Who is to Blame? Making Sense of The Gulf Oil Disaster

After the American Century

I gave an interview to the New Orleans Times Picayune a few days ago. The reporter was rightly interested in the American tendency to believe that all problems have technological solutions. If oil drilling technology created an underground gusher of oil, surely some other technology ought to be able to stop it. And if the solution was not found quickly, then it must be someone's fault. Lately the media has been debating whether it is the President's fault.

Karl Rove - surely the least trustworthy man in American politics - has made the argument that the oil leak is "Obama's Katrina" -  one of the most idiotic arguments ever. But logic has never been the strong point in American politics, and perhaps not in the education of journalists either. So let us do a comparison of Katrina and the oil leak, and see how well they compare.

Katrina was a hurricane, and the last time I checked that makes it a natural phenomena, of the sort known often to hit Louisiana. The federal government had spent years making plans and building defenses to protect New Orleans against a category 4 or 5 hurricane. However, the Bush Administration cut back funds to improve the levees around New Orleans, and George W. Bush specifically appointed a political hack as chief administrator to deal with such crises. The entire world knew that Hurricane Katrina was headed for the Louisiana coast, and the failure of the local, state, and federal authorities were many, both before and during the disaster. People died because of their incompetence, not least in the evacuation of the city.

A deep-water oil drilling disaster is a man-made phenomena. Moreover, no one saw it coming on a radar screen for days beforehand, as was the case with Hurricane Katrina. The explosion, fire, and oil leak resulted from the failure of a new kind of oil drilling, and unlike a hurricane, the specific accident was not foreseeable days in advance. The permit to do this kind of drilling came from the Bush-Cheney government, and it is worth noting that both Bush and Cheney worked as executives in the oil industry before coming to Washington. 

In contrast to a hurricane which is beyond human control, oil drilling is a human activity, in this case run by British Petroleum or BP. They were responsible for building the platform, and drilling from a point that was about one mile down in the ocean. BP was present at the site before, during and after the accident and "leak", so one might think that BP and more generally the oil industry, is to blame. People died because of BP's incompetence, but no one died because of anything Obama has done in this matter. 

Moreover, the oil industry gave the federal government assurances that deep water oil wells would be safe. Perhaps they lied, perhaps they are just incompetent, but one thing is certain: the oil industry was a whole was not ready to deal with the disaster. They failed to make contingency plans. They failed, in effect, to construct the protections, the levees if you will, that were needed. The oil industry was not prepared to defend the shoreline or the fishing industry against a massive oil spill. The oil industry decided, as it usually does, to put profits first.

And speaking of profits, BP had a profit of more than $4 billion in the fourth quarter of 2009, and it made even more in the first quarter of 2010, a rather tidy $6.1. That is more than $10 billion in the last six months. Why is BP making so much money? The price of crude oil has almost doubled in the last year, but the cost of extraction has actually gone down slightly, (see CBS news). BP, which is not even the largest or most profitably oil company, could have afforded to make contingency plans. Exxon made a profit of $45 billion in 2008 and continues to rack up big profits. If such companies cared about more than the bottom line they would have jointly funded a permanent task force  that is always ready to deal with oil leaks and spills. The oil industry could have been prepared. Instead, they just kept drilling and hoped to pass on the bill, and the responsibility, to someone else.

Yet even had they prepared, and this was my point when speaking with the Times Picayune, Americans tend to think that there is a technological fix. Not all problems can be quickly solved, and not all powerful natural phenomena can be stopped. Human beings might be able to provoke a volcanic eruption, but we cannot stop one.  BP opened a hole that let the oil escape into the Gulf of Mexico. Plugging that hole is harder than drilling it in the first place. Tampering with powerful natural forces can get us in over our heads, and Americans need to understand that  smart technology may not always be immediately available to get them out of trouble.

So, blame the oil companies for not being prepared, for not investing very much of their enormous profits in accident prevention or oil leak protection. Blame the Bush-Cheney oil-friendly administration for allowing this kind of drilling in the first place, and for not assuring that the safeguards were adequate. But do not imagine that just because human beings can create a problem, we can always create a solution. As our technologies grow more powerful, the responsibility to use them carefully increases exponentially.

If you want to read more along these lines, most libraries have a copy of my Technology Matters (MIT Press, 2006).

After I wrote this blog, BP admitted that it did not have adequate technical know-how to deal with the problem they had created.

Obama's Nobel Prize Address: The Just War & The Four Freedoms

After the American Century Posting # 199

President Obama has given a major speech on the occasion of receiving the Nobel Prize. He began by admitting quite frankly that he was at the beginning of his international labor and rather a surprise winner of the prize. He then confronted what many see as a contradiction: that he is currently the commander in chief of the American armed forces which are engaged in two wars.

To his credit, he did not mention George Bush. It would have been fair enough to blame him for the unnecessary invasion of Iraq, at the least. Rather, Obama made the case for just war, when diplomacy fails, and provided a summary of his foreign policy, linking it to Woodrow Wilson, John F. Kennedy, and Martin Luther King. In doing so, he specifically rejected the "realist" approach to foreign policy, which tends to be embraced by Republicans more than Democrats.

One aspect of this speech will be striking to most Europeans. Obama spoke several times of evil, a word that one might more expect to hear from George Bush. In Oslo, Obama declared: "Evil does exist in the world. A non-violent movement could not have halted Hitler's armies. " and later said: "We make mistakes, and fall victim to the temptations of pride, and power, and sometimes evil. Even those of us with the best of intentions will at times fail to right the wrongs before us." This is not far from the language of the Lord's Prayer. Such language is not unusual from an American politician. But "evil" is seldom heard in mainstream European politics, which are far less religious in tone.

