against the stuff that Truman set up, well, you have to say it’s probably the GOP. Yet Romney’s contention is that Obama is the break from the post war consensus.
This sentiment manifests itself in several different ways, including President Obama’s American Apology Tour. Never before in American history has its president gone to so many foreign audiences to apologize for so many American misdeeds, both real and imagined.
You’ll be SHOCKED to learn that Mitt Romney doesn’t actually quote any of the ways that Obama apologized for America. Also, the capitalizing makes it seem like that was the official name of the trip instead of some nonsense he made up. He does mention the apologies in broad outlines. “He has apologized for what he deems to be American arrogance, dismissiveness, and derision; for acting unilaterally, and for acting without regard for others; for treating other countries as mere proxies, for unjustly interfering in internal affairs of other nations, and for feeding anti-Muslim sentiments; for committing torture, for dragging our feet on global warming, and for selectively promoting democracy.”
I wish that he had actually apologized for some of those instead of just mentioning it, and saying we can do better. I wish someone high in the administration had said, “I’m sorry we waterboarded people. I’m sorry we invaded other countries.” I’m sorry is such a powerful thing. If we care about our values, we should apologize when we don’t live up to them.
Romney says we know it was bad because some bad actors said diplomatic things about being able to work with Obama. “Muammar Quaddafi, the dictator of Libya, declared that ‘we’d be content and happy if Obama can stay president for ever.” Again, I know that several years’ hindsight after Romney wrote the book is unfair. And if Romney was making an honest case, I wouldn’t point out that how’d that work out for Quaddafi? Man, if unlike his predecessors, Obama would use force when he found it necessary against bad actors like Quaddafi!
Then Romney complains that Obama isn’t taking Israel seriously enough. Obama doesn’t know what Israel has done to make peace. And Romney doesn’t know the basics of time:
To take just one example: In 2005, Israel evacuated its settlers and handed over the Gaza strip and part of the West Bank to the Palestinians. This unilateral concession on the part of Israel was met in return by thousands of rockets fired into the cities of Israel. The Palestinians, fully aware that President Obama is pressuring Israel to make even more unilateral concessions, are content to sit back and make no concessions of any kind.
I’m always wary of wading into the Israel-Palestine conflict. But, Israel left Gaza because they thought it was in their best interest. Obama didn’t really have anything to do with that. It was a conservative Israeli government decision supported by George W. Bush. And in the here and now, Obama is putting pressure on both sides in the conflict.
Anyway, more examples of how the administration is a break from the past are that he doesn’t support human rights around the world enough. I’d argue that’s true that we don’t support human rights enough, but less so than during the Bush administration or the Cold War. In fact he chose a Secretary of State who proclaimed that women’s rights are human rights around the world. And who since the book has been written has declared the same for gay rights. The administration, more militarily than I’d like, has taken an active role in helping the Arab Spring move toward democracy in many countries.
Romney doesn’t like how Obama hasn’t finished a trade deal with Columbia. This apparently proves that he didn’t mean it when he talked about multilateral relations.
And Obama has apparently been too weak on Iran and North Korea. “President Obama sends a signal that he is eager to negotiate at any time, any place, without conditions; the effect of this is to cede all of the power and leverage to our enemies. Time and again, President Obama’s open hand has been met with a clenched fist.” Maybe, but Iran’s actions have strengthened the resolve of our allies to impose further sanctions, and made multilateral sanctions stronger.
But of course, for Romney, Obama’s attempts at multilateralism are themselves signs that Obama secretly thinks America is in decline. “It has expressed itself in President Obama’s insistence that there is ‘no junior partner’ in our relations with Europe meaning that Luxembourg and Andorra carry the same weight and influence in world affairs as the United States and Great Britain (a claim that even Andorrans and citizens of Luxembourg would probably reject).” It’s tough to have a straw man when you actually quote people, isn’t it? Take 3 words and then declare what they mean, and hope that people focus on your paraphrase instead of what you quote. Has there been any indication in his actions that he thinks the Grand Duchy has the same influence as the United States? No, of course not.
Another awesome Romney argument is that one time Obama was asked if he believed in American exceptionalism. Obama said that he did, but noted that other countries probably believed in their own country’s exceptionalism. This, to Romney, proved that Obama didn’t believe in American exceptionalism. Because what?
