Click on WORD or PDF below for full content
Before we get into the normal news of the day, (beginning with a hilarious column by Gerard Baker) a WSJ Op-ed contains an important germ of thought about the overall robust condition of the world’s economy. The author argues for better metaphors that acknowledge that strength.
… There’s an old saying that if your neighbors are losing their jobs it’s a recession; if you are losing yours it’s a depression. It’s therefore unfortunate that such a large fraction of prominent forecasters hails from the financial community. Their views are colored by the turmoil suffered in their industry. In an earlier generation, many of the best-known forecasters ran economics departments in nonfinancial companies. Today these are a dying breed, thanks to the past decades of corporate cost-cutting.
We are not a nation of whiners, but we do have a lot of alarmists. It is becoming politically incorrect to suggest that the economy is basically sound.
We shouldn’t expect forecasters to shrug off the depressing effects of what’s happening in their own back yards. This is human nature. We just need to keep things in perspective when we listen to them. A more objective diagnosis is especially needed during an election year, in which many unfounded fears are broadcast and amplified by the media.
A natural system has built-in redundancy. It manages and heals itself. The economic system is no exception. On this page about 10 years ago, Penny Russell and I argued against the idea that the economy is a “house of cards,” susceptible to collapse as soon as a few cards are dislodged. We suggested that it’s more like a beehive. The future of the hive does not depend on full employment for all the worker bees. In fact, an accident can put many bees out of action without compromising the hive as a whole.
Metaphors are important. If they are off the mark, they can deceive. But good metaphors can help maintain perspective amid chaos. …
Gerard Baker has fun with The Tour.
And it came to pass, in the eighth year of the reign of the evil Bush the Younger (The Ignorant), when the whole land from the Arabian desert to the shores of the Great Lakes had been laid barren, that a Child appeared in the wilderness.
The Child was blessed in looks and intellect. Scion of a simple family, offspring of a miraculous union, grandson of a typical white person and an African peasant. And yea, as he grew, the Child walked in the path of righteousness, with only the occasional detour into the odd weed and a little blow.
When he was twelve years old, they found him in the temple in the City of Chicago, arguing the finer points of community organisation with the Prophet Jeremiah and the Elders. And the Elders were astonished at what they heard and said among themselves: “Verily, who is this Child that he opens our hearts and minds to the audacity of hope?”
In the great Battles of Caucus and Primary he smote the conniving Hillary, wife of the deposed King Bill the Priapic and their barbarian hordes of Working Class Whites.
And so it was, in the fullness of time, before the harvest month of the appointed year, the Child ventured forth – for the first time – to bring the light unto all the world. …
David Brooks too. He’s been absent from these pages lately, having drunk the Obama Kool-Aid and all. But, now he’s come back to earth.
… Obama’s tone was serious. But he pulled out his “this is our moment” rhetoric and offered visions of a world transformed. Obama speeches almost always have the same narrative arc. Some problem threatens. The odds are against the forces of righteousness. But then people of good faith unite and walls come tumbling down. Obama used the word “walls” 16 times in the Berlin speech, and in 11 of those cases, he was talking about walls coming down.
The Berlin blockade was thwarted because people came together. Apartheid ended because people came together and walls tumbled. Winning the cold war was the same: “People of the world,” Obama declared, “look at Berlin, where a wall came down, a continent came together and history proved there is no challenge too great for a world that stands as one.”
When I first heard this sort of radically optimistic speech in Iowa, I have to confess my American soul was stirred. It seemed like the overture for a new yet quintessentially American campaign.
But now it is more than half a year on, and the post-partisanship of Iowa has given way to the post-nationalism of Berlin, and it turns out that the vague overture is the entire symphony. The golden rhetoric impresses less, the evasion of hard choices strikes one more.
When John F. Kennedy and Ronald Reagan went to Berlin, their rhetoric soared, but their optimism was grounded in the reality of politics, conflict and hard choices. Kennedy didn’t dream of the universal brotherhood of man. He drew lines that reflected hard realities: “There are some who say, in Europe and elsewhere, we can work with the Communists. Let them come to Berlin.” Reagan didn’t call for a kumbaya moment. He cited tough policies that sparked harsh political disagreements — the deployment of U.S. missiles in response to the Soviet SS-20s — but still worked. …
Debra Saunders comments on the tour.
Should Americans become more like Our Betters in Europe?
Clearly the 200,000 Germans who gathered to watch Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama at Berlin’s Tiergarten on Thursday thought so. And in that Obama liberally challenged U.S. policies on the war in Iraq, global warming and U.S. interrogation measures, he gave the German audience the affirmation it craved.
A Pew Research Center poll showed 82 percent of Germans had confidence that Obama would do the right thing on world affairs. No wonder.
In Germany, it was all wunderbar. Addressing the throng as a “proud citizen of the United States,” but also “a fellow citizen of the world,” Obama seemed to be giving Europeans a role and a voice in an election in which they have no vote.