Part of the explanation for this difference is structural. In Denmark, the Queen always ends her yearly speech on New Year's eve with the same words: "God protect Denmark." This is the ordinary language of a European monarch, but it is less common for the European politicians to ask for the Lord's protection. The American president, however, must play both roles.

However, Obama does not merely mention "evil" in passing, in a formulaic way. The core of his argument that war is necessary and unavoidable is rooted in the belief that some men are beyond the reach of reason or diplomacy. While he referred to Ghandi and King and clearly admires their idealism, ultimately Obama presented himself as hard-headed idealist. He is closing down the prisons at Guantanamo Bay. He promises to ophold the Geneve Conventions and to the honor Human Rights. But he also sees a world where wars and conflicts remain unavoidable.

He does not see the same world as George W. Bush, however. Obama sees the greatest hope for peace in international cooperation, in standing together against regimes that oppress their own people, that seek to acquire nuclear weapons, or that threaten other states. His foreign policy is one of enlightened self-interest that echoed President Franklin Roosevelt's Four Freedoms. In his speech, Obama argued that freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom from fear, and freedom from want when achieved in any nation ultimately enhance the security of its neighbors and by extension the rest of humanity. He may not have mentioned Roosevelt by name, but by employing his language, Obama aligned himself with core values that guided American foreign policy before the Cold War, and made them appear equally useful today.

7,000 Killed by Drivers on Mobile Phones

After the American Century

We hear about it each time a soldier is killed in Iraq, but more people die each year on American highways, the victims of drivers who are busy texting or using their mobile phones. Studies have found they drive no better than drunks, causing more than 200,000 accidents every year.

I have written before in this space about the danger of texting or using mobile phones while driving. Now it turns out that the US National Highway Safety Administration did studies of this problem when it was just beginning to be serious, back in 2002. Guess what. They estimated that drivers talking on mobile phones were responsible for 955 highway deaths in that single year, plus a large number of non-fatal accidents. This number can only have risen higher since then, as more people now use these mobile devices than in 2002.

It gets worse. The bureaucrats in Washington decided to suppress these findings. The public never heard about it. The toadies did not want to anger Congress. Am I being unfair when I ask this, but is it not the duty of the National Highway Safety Administration to keep the roads safe? Hide the fact that annually 955 people (more now almost certainly) are dying on the highways because we should not anger legislators? Please recall that the idea of democracy is to serve the public, not Congress. A death toll of more than 7,000? More than 1.5 million accidents, with many maimed and damaged for life? In a statistical sense, this is about double the casualty toll from the 9/11 attacks. But these deaths happen just a few at a time, about 2 or 3 people killed every day.

Should we blame this on George W. Bush? Did anyone on his team ask that this information be squashed? Only now, due to pressure from journalists using the Freedom of Information Act, do we know that slaughter on the highways was thought preferable to riling up Congress. For more on this shameful episode, click here. But please do not read about it while driving.

How Bush Finally United the Iraqis

After the American Century

An Iraqi journalist has become famous because he took off his shoes and threw them at President Bush. This appears to have been a spontaneous action, or at least not thought out in advance. Had he really wanted to hit Bush with his shoes, he should have stood on one side, near the front, and waited until the president was looking the other direction. And he should not have shouted until the shoe was in the vicinity of the commander-in.chief's head. However, judging by the video. this appears to have been an emotional outburst, not a premeditated attack. Throwing a shoe is a traditional Iraqi way to insult a person, so the action makes more sense in that nation than it would in Europe or the US.

I do not find this incident surprising. Bush's mistaken and unnecessary invasion of Iraq has led to the deaths of huge numbers of civilians, perhaps 30 times as many as died in 9/11. This could make someone angry. Muntader al-Zaidi, the journalist, a 28 year old correspondent for Al Baghdadia, an Iraqi television station, was only a few rows away from Mr. Bush, when he slung his shoes, and shouted in Arabic: “This is a gift from the Iraqis; this is the farewell kiss, you dog!” He then threw the other shoe, shouting, "“This is from the widows, the orphans and those who were killed in Iraq!” Security police immediately subdued and arrested him. It appears that he was also beaten, which was hardly necessary.

Bush showed quick reactions and some agility in avoiding the flying shoes. But he will not be able to avoid being nailed by historians, even if his Administration did manage to lose (destroy?) large numbers of documents related to the invasion of Iraq.

The great majority of Iraqis, while divided by religion and much else, have embraced Muntader al-Zaidi's action, in a rare moment of unity. In any popularity contest, he is a "shoe in." Millions of Arabs all over the Middle East seem delighted with the idea of throwing shoes at President Bush, and the journalist has been widely praised for his courage. Is it possible that Bush has now united the Iraqi people in support of free speech and democracy?

Bush's Email-gate

After the American Century

As President Bush prepares to leave Washington, we begin to think about his legacy. Unfortunately, full evaluation of his eight years in office may be difficult because he has not kept good records. In 2003 the White House was busy with many things, including the build-up to the Iraq War. The records from that year might be particularly interesting to historians, and they are crucial to understanding how the Bush government decided, mistakenly, that weapons of mass destruction were being hidden by Saddam Hussein. However, much of the email from that year, perhaps 225 days, may be lost. Electronic accident? or expunged?