We’re almost done, but there are a few more things Obama should do. He should treat our allies like allies, without ever explaining how we aren’t. But if we don’t then there will be a continent wide revolution in South America lead by Hugo Chavez, Iran will have nuclear weapons, and Japan and China will become allies (?*∞). I think we can judge some of this by what has happened. And what has happened so far in foreign policy under Obama is not those things.
Romney also thinks Obama should also strengthen the economy. While there’s still a long way to go, the economy has been improving since the book came out. We were in a huge hole, and we passed a large, but not large enough, stimulus. But Romney is worried that in the future taxes will have to be raised and that will undermine capitalism. “It is an often-remaked-upon** irony that at a time when Europe is moving away from socialism and its many failures, President Obama is moving us toward that direction.”
Don’t use the word irony, Mitt. Just don’t. Also, “toward that direction”? You move in a direction or toward a thing. Finally we aren’t moving toward or in the direction of socialism, so problem solved.
Romney thinks that because of, um all the socialism, we won’t spend enough on our military and missile defense. Romney once again doesn’t seem to realize that our missile defense system won’t defend us against missiles. He doesn’t engage this point. Also, he says that our military budget should be 4% of GDP. I don’t think that throwing out a number randomly is really appropriate, but wouldn’t that mean Romney thinks we should spend less on the military when the economy is down?
We also need to remember that our ideals are the best thing about America. But for like the thousandth time, what does it say about those ideals that Romney thinks we shouldn’t apologize when we don’t live up to them? Let’s hear what Romney says:
That doesn’t mean, of course, that America is a perfect country. We have made mistakes and committed grave offenses over the centuries. Too often we have failed to live up to our ideals. But to say that is to say that we live in this fallen world rather than a perfect one, a world composed not of angels but of flawed and imperfect beings. And, crucially, our past faults and errors have long been acknowledged and do not deserve the the repetition that suggests either that we have been reluctant to remedy them or that we are inclined to repeat them. What we should say and repeat is this: No nation has shed more blood for more noble causes than the United States. Its beneficence and benevolence are unmatched by any nation on earth, and by any nation in history.
Torture hasn’t been acknowledged. The way we fucked up in Iraq hasn’t been acknowledged by much of the country even if we believe in the abstract it was the wrong war.
But beyond suggesting that all of our problems are some ephemeral distant past, I feel like Mitt Romney has never heard a speech by President Obama. Is that possible? He continues on suggesting that “of all people, we should expect our president to understand” American greatness. Since that’s in every speech Obama has ever made: bar cleared. Romney — mercifully, finally — ends the chapter setting up the next one.
I reject the view that America must decline. I believe in American exceptionalism. I am convinced that we can act together to strengthen our nation, to preserve our global leadership and to protect freedom where it exists and promote it where it does not.
So we’ll start on Why Nations Decline tomorrow.
by Carl Ballard — ,
[I’m on vacation this week, but I’m reading and doing some metacommentary on Mitt Romney’s book. Enjoy, or skip over it: it’s a free country.]
Remember in the intro, where I complained that Mitt Romney didn’t mention any of his hardships? I think it might be because his greatest hardship in life was weeding his father’s garden when he was like 14. Here’s how he opens this chapter:
I hate to weed. I’ve hated it ever since my father put me to work weeding the garden at our home in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan. It was planted with zinnias, snapdragons, and petunias, none of which seemed to grow as heartily as the weeds. After what seemed like hours of work, I never could see much progress and I’d complain to my dad. “Mitt,” he would reply, “the pursuit of the difficult makes men strong.” It seems now like an awfully grandiose response for such a pedestrian task. I complained about the weeding often enough that I heard his homily regularly. I’m sure that’s why it sticks with me to this day.
Fathers and sons. Great stuff for literature. Unfortunately, in this case, it seems Mitt is going personal only so that in a few paragraphs he can say how America needs the same ability to face tough challenges. We’ll get to that in a minute, but first a little more of his father’s story:
My father knew what it meant to pursue the difficult. He was born in Mexico, where his Mormon grandparents had moved to escape religious persecution.
For a book that’s about USA! USA! USA! this is willing to call what America did to the Mormons “persecution.” I agree, incidentally. But I think an apology is reasonable for persecution. And as we’ll see later in this chapter, Romney thinks Obama mentioning any legit problem is the same as him apologizing for it. So I don’t know, Romney is apologizing for and complaining about America? Maybe it’s too much to hope he has a coherent narrative.
Anyway, more family history. They were forced to move back to America, not because of anything America offered, but because they were afraid of “Mexican revolutionaries.” So his grandparents suffered hardships. They had to leave everything they had and live off the land. His father had to go to work and support the family at a young age, and never graduated from college.* Anyway, all that hard work by his parents and grandparents leads back to Romney weeding.
