Maureen Dowd Meets the Red Meanies

What happens when you have run out of invective but are facing an audience that prefers a jolt of nasty with its Sunday morning coffee?

You have to sympathize with Maureen Dowd. She wishes she could still call Republican women racists, but she knows that it sounds like rhetorical bluster.

That doesn’t stop her from the insinuation, but she is a good enough writer to know that she cannot just leave it at that.

She advances into throwing all Republican woman candidates into the same bag, stereotyping them, slandering them, and dismissing their work.

If she weren't a feminist, the sisterhood would already have done serious damage to her reputation.

The rest of us are within our rights to be shocked to discover that Dowd does not possess enough mental fire power to distinguish the accomplishments of a Meg Whitman from those of a Christine O’Donnell.

One hopes that Dowd feels a few pangs of conscience, what I like to call the agenbite of inwit, for such a blatant display of misogyny. What could be worse than to dismiss their achievements and policy proposals, as… get this… MEAN.

It feels like the plaintive cry of a twelve year old girl running home to blurt out: “Mommy, they were mean to me.”

That’s right, Maureen Dowd has stooped to the level of schoolyard taunts. Say it ain’t so, Mo.

Dowd’s column today is sure to be an instant classic. Though probably not for the reasons she thinks. She begins by making a run at racism baiting, denouncing the  governor of Arizona, Jan Brewer, for racism.

Crudely, with a dash of vulgarity, but wrapped in rhetorical ribbons, Dowd wrote: “As the politicians droned on and my Irish skin turned toasty brown, I worried that Governor Brewer might make a citizen’s arrest and I would have to run for my life across the desert. She has, after all, declared open season on anyone with a suspicious skin tone in her state.”

Name-calling is not original. It attempts to shut down debate. As an argument, it has already failed. We expect better from Maureen Dowd.

To offer the perspective that Dowd ignores, Brewer has been excoriated for signing into law a bill passed by both houses of the Arizona legislature, a bill that attempted to deal with the fact that the Mexican drug wars are bleeding over into Arizona.

Of course, the law explicitly forbids racial profiling, but why cavil.

Like it or not, The Arizona law represented the will of the people, so much so that Republican candidates in Arizona are likely to have a very good day on November 2. Regardless of gender, as it happens.

Dowd’s next point is stranger still. Perhaps she thinks it’s a winning argument, perhaps she feels that men will find it persuasive, perhaps she is worried that so many men find this new breed of Republican woman attractive, but Dowd wants us to believe that these mean women have stooped to impugning the masculinity of their male opponents.

It was bad enough when they impugned your patriotism, but to impugn your manhood... Oh, my God.

Dowd is outraged that a Republican woman would dare belittle: “the president’s manhood….”

As if that were not bad enough Sharron Angle dared blurt out at her debate with the Senate majority leader, these now-famous words: “Man up, Harry Reid.”

How presumptuous can you get?

Dowd continues: “With casino red suit and lipstick, Angle played the Red Queen of the Mad Hatter tea party, denouncing career politicians and ordering 'Off with your head!' and 'Down with government benefits'!”

Dowd goes into high dudgeon, but Angle was simply using high concept. By now everyone knows that political debates are about memorable sound bites. Whatever you think of Sharron Angle, hers was simply very good.

Fairness obliges me to note that Dowd does not even include the most virulent attack on manliness, the one performed by Linda McMahon.

She leaves that for fellow Timesman, Frank Rich, who uses his portion of the op-ed page today to conjure this frightening vision: “We shouldn’t be surprised that this year even a state as seemingly well-mannered as Connecticut has produced a senatorial candidate best known for marching into a wrestling ring to gratuitously kick a man in the groin.” Link here.

Hold on to your family jewels, Linda McMahon is coming.

Of course, Rich is being snarky here, but do you think it fair to diminish a woman’s achievements, especially when the woman in question has built a rather large and rather successful business, albeit one that neither Frank Rich nor I has ever frequented.

In the old days, feminists used to be happy to traffic in images of women kneeing men in the groin. Today’s feminists have revived the image in order to scare men into voting Democratic.

Not to put too vulgar a point on it, but Maureen Dowd and Frank Rich are here to tell you that all of these beautiful Republican women are a bunch of ball-busters.

In the old days, this used to be one of the most important charges leveled against witches. Check out that wonder of 15th century inquisitorial thinking: Malleus Maleficarum. Not only is this the manual inquisitors used for their witch hunts, but it is also one of the first books about sex therapy.

Strangely, Dowd does not seem to believe that these great exemplars of manliness cannot defend themselves. If you need Maureen Dowd to defend you, then maybe you do need to man up.

Beyond the insults and the adolescent taunts, Dowd does arrive at something that resembles an idea. In it she tries to explain why these Republican women are doing so well.

In her words: “They are the ideal nihilistic cheerleaders for an angry electorate.”

Say what? Do you really believe that Meg Whitman and Carly Fiorina are nihilists?

I am sure that the world would be a better place if Maureeen Dowd understood the concepts she bandies about.

Whatever Dowd means, “nihilistic” is the wrong word. These women are not running on nothing. They are running on principles, like free enterprise, the integrity of our borders, the ability to live within our means, obedience to the constitution, and respect for the will of the people.

You can disagree with their policies, but that does not make them nihilists. Many of them are libertarians; some are more traditionally conservative. None of it has anything to do with nihilism.

They do not reject social mores and social conventions. They are playing by the rules, and, for the most part, have respected social mores and conventions.

Some of them are even asserting their constitutional rights to bear arms.

They do not believe that life is pointless. They want to restore the value and dignity of work, and they want to reassert what they consider to be basic American values.

They are certainly not following in the footsteps of the 19th century Russian nihilists, who believed in destroying all authority through acts of terror and assassination.