The losses begin, conveniently enough, during the build-up to the Iraq War . The missing mail also includes records related to the CIA-leak case, in which White House personnel "outed" one of their own agents, apparently as political revenge. This led to the prosecution and conviction of "Scooter" Libby, one of Dick Cheney's closest aids.

Some email has also apparently disappeared for 2004 and 2005, perhaps as many as 5 million pages in all, according to CREW, a non-profit watchdog organization concerned with ethics in government. However, it is possible that all this material still exists in White House servers - but no one writing about this on the Internet seems to know. In fact, if all the emails are entirely lost from every server, that result almost required systematic record destruction

The Federal Records Act requires the preservation of all presidential papers, including emails. Yet it appears that George Bush and his team have been both careless in preservation and lax in recovery efforts. In contrast, the Clinton White House had an automatic archiving system that made copies of all emails. When the Bush team chose a new email system in 2002, however, they did not include automatic archiving. Instead, each email had to be manually renamed and saved. This sounds like a ludicrous, make-work program most of the time, but also it also potentially provides a chance to omit the damaging email now and again. But 225 days in one year? Perhaps 473 days in all? 5 million messages?

Such incompetence (or is it the intentional loss of damaging information?) may be hard to believe. But then these are Republicans. A Republican President, Richard Nixon, erased vital parts of the Watergate tapes. In the Irangate scandal, the Reagan White House, tried (unsuccessfully) to erase incriminating information as well. There is a pattern here, and it should more than embarrass the Republicans. There appear to be grounds for a criminal investigation, because the Bush Administration was aware of the problem already in 2002, but failed to fix it for six years. During most of the two Bush terms, many people may have been able to delete emails from their accounts or even from the servers. Historians will not be able to trust this partial record.

At the same time, Dick Cheney at times has been doing official business using a private email account. This is illegal because it skirts the legal requirements of the Federal Records Act, and makes it even easier to eliminate anything illegal, incriminating or embarrassing.

The Bush White House has systematically undermined the record keeping process. The legacy of these eight years is apparently rife with evasion and destruction of evidence. Will anyone be prosecuted?

For a chronology of this unfolding scandal and more information, go to The National Security Archive.

Republicans and Democrats: changing regional support

After the American Century

The Republicans have changed a great deal in the twentieth century. Back in 1901 they were led by Teddy Roosevelt, and he won reelection in 1904 with scarcely any support in the South. That was solidly Democratic, and remained so until the 1960s. Then in 1964 Barry Goldwater did poorly in the general election, but won several states in the Deep South. Richard Nixon took note, and made a concerted effort to win in that region, where Republicans had been anathema since the Civil War. The Republicans long were despised below the Mason-Dixon line, as the party of Lincoln and Reconstruction.

The sea-change that followed Nixon's 1968 triumph in the South was astonishing. It was as if two men who had been wrestling furiously until they emerged from their struggle wearing each other's clothing. The Republicans ended up switching regions, as it were, and today the so-called "red states" they tend to win are mostly the old slave states. Lincoln would be astonished to find that his home state of Illinois is solidly behind Obama, the Democrat, while his party is very strong in Mississippi and Georgia. Likewise, the Democrats are now strong in the North where they seldom could win electoral votes for generations after the Civil War.

By meeting in Minneapolis, the Republicans are trying to keep their brand national. At the party's birth in the 1850s it was strong in the Middle West, and stood for free labor against the slave South. But it has not been the party of affirmative action or the equal rights amendment. In my childhood, Republicans often called themselves "the party of Lincoln." One hears this seldom now. Where Black Americans once overwhelmingly voted Republican, they now vote almost entirely Democratic, often over 90%. Women likewise tend to vote more for Democrats, but by less dramatic margins. In 1992, had only men been allowed to vote, George Bush would have been reelected. Had only whites been allowed to vote, Bush also would have won. Blacks and women made Clinton president.

So the party that abolished slavery lost its Black support, moved its center of power from North to South, and embraced religious conservatism. Yet it also remained the party of businessmen. Ronald Reagan was able to remain popular with these somewhat contradictory constituencies, and he also kept the Republicans strong in California. Today, the Republicans are weak there, as well as in New York, however, and they tend to be stronger with businessmen in older, heavy industries than in the high-tech and computer areas.

Is the party still national, or has eight years with George Bush cemented its Southern identity? Certainly, it seems unlikely to win much in the Northeast or the West Coast. Holding the convention in St. Paul is designed to keep its brand visible. Indeed, the hope is that they might win Minnesota. Neither McCain nor Palin has Southern roots or a drawl, and clearly the GOP thinks it can be viable in many Midwestern and Western states. At the same time, Obama is attempting to compete in every state, hoping to break or weaken the Republican hold on such places as Nevada, Montana, North Dakota, Indiana, North Carolina, and Virgina, and keen to win back Florida, if possible.

Will the 2008 election be a watershed event like that in 1968? Probably not. But it may begin a process of realignment, as both parties try to win in new areas. Conceivably, if Obama does very well, the Republicans could lose much of their western base, and be reduced to a regional, southern core. Alternately, if McCain does very well, the Democrats might be reduced to the party of the Northeast and the West Coast, with little in between.