Three decades later, by the time I was weeding that Bloomfield Hills garden, my father had become a successful businessman. I knew he worried that because my brother, sisters, and I had grown up in a prosperous family, we wouldn’t understand the lessons of hard work. That’s why he put us to work shoveling snow, raking leaves, mowing the lawn, planting the garden, and of course, weeding–always reminding us that work would make us strong.
I know that I don’t know enough to actually say lesson not learned about hard work. But Mitt doesn’t mention hard work he’s actually done since his parents did what parents do. He doesn’t mention any hard work he willingly undertook on his own. I mean, I don’t expect him to have worked a decade on the line at American Motors, but he could show something to demonstrate he knows about hard work beyond he had to mow the lawn and weed the garden sometimes.
Anyway, a bit more about his father doing actual good things at American Motors. And then it isn’t just individuals who have to work hard, but also much more broadly. Then several paragraphs about Staples that feel like he wanted to write them, but didn’t know exactly where to put them because they don’t really fit. A competent editor would help. And then:
Today the United States faces daunting challenges, and I am similarly convinced that if we confront them and overcome them, we will remain a strong and leading nation. Just like individuals, companies, and human enterprises of every kind, nations that are undaunted by the challenges they face become stronger. Those that shrink from difficult tasks become weaker.
The examples are that we defeated the British to gain our independence, we won the Second World War, and the moon launch. He mentions Detroit switching to building planes during the war, without ever mentioning that these were top down orders from the government. He talks about how there were failures of American satellite launches, but we kept making them until they did work and “we became the first** nation on earth to put a man on the moon.” I couldn’t help thinking when I read that, that I can imagine how the Tea Party and today’s GOP would have reacted each moment along the way if they were around in the 1950’s and 1960’s.
And we’re to a section called Facing our Challenges Head-on. it starts by saying we thought we didn’t have any challenges during the Clinton administration. So we cut our military and that was a terrible thing. As if our military should have been as large or larger after the collapse of global communism than before it. Then without mentioning the Bush administration, he says:
In the first decade of the twenty-first century, our economy has suffered its worst crisis since the Great Depression. We have amassed an unprecedented amount of debt and liabilities, and added to that, the Obama administration plans trillion-dollar deficits every year. Russian belligerence is on the rise. China holds over $750 billion of U.S. obligations. Iran and North Korea threaten the world with unbridled nuclear ambition. Violent jihadists like those who attacked us on 9/11 plot our destruction. The consequences of failure to act in response to these perils is unthinkable.
I know it’s a bit unfair to criticize Romney for things that happened after the book was written. But most of those things are better because Obama acted. The depression isn’t nearly as bad as if we hadn’t had a stimulus. Iran and North Korea are whatever is the opposite of unbridled. Bridled, I guess. Iran still doesn’t have nuclear weapons, and North Korea’s missiles keep exploding into the sea. They’re both more isolated than under the Bush administration. And of course, Bin Laden is dead and much of his terror network destroyed, unlike the decade we wasted in Iraq. I don’t agree with everything the administration has done to get there, but it’s silly to say they didn’t act. All that said, he clearly is attacking a caricature of President Obama.
The section concludes with a plea for a strong military without ever explaining how we’re supposed to pay for it. The only remarkable paragraph is this one:
Does America make mistakes? Absolutely. We never fully understood the enormously complex political, economic, and military issues we faced in Vietnam, and we were wrong in our assessment of Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction programs. But in every case throughout modern history in which America has exercised military power, we have acted with good intention–not to colonize, not to subjugate, never to oppress.
First off: what do you do when you do something wrong but with good intentions? Oh, that’s right, you apologize to the people you wronged. That’s like human decency 101. So the No Apology book makes yet another case that there are places where America should apologize.
Second, does intent really matter? I mean the fact that we didn’t take the land in Iraq as our own is worth noting. But the dead in Iraq and Viet Nam don’t care about the country’s intentions. Our actions matter, and are what we should be held accountable for, good and bad.
We’ve reached the end of this section. Tomorrow, strategies countries can use to get ahead, and why Obama sux at foreign policy. Stay tuned.
Eager to share our brilliant political commentary and blunt media criticism, but too genteel to link to horsesass.org? Well, good news, ladies: we also answer to HASeattle.com, because, you know, whatever. You're welcome!