David Brooks needs a better editor

Random thought generator

David Brooks’s most recent column is an absolute mind-bender. What he wants to say is…what he wants to say is…what he wants to says is…I have no idea what he wants to say. Let’s look at it piece by piece and see if we can make some sense of it. Continue reading »

Economic Failures & the Asia Tour

Obama "gets served" in Asia.

In the wake of blows taken by the Democratic Party in the recent midterm elections, the media has labeled the President’s recent Asia tour a similarly crushing stroke on a global scale.  Where domestically the President “got served” by the Tea Party and Republicans – abroad China, South Korea and Germany delivered a similar treatment – overall displaying the growing weakness of the Obama administration.  This limited presentation of the Asia tour seems accurate only if one believes that economics was the only focus of the tour and that the G20 was somehow going to miraculously resolve the lingering woes of our global economic crises.

Overlooking the President’s activities in India and Indonesia as irrelevant in search for a single striking narrative is illustrative of the larger flaws in the way information is presented to the US populace.  However one may feel about the subjects of democracy promotion, international relations or religious freedom, acting as if these subjects simply weren’t relevant to the tour speaks of either dramatic shortsightedness or a conscious agenda.   Even in the area of economics it seems that a conscious decision has been made to ignore the activities of the administration in India.  The development and deepening of the bilateral relationship between India and the United States cannot be ignored if one is interested in economic policy.

In the area of democracy and international relations, the clashes between the China and the US over the elections in Burma and issues of human rights in the nation necessitate some attention.  The promotion of Indonesia as a thriving Muslim democracy (regardless of realities of religious freedom in Indonesia) deserves the same level of consideration.  The above issues alone would have justified the Asia tour, regardless of the successes of developing economic ties with India.  Yet the evening news supported only the conclusion that the whole of the tour was a waste of time and resources, and a dismal failure of foreign policy.  The only thing I really perceived as a marked failure in the tour was the effort to solve the world’s economic woes through the G20 summit, which I can’t imagine anyone genuinely expected.

Pundits and Presidents

Building off David’s great insight, why is it that when some Presidents do things that the public doesn’t support, such as sending more troops to Iraq in 2006, pundits laud the President for bold leadership, while when others do things the public doesn’t support, like extending health care to all Americans, pundits accuse the President of not listening to the people? How can we ex ante define when going against public opinion shows bold leadership versus not listening to the people? Similarly, what’s the difference between pandering and listening to the people?

Nerd Alert: NYT Budget Puzzle Lets YOU Solve the Deficit

This morning I woke up, put on a pot of sub-par coffee, had some frosted mini shredded wheats, and solved the federal deficit.

That’s right kids, I did it. Or rather, I get to think I did thanks to the NYT’s super sweet interactive budget puzzle. Now that Obama’s fiscal commission has given a little preview of its inevitably controversial recommendations for solving the (real) deficit, the NYT has come up with a way for anyone to take a stab at cutting the deficit.

A while back I was listening to NPR’s Planet Money and they were having listeners call in with their suggestions for cutting the deficit and had experts on the other line ready to explain why those ideas would or would not work. One guy called it and was totally positive he had the best idea ever: cut the space program. Continue reading »

Democracy & Transparency in Asia

A week after his political party suffered some heavy losses in midterm elections; US President Barak Obama is abroad promoting the merits of democracy in Asia.  Though the crux of this “Asia tour” is likely the issue of trade, democracy seems a close second, and really what better time could there be to promote the principles of democracy than right after your political allies were trounced.  Given the international tendency for incumbents to stay in power regardless of what elections might say, the presentation of the democratic party’s  losses as “a healthy thing” might be a helpful message throughout the region particularly when delivered to college-age students in effort to influence future relationships.

Many things can be said about the years of Obama’s presidency so far, if interested one can catch up on the most recent summaries of his successes and failures as interpreted by political pundits at pretty much any time of the day.  Perhaps I’m a bit naïve in thinking this but it seems to me that regardless of what side of the political fence one stands on, the current administration’s efforts toward government transparency have been laudable and something that could leave a lasting impact on our nation regardless of how everything else works out.  Thus even more than the promotion of democracy (which unfortunately has become quite the loaded political term) I appreciate the administration’s current promotion of transparency and open government.  Regardless of what system of government one lives under, it’s a good thing to have access to credible information about the activities of one’s government.