If the two parties remain roughly in their present positions, however, things will hardly be so neatly regional. The New York Times electoral map currently suggests that if the election were held tomorrow there would be 251 electoral votes for Obama, 229 for McCain, and 60 too close to call. Real Clear Politics thinks twice as many electoral votes are up in the air, a total of 125. Both agree, however, that six states are balanced on a knife edge and could go either way: Michigan, Ohio, Colorado, New Mexico, Nevada, and New Hampshire. Not surprisingly, on Labor Day, Obama was in one of the largest of these: Michigan.

Bush Dusts off Reagan's Energy Script, for McCain

After the American Century

In my last Blog I recalled the rhetoric of Ronald Reagan on energy in the 1980 campaign. No sooner had I published it than the Republicans began to talk just like Reagan did at that time. Back then the oil crisis apparently made it necessary to drill for Alaskan oil. The hue and cry was that the whole energy crisis was caused by over-zealous bureaucrats cheered on by environmentalists. It worked for the Republicans then. The public preferred to hear not that the shortages were real but that the US had lots of its own oil.

So the Republicans will try to blame the Democrats for the oil shortage! Not Detroit automakers who made inefficient cars and fought every attempt to raise the mandated minimum mpg (miles per gallon) for their fleets. Not campaign donors who run the oil corporations, who are reporting obscenely large profits. Not the Saudis and OPEC! Not rising demand in Asia. NO! Blame the Democrats.

Ronald Reagan, 1980: "The truth is America has an abundance of energy. But the policies of this administration [President Carter] consistently discouraged its discovery and production."

Until yesterday, McCain opposed off-shore drilling on environmental grounds. Now he is singing from the oil corporation song book. He said yesterday: "We must take control over our own energy future and become once again the master of our fate." Where? In Houston, Texas, the oil capital of the United States. He was talking to oil executives at Bush Family Central. This is the same McCain who last week wanted everyone to believe that he cares about global warming and is much different from G W Bush.

Meanwhile, Obama - correctly - told the press that off shore oil, even if found, drilled for and extracted, would not be available for more than ten years. "Much like his gas tax gimmick that would leave consumers with pennies in savings, opening our coastlines to offshore drilling would take at least a decade to produce any oil at all, and the effect on gasoline prices would be negligible at best, since America only has 3% of the world's oil. . . .It's another example of short-term political posturing from Washington, not the long-term leadership we need to solve our dependence on oil."

Drilling for off-shore oil will not solve the current problem of higher gas prices, but it will continue the US fixation on oil, and it will make corporate Republicans billions of dollars. Interestingly, a few Republicans from tidewater states, notably California's Arnold Schwartznegger, openly rejected the joint McCain-Bush call for off-shore drilling. Oil spills are bad for tourism, destroy wildlife, and threaten fishing. Oh, and burning oil creates greenhouse gases. But please don't tell Mr. McBush, as he thinks drilling for oil that will not be available for a decade is better than using less oil immediately or leading a determined drive to find alternatives.

McBush and Appeasement

After the American Century

Senator McCain has endorsed George Bush's attack on the Democrats for "appeasement." I will return to this, but only after looking at the many absurdies in this attack. Bush chose to go after the Democrats while making a state visit to Israel to mark the 60th anniversary of that nation's independence. Partisan attacks are to be expected from now on until the election, but it is poor form to go to another nation and distract attention from their celebrations to engage in electoral politics. However, where Bush made his statement had a special resonance when he chose to compare the Democrats to those who appeased Hitler. The implication was that if Americans elect Obama, they will be responsible for another holocaust. But there is no historical sense to these assertions.

It was the Republicans far, far more than FDR's Democrats, who were in the appeasement camp. In the 1930s many Americans, especially Republicans, wanted the nation to remain neutral. It was Roosevelt and the Democrats who have the more honorable record. Who wanted to negotiate with Hitler? Republican Senator Borah! Yes, that wonderful party leader who also helped to sabotage Wilson's League of Nations. He was from Bush's party.

And another thing. Just which leader or which nation today can realistically be compared to Hitler? Iran's leaders deny the Holocaust. They sponsor terrorist groups. Democrats and Republicans would all agree aboout these things. But Iran simply does not have the geopolitical clout that Germany had in the 1930s. Because we are talking about a nation, not an amorphous group of terrorists, they could conceivably be negotiated with. The Neo-Conservative Republicans seem to have forgotten that the Cold War was won not by arms, but by a much slower process of dialogue, trade, cultural interchange, and, yes, negotiation. The Berlin Wall came down without a shot being fired. Bush's continual refusal to talk to Iran's leaders has pushed them into the willing arms of the Russians, who are happy to help them build oil and gas pipelines and trade with them. Furthermore, many in Washington, even some Republicans, have come to recognize that it will be impossible to forge a peace in Iraq without somehow involving the Iranians.

Leaving aside historical analogies, Bush himself has at times been a negotiator, so that must make him "an appeaser." At almost the very moment the President was declaring one should never negotiate with terrorists, his administration announced that it was sending massive food aid to North Korea. This is part of the complex negotiations that have, with some success, sought to turn that nation away from its nuclear program. Thus Bush's own administration has been doing the very thing for which he criticized the Democrats.

