Election 2012: Wealthy Republican Candidates: One Angry, One Cold

After the American Century

South Carolina is voting as I write, and all the polls suggest that Gingrich is likely to win, or to come close to winning. A sampling of polls suggests that Gingrich might win by 4%, but the margin of error and the volatility of the public makes this prediction a bit dubious. The momentum is on Gingrich's side, as he has come from a deficit of more than 10 percentage points to take the lead. Romney will not be able to capture the nomination easily. 

The coming vote in Florida will test the Republican Party further. Romney and Gingrich do not just represent different political views. There is considerable animosity between them, and it is fueled by a barrage of negative advertising, from both sides. The longer the campaign lasts, the more divided the Republicans will become, and the fault lines are not merely between Gingrich and Romney  The Ron Paul stalwarts show no sign of losing enthusiasm for their man, who keeps alive a libertarianism that can never really compromise with Romney and has contempt for Gingrich's opportunism. That leaves Santorum to gather up the votes of conservative Catholics and evangelicals. They find Gingrich immoral, and they see Romney as unacceptable, for he is a Mormon who has supported abortion in the past.

In the previous post I predicted that South Carolina would be a bloodbath of negative advertising, and so it has been. Possibly in the coming Florida primary the Republican leadership will be able to convince the candidates to tone down their rhetoric, in the interest of eventual unity in the general election. However, my guess is that the vituperation and nastiness will continue. Romney has begun to attack Gingrich for his ethics violations that cost him leadership in the House of Representatives back in the 1990s. Until now little had been said about this. And Gingrich continues to hound Romney about his off-shore wealth, his low tax rate, and his still undisclosed personal finances. John McCain was successfully attacked for having so many houses that he could not recall how many, and Romney will be in for similar problems. 

It is not a sin to be rich in the United States, but it is unwise to run for public office if the wealth is not mitigated by well-publicized philanthropy or pro bono work for good causes. The rich man who is a public benefactor, like Andrew Carnegie or Bill Gates, is the cultural ideal. Angry or cold rich men who do not give something back are not popular. Men of great wealth have often created foundations to redistribute it, notably the Ford Foundation or the Rockefeller Foundation.  These charitable institutions have the added advantage that the contributions to them are tax deductions. Ted Turner gave much of his personal fortune to the United Nations, and Warren Buffet has put billions of dollars into the foundation that Bill Gates created with his billions. Such acts seem rooted in a Protestant idea of stewardship.

It may be that Romney has been beneficent, but if so, the news has not reached this writer or most of the electorate. He seems to be a ruthless capitalist, a Bain Buccaneer, who recently declared that he likes to fire people. Gingrich also seems devoted to feathering his own nest, and last year at times seemed to campaign in order to promote his books more than to win. He has accepted outrageous "consultation fees" from clients, when it is obvious that in fact he was peddling his considerable political influence.

None of these men seems a worthy steward of the nation's resources, much less a repository for the public trust. Santorum is not worth commenting on, and Ron Paul is too extreme to be taken seriously. Republican voters are left with two wealthy, self-serving, nasty candidates, neither of whom are trustworthy, consistent in their views, compassionate in their nature, or visionary in their politics. When the dust finally settles and we have a Republican nominee, one can only hope that by some miracle a new face has suddenly emerged. A nation of 300,000,000 people surely ought to be able to produce at least one decent Republican candidate. In hard times, a wealthy candidate can be appealing. Think of Franklin Roosevelt. Instead, we have two insensitive rich men, one angry, one cold.

What Can Denmark Learn from the United States?

In my last blog I pointed to some areas where the United States might learn from Denmark. Now it is only fair to do the reverse: what can Denmark learn from the US? Quite a lot, actually. I want to point to four areas.

First, Danes have only a generation of recent experience in living with minorities from other cultures, and they have not done a good job of integrating them into their society. Refugees and immigrants have come to Denmark from more than 100 nations, but Danes speak of them as if they were a singe group, with few nuances. They speak of them collectively as "new Danes," which is code phrase that signals that these are people that are not really accepted as full members of society, even if they were born in the country and speak Danish as their first language. Politicians on the Danish right angrily demand that foreigners give up their own cultures and assimilate. They talk much like the anti-immigration leaders in the United States c. 1910. I personally know a lovely young women whose parents came to Denmark from Sri Lanka. She got an engineering education and speaks the language like a native - and Denmark is screaming for engineers - but nevertheless she never got a decent job offer inside the country. Instead, she has a terrific position in London. That is crazy, of course, but there are all too many examples of such discrimination and failed integration. The unemployment rate for "new Danes" is much higher than for the rest of the population. So, Danes should go to school to Canada and the US to see better models of how to welcome and integrate new citizens. The need is great, because Denmark has an unemployment rate that is now under 3%. Not only do they need to retain their own minorities, but they desperately want to recruit and then retain skilled people from abroad.

Second, Danes are losing some of their cultural heritage every year, particularly books and paintings, but also other important cultural objects. This is because of tax laws that do not encourage donations. In the United States, of course, donations are a tax write-off, so someone with a valuable painting can both be benevolent and also get full value for philanthropy. Another example is close to my heart. When a university professor retires in the US, he or she might well donate valuable books and collections to the library, again in exchange for a tax write-off. But in Denmark, no such rules apply. I know of one case of a man who had a valuable personal library, which almost was broken up and sold. Finally, the family did agree to sell it to the university for a fraction of its total worth. But in most cases, nothing of the sort happens. This would not matter so much if Danish libraries were well stocked. However, there is little tradition of building up good research libraries in Denmark, because this sort of thing is left to the State. But national governments, in my observation, are irregular in supporting libraries and museums. So, the Danish nation could benefit from changing the tax laws, because for a pittance they could preserve far more of their cultural heritage. The United States has some amazing libraries and museum collections built up by knowledgeable collectors. There is little monetary incentive for Danes to do the same.

Third, while I praised the Danish socialized medical system in my last Blog because it is free and works pretty well, it could be improved if it adopted a more proactive approach. In the US doctors give their patients an annual medical exam, and so can track their weight, blood pressure, and other vital indicators. Danish doctors only see a patient when something goes wrong. In other words, they wait, often until it is a bit late in the game. Preventive medicine would raise life expectancy, which currently is a bit lower than the US, and quite a bit lower than next door Sweden. I mention Sweden to indicate that this is not a problem with socialized medicine per se, but rather a specifically Danish problem.

Fourth, and finally for today, the Danes could learn from Americans how to meet new people. They are a rather shy lot, hanging back in the corner of the room if they find themselves in a group of strangers. In the US people are quite ready to mix it up at a cocktail party, the more the merrier. Danes feel most comfortable at a smaller gathering, preferably where they know everyone else in advance, and ideally where there is a seating plan. Spontaneity is not the Danish strong point, in other words. Most of my Danish students who take a term in the US are able to make this adjustment, so there is a chance that the country can and will open up a little.

If both nations have something to learn from the other, however, I am not advocating cultural homogeneity. Fortunately, in my view, the Danes are not becoming Americanized, but that is a subject for another blog.