Perish This Thought...

In the winter of 2007 I was discussing “Profiles in Courage” with a political science professor. We were batting around potential future candidates in case anyone writes a sequel, and I decided to swing for the fences. I asked him to suppose, just suppose, that Iraq settles down, violence subsides, and the country truly becomes a bastion of democracy in the Middle East, acting as a hedge against Iran and establishes itself as a stalwart U.S. ally. If that happened, could George W. Bush become a future “profile in courage?” A politician in the same realm as Sam Houston, Thomas Hart Benton and Edmund Ross – men who took actions that were correct but so unpopular their careers ended, and it took decades for people to finally recognize them for their dignity and valor?

The professor thought for a good minute and finally said yes. Yes, that would establish him as a potential candidate for Profiles in Courage (the sequel). But he thought the chances of it happening were the same as a meteor crashing through the roof in the next five minutes. I agreed with him on both counts.

But look at Iraq today. The peace is fragile but holding. Bush and company made far, far too many mistakes and lost too many lives to get to where they are today, but all the things he envisioned Iraq becoming now don’t seem too far fetched anymore, except for those pesky weapons of mass destruction thing.

Some would say Iraq’s progress is less about Bush and more about General Petraeus successfully executing “the surge” and they have a point. It could be that it unfortunately took four years for Bush to find the right general to execute his mission. It took Lincoln a while to find his right general as well.

When presidents leave office, they often go through a period where they are intensely unpopular for a few years, then extremely popular until a few years after their death. It takes at least 25 years after that for history to finally determine what kind of president they really were. Currently Clinton’s popularity is very low, although his recent actions are partly to blame for that. However, Jimmy Carter and George H.W. Bush’s popularity are high, although both were far less effective as president than Clinton was.

The one candidate who would definitely qualify as a new Profile in Courage would be Harry Truman. Truman made decisions that were increasingly unpopular during his eight years in office and left as the president with a 22% approval rating – still the lowest ever. Yet today he is regarded as one of our best presidents and the unpopular decisions he made – from desegregating the armed forces to firing MacArthur and beginning the containment policy to limit the spread of communism – are now seen as prescient and acts that helped the U.S. rebound from World War II. Will George W. Bush, who currently has similar approval ratings, regain a stature similar to Truman? Check back with me in 25 years.

More Info: My earlier blog comparing the Iraq War with the Philippine War

This Bud's for the U.S.

If you’re upset about the American icon Budweiser being bought out by (gasp) - a foreign company! - you can settle down. Welcome to the global economy. Bud and Bud Light is not going anywhere, Spuds McKenzie will not suddenly reappear during football season and maybe the Belgians can get Americans to start drinking better beer.

You hear a lot about outsourcing – U.S. companies that send domestic jobs overseas. What you don’t hear about is insourcing, which is foreign companies that come here and provide good jobs in America to Americans. Some of these companies include Toyota, Michelin, ING, L’Oreal, Sony, Nestle, Philips and many others. You’ve probably got several of these companies’ products in your house, and are invested in several of them in your portfolio. In the interest of full disclosure, I work for a foreign company here in Boston, but not one of the ones just mentioned.

Is your U.S. company outsourcing or just shedding jobs like sick icon GM? Foreign companies insource over 5 million jobs in the U.S., and you can soon add InBev/Budweiser to the list. When you pursue a weak dollar policy like the Bush Administration does, you’re basically rolling out the For Sale sign on the border. And that is not necessarily a bad thing – no matter where you live, your governor probably spends much of his time abroad lobbying foreign companies to invest in your state, either by opening a satellite office, building a new plant or buying the state’s bonds. If they come, the foreign companies will create the same jobs and pay the same taxes the American companies do.

And Budweiser (legally Anheuser-Busch)? Before the unsolicited bid, its sales and stock had been basically flat for five years. InBev pulled a neat move by getting renegade family uncle Adolphus Busch in its corner before raising its offer. Missouri’s senators are whining about losing “part of America’s heritage.” They seem to have forgotten that Anheuser-Busch was started by German immigrants, and the brewers had previously announced plans to lay off over 1,100 workers. A foreign buyout is nowhere near a worst case scenario for its workers and stockholders.

Globalization and free trade agreements are frowned upon, but the end result ends up being positive for all parties. Main Street Americans will eventually accept the deal, grumbling into their Budweisers as they pull off in their Ford trucks (which were built in Mexico).

More Info: An Empirical Study on the Economic Importance of Insourcing

With Friends Like The New Yorker...

I once met someone who told me she was so liberal she “screamed at The New Yorker because its political stance infuriates me.” That person is probably screaming at The New Yorker today for a whole new reason, mainly their cover “cartoon” which may just cost Obama the presidency.

Like many, I have tried to make sense of numerous New Yorker cartoons over the years and given up. Perhaps in a snooty aren’t-we-clever-because-we-live-in-NY way, tens of people find them funny or satirical. There was even a whole Seinfeld episode devoted to the absurdity of this topic.

Editorial cartoons are supposed to make you laugh, or at least think. So let’s see – we have a man who could be president dressed like a Muslim (which 12% of Americans still think he is), with his wife dressed as a terrorist, with a photo of Osama bin Laden on his wall and an American flag burning in the fireplace. Are you laughing? Are you amazed by the satirical nature of the image? Do you get the joke?

Obama certainly doesn’t find it funny. It doesn’t matter if the accompanying article is a critique of American paranoia and how Obama fits into that. And The New Yorker’s excuse that the cover “combines a number of fantastical images about the Obamas and shows them for the obvious distortions they are,” is jaw-dropping. I consider myself relatively intelligent (although obviously too dumb to understand The New Yorker) and the “joke” is totally lost on me and anyone else I’ve spoken to.

Maybe what the New Yorker sees is a witty and satirical poke at the American mindset. That attitude alone won’t win them any new converts or readers. The mistake they made is assuming that everyone else in America would see it their way, and their churlish response means that if you don’t understand it, you’re not as smart as us.

Context is unimportant, especially with art. The most effective political communication works on emotion and gut, and an image must stand together with context to work. With this cover art, The New Yorker has just given ammunition and excuses to the bigots and ignorant who think Obama is a Muslim, dislikes America and will go soft on terrorists. Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity now have free reign to make as many racist comments as they want – hey, if The New Yorker can do it and excuse it as “satire” then they can too, right?

Get ready to see this cartoon appear ad nauseam on Fox News, billboards and anti-Obama 527 rhetoric until November. It is red meat for conservative partisans who need no explanation to spin it to uninformed and undecided voters. And if you think I’m wrong, how would you feel if this was the cover of the National Review?

More Info: The New Yorker's Self-Confessed View of the World (now this is satire, I think)