Bush is trying to distract attention from his foreign policy failures. But his shoot-first-preemptive-strike-cowboy approach to the world has not yielded success in Afghanistan or Iraq. His administration arrogantly refused to listen to its allies. France and Germany both tried to dissuade him from invading Iraq, but Bush told the world that US intelligence information was more reliable than theirs and charged ahead. However, the French and the Germans got it right. There was no pressing national security reason to rush into that war. No weapons of mass destruction were ever found. Bush either lied or his intelligence services were incompetent. Either way, it was an expensive mistake that has cost hundreds of billions of dollars and led to the deaths of more than 100,000 people, the vast majority civilians. The Iraq War has increased instability in the Middle East and served as a training ground for terrorists. Bush's interventionism has also indirectly driven up the cost of oil, because the Iraqui oil fields are not producing as much as they might. Anyone who thinks the US is more secure or better off economically than it was before the invasion of Iraq has not been paying attention.

John McCain had an oportunity to show he was not like the President, but he has endorsed Bush's attack on the Democrats. So much for his claims to represent "straight talk." Perhaps the fall ballots should read "McBush" so voters will know what he represents. For McCain's remarks show once again that he is a throwback from another age, living in the mental universe of the Cold War where he was trained as a military man. McCain by temperment and education is not prepared to be a negotiator or to understand the world as a complex place. He is the candidate who thought it was funny to sing "Bomb Bomb Bomb, Bomb Bomb Iran" to a Beach Boys tune. He is unfit to be President precisely because he has all that Cold War and Vietnam military experience. The world is a different place now.

Finally, suppose we were to evaluate Bush by his own Rambo standards. Seven years after the 9/11 attacks, he has been unable to find Osama bin Laden. By any measure, he has been a miserable failure.

The Bush Economy: End of the "Almighty Dollar"?

After the American Century

The US mortgage crisis and the falling prices for houses have been making headlines for months. The stock market is also jittery because consumer spending has begun to fall, as homeowners feel the equity shrink. In a few cities, such as Cleveland, a glut of unsold homes on the market has created a crisis. Housing values are in free fall. Even though most people are not selling their homes, when the value of a house drops, it has a psychological effect.

Bear-Stearns was part of the rush of speculators who got caught up in the housing bubble, stimulating the market, acquiring sub-prime mortgages, luring people to buy homes they could not afford. And now, Bear-Stearns, on the brink of collapse, has been "saved" for a little while, at any rate. Why did the Bush Administration not try to save the homeowners? Then it might have saved Bear Stearns as a secondary result. Why is a speculative corporation more worth saving than several million home owners? This is the Bush double standard at work.

Of course, if Bear Stearns collapses, other investment houses and even some banks might collapse as well. (It might be the domino effect, which never happened in Vietnam, but maybe this is where the under performing domino effect can make a comeback.)

If a really big organization like Bear Stearns is run badly, society has to pay for it twice - first by suffering the effects, and second by bailing out the people who inflicted the suffering. Instead, Bush should take a truly conservative line: corporations that are run badly should not expect a government handout. Their overpaid executives, many of whom make more money in one year the most working people make in their entire lives, should not helped. Rather, the victims of such corporations should be protected from unscrupulous lenders.

My father was a lifelong Republican, of the old school. He had actually read Adam Smith. He was an engineer and an educator who ended his career as a college dean. He also was a investor. But his fellow Republicans wandered far off the path of hard work, stewardship, and honesty, and he was robbed in the last years of his retirement by Enron. That corporation's brazen lies, arrogance, and manipulations knew no bounds, and the executives of that corporation were campaign contributors to George W. Bush and Dick Cheney.

A few of Enron's executives have been sent to prison, but the Bush Administration did not punish many, and the punishments were mild compared to the economic destruction they caused. The executives cooked their books and issued misleading profit statements, when they were really losing money. Near the end, they quietly began selling their own stock holdings, since they knew that the company was close to worthless. But they would not let their employees sell their stock, and many lost everything. Enron's leaders milked the company literally to death, as they robbed investors and abandoned their employees, who lost their jobs and their pensions.

That is how the Bush League Economy works. It started by giving huge tax cuts to the wealthy. It continued by letting many of the white-collar criminals from ENRON get away. In Iraq, it was time to give away billion dollar contracts (with no competitive bidding) to Bechtel executives and other old friends. And now it is time to bail out Bear Stearns. Save the capitalists, and the American public be damned? Actually it is worse than that.

The Bush economy apparently will end with a debacle much bigger than the collapse of Enron. Does this prove that the Republicans cannot safeguard the economy for the well-being of all Americans? No, it is much worse than that. The Republicans have failed to safeguard the value of the dollar itself, which is plunging to new lows. Things will continue to get worse before they can have any hope of getting better, because the Bear Stearns bailout requires the US Federal Reserve to print more money, making the dollar even less valuable. Ominously, the oil markets are beginning to operate in other currencies, and one wonders if the dollar will ever again be "almighty". If things get much worse, this blog might have to change its title to "After the American Economy."

Clinton Rises from the Mud, But McCain is the Winner

After the American Century

Hillary Clinton has wallowed in the mud and been rewarded for it. No one doubts that her series of dubious allegations and fear mongering in the last week has been decisive in winning Texas and helping her in Ohio. Lyndon Johnson beat Barry Goldwater back in 1964 with an advertisement that bluntly asked voters, whose finger did they want on the atomic button. Hillary's advertisement was a bit more subtle, but not much, suggesting that for reasons never stated, she would be more competent to answer a sudden emergency in the middle of the night. Actually, I cannot think of any particular reason why Hillary, who has no military experience at all, and whose record on the Iraq War is uneven, would have better judgement than Obama when half awake in the middle of night. Perhaps we are to assume that she has Bill Clinton beside her to offer his non-existent military experience. The sad fact is that advertisement, effective as it may have been in the short run, undermines both Democrats. If the election really is about who should answer that phone in a military emergency, then most Americans will think of John McCain.