Not that Europeans haven’t tried to play a role in U.S. electoral politics before. Who can forget Operation Clark County? That was the campaign waged by British paper the Guardian that encouraged Brits to write to voters in a swing county in the swing state of Ohio to urge them to vote for 2004 Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry — because “the result of the U.S. election will affect the lives of millions around the world, but those of us outside the 50 states have had no say in it.”
Well, they had their say, and Clark was the only county in Ohio to switch from supporting Gore in 2000 to Bush GOP in 2004. George W. Bush garnered some 25 percent more votes than in 2000. …
More of our favorites – David Warren.
‘People of Berlin, people of the world, this is our moment. This is our time.”
That is what Barack Obama said, to a crowd of a couple hundred thousand, on Thursday, after stepping out of his spaceship in Germany. From where? From Amerika, we understand.
The very next sentence: “I know my country has not perfected itself.”
But Obama’s transition team is only beginning its work. America might be fixed during his first week in office. And then, Europe can be fixed. …
For a change of subject, Sam Thernstrom says it’s good to have a climate debate just leave Al The Poseur out of it.
Al Gore continues to build a remarkably mixed legacy as the leader of the movement to combat global climate change. For many years, the climate debate focused primarily on the scientific questions; today, that controversy continues but it is increasingly marginal in political circles, where attention has turned to the far more difficult task of developing an effective policy response to warming.
Mr. Gore’s activism on the science of climate change has earned him the attention of the world; when he speaks, everyone listens. But what they hear from him on climate policy is sheer nonsense. Worse, it is dangerous nonsense; Gore deliberately obscures the critical questions that need to be carefully considered when crafting climate policy. Gore’s proposal to produce 100 percent of American electricity from renewable sources within a decade should be rejected–indeed, ridiculed–even by those who share Gore’s goal of combating climate change.
Almost no one believes Gore’s proposal is even technically feasible, much less economically realistic. This is the sort of goal that a politician plucks out of thin air just because it sounds bold; it has no bearing on reality whatsoever. Renewables produce roughly 2.3 percent of our power today; it may be possible to increase that number significantly, but the idea of generating all of America’s electricity with renewables within a decade is simply laughable. Underscoring the absurdity of this agenda is Gore’s silence on the one source of energy that realistically could quickly produce significant amounts of reliable, affordable, zero-emissions energy: nuclear. …
And Michael Barone says the enviro-lunatics may be on their way out.
Sometimes public opinion doesn’t flow smoothly; it shifts sharply when a tipping point is reached. Case in point: gas prices. $3 a gallon gas didn’t change anybody’s mind about energy issues. $4 a gallon gas did. Evidently, the experience of paying more than $50 for a tankful gets people thinking we should stop worrying so much about global warming and the environmental dangers of oil wells on the outer continental shelf and in Alaska. Drill now! Nuke the caribou!
Our system of divided government and litigation-friendly regulation makes it hard for our society to do things and easy for adroit lobbyists and lawyers to stop them. Nations with more centralized power and less democratic accountability find it easier: France and Japan generate most of their electricity by nuclear power and Chicago, where authority is more centralized and accountability less robust than in most of the country, depends more on nuclear power than almost all the rest of the nation.
In contrast, lobbyists and litigators for environmental restriction groups have produced energy policies that I suspect future generations will regard as lunatic. We haven’t built a new nuclear plant for some 30 years, since a Jane Fonda movie exaggerated their dangers. We have allowed states to ban oil drilling on the outer continental shelf, prompted by the failure of 40- or 50-year-old technology in Santa Barbara, Calif., in 1969, though current technology is much better, as shown by the lack of oil spills in the waters off Louisiana and Mississippi during Hurricane Katrina.
We have banned oil drilling on a very small portion of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge that is godforsaken tundra (I have been to the North Slope oil fields, similar terrain — I know) for fear of disturbing a herd of caribou — a species of hoofed animals that is in no way endangered or scarce. …
English speaking peoples have much to be proud of; nothing more so than the abolitionist movement of the late 18th and early 19th centuries which was led by William Wilberforce. WSJ’s Bookshelf reviews a new biography.
… Full success would come only two decades later, as a result of a persistent campaign to shift public opinion, principally by showing the horrors of the slave trade while arguing that its abolition would not wreck the economy or merely benefit foreigners who would step into the market. Wilberforce guided a coalition to make the case for abolition. Mr. Hague’s insider knowledge of politics — he is himself a member of Parliament and a former leader of Britain’s Conservative Party — sharpens his analysis of Wilberforce’s own campaign and deepens his admiration for its success. Winning over both public opinion and key politicians eventually allowed Wilberforce to push abolition through. Lord Grenville, as prime minister, introduced a motion in the House of Lords in 1807 that made its passage in the House of Commons a foregone conclusion.
As the debate in the Commons reached a climax, Samuel Romilly rose to give a speech that poignantly contrasted Wilberforce’s victory with Napoleon Bonaparte’s career. When Bonaparte seemed to have reached the summit of his ambition, he could not escape “recollection of the blood he had spilled and the oppressions he had committed.” Wilberforce, by contrast, could enjoy the consciousness of having saved “so many millions of his fellow creatures.” When Romilly concluded his tribute, the House of Commons rose to its feet and cheered. …