The advertisement is just one of many examples from the last week of how the Obama-Clinton fight runs the danger of damaging the eventual Democratic nominee. Suppose Obama decides to stop being so nice to Hillary? What if he put together an advertisement showing her many sharply different moods, including crying for the cameras? And suppose that advertisement ended with him asking: Is She Stable Enough In a Crisis? Every feminist in the US would rise up in fury, and help convince the electorate that Clinton indeed is unstable. By playing the "angry woman" which was her persona during much of last week, she runs a terrible risk. It worked for a few days, but the Republicans can easily undermine her for being moody if she does not hit and maintain a steady and measured tone, as McCain has been doing for some time.

Clinton's next stunt, yesterday, to suggest that Obama, who is leading, should subordinate himself to her and become her running mate, is calculated, too. There is no example in American politics, ever, of the person with the most delegates giving up like that. Obama should, of course, accept her offer to be his vice-presidential running mate! Which she too would refuse.

Then consider Clinton's successful smear tactics on NAFTA. Even Danish reporters who are following the campaign in the US, like Politiken's Marcus Rubin, are repeating the misrepresentations spread from the Clinton campaign, that Obama gave secret assurances to Canadian officials that he did not really mean what he was saying about NAFTA. Now the Canadians say that this did not happen. But if you throw enough mud just before people vote, then some sticks and is even spread around by reporters long after the lie has been discredited.

Meanwhile, throwing that particular mud at Obama helped voters forget that Bill Clinton championed the NAFTA Treaty and signed it, or that Hillary also supported it for some time. NAFTA should have been a problem for her, but by throwing mud it became his problem. Worst of all, NAFTA is not really the problem. Ohio did not lose its steel industry because of that agreement, nor are its automobile parts plants closed because of it. A far more nuanced debate on jobs and trade never took place.

Or again, Clinton is doing her best to make Obama look as though he was tightly connected to a Chicago wheeler and dealer, now on trial. But that man, in fact, has given campaign money to both Republicans and Democrats for a generation, and Obama gave back all the funds he ever contributed. She wants to make it seem that Obama, who bought his house and an adjoining strip of land at the market price, has committed a crime. Last time I checked, there is nothing illegal about purchasing land at the market price from someone who has legal title to the land. Should Obama reply in kind, and dig up old Whitewater allegations against Clinton? Should he remind the public that the Clintons took quite a lot of White House furniture with them, illegally, when they left in 2001? The Republicans will be ready to do that anyway, but what if it starts already now?

The Clintons headed into the mud with less success in South Carolina. When behind, their instinct is to go negative. We have not seen the end of it, but the consequences can be dire. For these tactics take the gloss off both candidates, and deepen the split between Obama's and Hillary's supporters. Mud slinging will make it harder to unify the Democratic Party later, and it will weaken the party's appeal to the Independents. And don't forget, those swing voters decide every close election.

Meanwhile, John McCain clinched the Republican nomination, as Huckabee withdrew from the race. McCain has not thrown any mud, but remained statesmanlike during his campaign. He was at the White House yesterday, getting the endorsement of President Bush. Republicans are beginning to adjust to the idea of McCain as their leader, and Mrs. McCain has now had a chance to think about how to rearrange the White House furniture. Meanwhile, the Democrats are getting dirty, and no where near the Rose Garden.

Three months ago, many said that 2008 would definitely be a great year for the Democrats, because of Iraq, because of the failing economy, because Bush is so unpopular. But McCain is the strongest opponent the Republicans had available, because he is definitely neither a Bush clone nor a religious, right-wing candidate. He appeals to swing voters. According to polls, still early of course, he would beat Hillary now and is running close to Obama. Think what he might do after some more mud has been thrown, once he has, for the first time some money to campaign with. All in all, it has been a great week for the Republicans.

The Real Campaign Issues I: Oil

All the candidates are talking about change. One area that screams out for change is US oil policy. The United States is the world's largest oil consumer and polluter per capita, and yet it has resisted the Kyoto Accords. Rather than offering leadership, the US has been a stumbling block. This is not in its own national interest, and it is economically wrong-headed, as well as contributing to environmental degradation. 

The US spends billions of dollars a year on imported oil, and yet its cars are far less efficient than they might be. Indeed, while some mild requirements for miles per gallon have been imposed on automobiles, the gas-guzzling SUVs and small trucks driven by millions of Americans are exempt from controls. I even know one 80 year-old woman who drives a Humvee to the supermarket, getting about 4 miles to the gallon. This is in rural Connecticut, where the need for an armored car is minimal. Gas mileage for cars in the US is roughly the same now as it was thirty years ago, and it was better in 1988 than in 2008!  Could there be any connection between this policy fiasco and the fact that former oil executives, i.e. members of the Bush family, have been running the country for 12 of those 20 years? I am not suggesting a conspiracy, just inability to see that the world has changed. Only as his presidency has drifted toward its end has George W. Bush admitted that, in his words, the nation is "addicted to oil." But after making that admission in a State of the Union message, little has changed. Except the price of oil. It has kept going up. 

The US today could drive just as much and use less than half the oil it does today, if only it made a real effort. American cars today average less than 25 mpg. The Toyota Prius gets 55 mpg. The Honda Insight got 70 mpg. Detroit did not build these cars, and has consistently fought for lower standards, and that means more imported oil, primarily from the Middle East. Detroit has not shown any leadership, and it has backed candidates with a similar (lack of) ideas, notably George Bush and another former oil executive, Dick Cheney.

This is the old story. Do any of the candidates in this election want to champion a new story? The Democratic candidates seem to want a new policy for gas mileage, but the American public has generally resisted any forced changes in the automotive lifestyle. Obama has proposed to help Detroit make the transition to hybrid cars by having the Federal Government pick up some of the health-care costs the car industry has. As he points out, health care now adds $1500 to the cost of every car, which is more than the cost of the steel. In short, Obama has moved beyond mere rhetoric to look for a solution and a partnership. He argues that Ford, GM, and Chrysler really have no choice. If they want to stop losing market share, then they will have to begin making more fuel efficient cars.  Obama also champions substituting home-grown biofuels for oil, reducing the costly dependence on foreign oils. Obama has also said that he would appoint a Secretary of Energy Security, in order to keep focused on the problem.

Hillary Clinton has some of the same ideas. More efficient cars, bio-fuel, more solar and wind power. She introduced legislation in 2006 for a "strategic energy fund" that would put $9 billion over a five year period into energy research, and and she suggested taxing the oil companies to help pay for it. Clinton has noted that ExxonMobil made the highest corporate profits in history, and together with the five other large oil companies had profits of $113 billion in 2005. A tax of less than 10% on their profits from one year would be enough to pay for the research into alternative energies. 

In short, both Obama and Clinton see the importance of new energy policies. Both see the dangers of relying on foreign oil, the dangers of global warming, and the need to rescue Detroit from its own backward looking executives. Either, if elected, would push the US in the right direction. But how hard would they push? Jimmy Carter was educated as an engineer, and he understands thermodynamics. Unfortunately, he did not find a way to get the public to accept his energy plans. Instead, Ronald Reagan told the electorate what they wanted to hear, that the shortages were artificial results of red-tape and environmentalists tampering with the free market. Never overestimate the American voter when it comes to oil. Convenience and the cost at the pump may matter more than global warming or national security or preserving what is left of the automobile industry. But at least if either Clinton or Obama are elected, there is a chance that the US will have an intelligent policy.

Anyone interested in the story of how the US became the world's largest consumer of energy might want to go to the library and borrow my Consuming Power: A Social History of American Energies (MIT Press).

A blog on Electricity will follow next month.

Moby Bush and The Great Saddam Whale

On April 2, 2003 I sent a short opinion piece out to several US newspapers, criticizing the Bush Administration's planned war on Iraq. None would print it. Criticism of the Bush Government was still not widespread in the media, though hundreds of thousands of people were protesting the planned invasion in the streets of New York, San Francisco, Chicago, and other cities around the nation. At the time I was a visiting professor at Notre Dame University, and I had followed the build up to the Iraq War quite carefully. I was against the invasion then, but I could not have imagined how thoroughly the Bush Administration was going to bungle their "peace keeping" once the invasion was over. Subsequent events showed that Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction and was not making any. This seemed likely to be the case to many people at the time, not least to the inspectors who were on the ground. Recall that Colin Powell went to the UN and, we now know, lied, claiming that the US had superior intelligence to that possessed by the French and the Germans. Today, we know that they were right and the US was wrong. But even at that time, I felt that the nation was going absolutely in the wrong direction. And so I wrote the piece now published here. Warning: If you have not read Herman Melville's Moby Dick, then the literary parallels between Ahab and George W. Bush will be lost on you.  On board the Pequod II The Pequod II shipped out in 2001 with the new captain, whom we did not know well, but he was rumored to be compassionate. In the first long months of the voyage he kept himself mostly below, in the Texas, letting others steer the ship while he plotted his unilateral course. Then he emerged in the midst of a storm and addressed his officers and crew. He called on all to join in a quest to make the seas safe for whalers and to assure civilization a steady supply of sperm oil, by hunting down and slaying the Great Saddam Whale. Captains from passing French, German, and Russian ships warned him to hunt only normal prey, but he ignored them. For his mind was fixed on an earlier encounter with that great whale, whom he believed once tried to kill his father, and whom he saw as the very incarnation of evil. Indeed, he spoke of an "axis of evil" that included Iran and North Korea, making up a strange triumvirate that had no alliances with one another. Can First Mate Starbuck Powell stand up to the Captain's extravagance, and steer us into safer waters? Or is his goodness ultimately no match for monomania? Will the frowning captain accept advice to change course from the smiling second mate, Tony "Stubb" Blair? Can the captain heed advice, or is this course become a destiny? We cannot expect restraint from third mate Flask Rumsfeld, who is cheerfully certain he can kill all whales that spout in any gulf. Below decks are wolfish planners who steel Bush's will for the fiery chase. First, they promise an easy chase and quick victory. Have we not harpoons with satellite guidance? Now, they counsel patient pursuit. We will bring democracy and progress to the Middle East fishery. There be also readers of Revelation on board, who look to scripture and conclude that the confrontation with the Great Whore of Babylon has come. This will be the last day of judgement against the infidels.  The Pequod sails on a profitless voyage into a rising storm. In his quest to destroy the Great Sadddam Whale the Captain risks his cargo, insults his allies, kills innocent people, and creates new enemies. I am a involuntary Ishmael on this voyage. My cry for war did not go up with the rest. I don't want to end up clinging to my best friend's coffin. +++++ I see no need to change this more than 1700 days later. Melville was not, of course, writing about George Bush. But he had seen men like him and was able to imagine an apocalyptic scenario.  Bush's foreign policy has been a catastrophe for United States. If we are fortunate enough to have wise leadership after the next election, by which I mean leaders who do not act unilaterally but listen to their allies, it will still take at least a generation for the nation to regain  the moral stature it had abroad at the end of the Clinton years. Sadly, however, it is possible that during the last decade the US has squandered a great historical opportunity for world leadership that will not come again.

The Bush Economy

The US mortgage crisis and the falling prices for houses have now been making headlines for months. The stock market is also jittery because consumer spending seems certain to fall, as homeowners react to this news. Even though most people are not selling their homes this Christmas, when the value of a house drops, it has a psychological effect. When Jones hears that Smith, just down the street, had to sell for $75,000 less than he expected, Jones is deeply sympathetic, and worried.

How is this problem related to George Bush's 7 years in office? Before his election, in 2000, the country was economically strong. The economy had created 1 million new jobs a year during Clinton's presidency. The federal budget was in robust surplus, and Americans were rapidly paying off their national debt. After Bush came into office, not by virtue of a clear electoral victory but thanks to a 5-4 decision in the Supreme Court, he chose to lower taxes, especially for the wealthiest people. So those who least needed a tax break got one, and the budget once again went into the red. The national debt started to rise again, and the US government had to borrow more money every year. Ronald Reagan did the same thing, so one can say that Republican presidents since 1980 have a clear track record on the economy. Republicans spend more than they take in. They drive up the deficit. Republicans are tax cut and overspend conservatives, who pass the bill on to the next generation. In other words, they are not conservatives at all, in the classical understanding of the term.

Part of the bill for these economic policies comes due now in the form of a crumbling housing market. Why is that Bush's fault? First, by lowering taxes, Bush gave people, especially wealthy people, more money to spend, and much of it went into houses. This drove up prices, and it encouraged all home owners to borrow on the value of their property. It also drew many to invest in real estate. So, something of a housing bubble developed, thanks in part to Bush's profligate policy.

Second, more than $1 billion a day of Bush's deficit spending has gone into the War in Iraq. Had he gone out in the desert and simply burned $1 billion a day, it would have had almost as negative an impact on the economy, except that some of the huge war expense did come back, not to ordinary people, of course, but into the coffers of US corporations like Bechtel. But overall, considered as an economic program, the Iraq adventure is hardly a money-making activity.

Indeed, think about all the money that has gone into military hardware. Building a tank or a military jet does not do much to stimulate the American economy after it is built. A big piece of military equipment itself does not create jobs, improve transportation, or upgrade education. A tank does not innovate. A missile does not start a new business. There is far more economic payoff if a government invests in human beings. A better educated workforce generates more national income. A more highly trained hospital staff provides better care. Job training programs help workers make the transition to a new position. Investment in innovation more than pays for itself. In short, the huge military expenses of the Bush years have siphoned off more than $1 trillion and blasted most of it to bits in Iraq. Think about how much stronger the economy would be if that $1 trillion had been spent on health, education, rebuilding roads, and developing alternatives to imported energy. And in a stronger economy, the housing market would not weaken.

Third, one of the arguments for going into Iraq was that the nation could not let all that oil be controlled by Saddam Hussein. But the War has hardly stabilized the price of oil. For much of the time since the US "won" the war Iraq has had trouble supplying even its own population. Meanwhile, the war itself angered many of those who control Middle East oil production, and they are not rushing to increase production. For some reason, they like getting over $95 a barrel. The high cost of fuel obviously does not help the American economy in general, or the housing market in particular.

Bush Administration policies encouraged housing prices to soar while undermining the strength of the economy as a whole. A correction is unavoidable. One hopes it will not be too severe. It is happening even as I write, and we can only hope that the hard work and innovative activity of ordinary Americans has been a sufficient counter force to Bush's over-spending.

Gore Receives Nobel Prize

Al Gore received the Nobel Prize yesterday in Oslo. He also won the popular vote in the United States in 2000. And if there were an election today in the rest of the world, who doubts that he would defeat George Bush? The trajectories of these two men, both born in 1946, is fascinating. Bush avoided Vietnam, using family connections to be placed in the National Guard. Even in that safe, domestic role, the evidence suggests he was not quite a full-time soldier. As President, Bush has enjoyed parading himself before the troops as the commander in chief, but future historians will surely see the hypocrisy in his posing. Gore, in contrast, went to Vietnam, out of a sense of duty, but without enthusiasm for the war itself. Like John Kerry, he has direct experience of what it means to serve in a foreign war. 

This is not the place for a full rehearsal of Bush's subsequent career, or to compare it with Gore's. Suffice it to say that after lying to the United Nations and charging into a war with Iraq, there is little chance of George W. Bush ever winning the Nobel Peace Prize, and absolutely no chance that he will be remembered as a man of vision with regards to the environment. Recall that Bush long denied even the existence of global warming. He has represented an old-fashioned view of the relationship between the economy and ecology, one that made him popular with oil companies and the boardrooms of Detroit car companies. By comparison, Gore has proved himself to be a man of vision, articulating the environmental crisis with clarity and compassion. In his speech, he emphasized that "without realizing it, we have begun to wage war on the earth itself. It is time to make peace with the planet." Try to imagine Bush making that statement. Try to imagine anyone believing him if he did.

It is an inconvenient truth for the American people, but Al Gore would have made a far better president than George Bush.