Women running for political office, and playing by the rules of a democratic society, are not the heiresses of 19th century nihilists.

It takes more than a clever quip to make you a nihilist.

"Charity Doesn't Solve Anything"

As you know, Bill and Warren have set out on an excellent adventure.

Bill Gates and Warren Buffett have been traveling around America and the world trying to persuade their fellow billionaires to join them in pledging half of their assets to charity.

Now you know that Bill and Warren are very generous people. They will not merely be remembered as obscenely rich, but as paragons, as paladins, as champions of progressive causes, as men of unimpeachable moral standing.

If we are not feeling quite so charitable ourselves, we would note that we are witnessing the spectacle of two men who are so rich that they can burn money. It does not really matter how much they burn.

After all Bill himself lives in the Pacific Northwest. Maybe he is just reviving the old Native American custom of potlatch.

Half of an infinite amount of money is still an infinite amount of money. Bill and Warren can burn half of it and still, if they wish, ensure that their descendants will always be richer than everyone else.

If they have decided not to make their children and grandchildren absurdly rich, because they understand that living off of trust funds does not promote human initiative, self-reliance and self-respect, then why would they want the same rules to apply to non-family members?

For all I know, Bill and Warren are just avoiding taxes. They do not trust the government, and want to have a say in how their money is spent.

Ironically, both Bill and Warren tend to favor high taxes. When you are a billionaire you do not effectively pay taxes, so no matter what your tax rate your lifestyle does not suffer.

The best irony here is that while Bill and Warren are off on their grand adventure, Bill, Sr. father of the Microsoft billionaire, is promoting an initiative in Washington State to raise state taxes on wealthy people.

Is this part of the Gates philanthropy business? To make sure that others give more money to the government, the better to make up for the money that the Gates family is sheltering from taxation.

Unfortunately, it is also public policy. As Arthur Laffer pointed out, state income taxes tend to stifle economic growth. Maybe, having gobs of money blinds you to reality. Link here.

All things considered Bill and Warren’s excellent adventure looks like a self- promotional junket by people who have too much time and money on their hands.

Yesterday, the world’s richest man, Carlos Slim, answered Bill and Warren's initiative. Slim responded: “Charity never solved anything.” Link here.

Slim continued: "'The only way to fight poverty is with employment,' he said. 'Trillions of dollars have been given to charity in the last 50 years, and they don’t solve anything.'"

Charities do create employment, mostly for administrators and for do-gooders. But they do not create the kind of economic activity that sustains a prosperous society, and allows people to arrive at a point where they do not need charity.

The point is very obvious. It has been repeated over and over again. Apparently it has made no impression on Bill and Warren. As the Journal reports, Slim’s: "… point seems to be that society would benefit more if the wealthy channeled their creative energies and talents toward building job-creating businesses rather than doling out cash."

Here’s an idea. What if Bill and Warren dedicated ten percent of their fortune to providing seed money for new businesses in poorer American neighborhoods. What if they set up cooperatives that would train and help prospective entrepreneurs run these new businesses?

Human societies have always had charities. After all, religions have been on the front lines of charity as long as they have existed.  Christian love is called agape in Greek, caritas in Latin, and charity in English.

When the New Testament says that you should love your neighbor as yourself, it uses the word: agape.

But how much of the money that Bill and Warren and their friends are going to be funneling into charity is going to be given to religious organizations? How much of it do you think will go to Catholic charities or Hadassah or the United Methodist Committee on Relief?

Don’t hold your breath.

Bill Gates wants to cure malaria. It is certainly a worthy goal. Of course, you would think that given the prevalence of malaria, pharmaceutical companies have plenty of incentive to find a cure.

I will guarantee, without even looking it up, that the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation is not involved with research that would produce new pesticides that could kill the mosquitoes that transmit malaria. Progressive values would preclude such funding.

Carlos Slim was pointing to the simple fact that if you send boatloads of food to feed the world’s hungry, you are going to feel very good about yourself, but you are also going to destroy local agriculture.

No one can compete with “free.”

Gratifying your philanthropic urges can easily create a cycle of dependence, one that saps initiative, self-respect, and demeans individuals.

Keep in mind, no matter who begins these foundations, and no matter whose name is on the door, ultimately they will be run by people who are in the business of philanthropy, and that means, people who have made it their life’s work.

These people are not champions of the free market; they are not especially interested in building businesses. They are interested in assuaging guilt, their own or someone else’s, by giving away money.

These charities will be promoting liberal and progressive causes; they will become advocacy organizations. They will not be promoting capitalism.

It is a good thing to fund education. It makes you feel good to fund education. Except that the problem with education has very little to do with money.

Education is a system that has been run by liberals and progressives, with precious little interference from moderates and conservatives. More and more it has devoted itself to inculcating the values associated with political correctness and self-esteemism, rather than teaching children.

All the world’s money is not going to change that.

It’s one thing to give money to the poor and the indigent. Religions have always done as much. It’s quite another to create a special class of people who can promote their own ideology under cover of philanthropy.

And who are not answerable to market forces or even to God.

A Nation Shamed by Debt

Yesterday, Victor Davis Hanson took America’s emotional temperature and concluded that our nation is ashamed at being the world’s biggest debtor nation. Link here.

Surely, this was one competition that we didn’t want to win. We didn’t even want to compete.

The shame expresses a foreboding, a knowledge that paying our way out of debt is verging on the impossible.

Of course, there’s debt and there’s debt. If you can easily service your credit card balance, you are not going to feel ashamed of your debt load.

If you take out a mortgage that you can afford, only to lose your job and fall behind on your monthly payments, you will feel some sense of shame for failing to fulfill your obligations.

But you will think that as soon as  you get a new job, you will get back to paying your mortgage.

If you become unemployed for too long, or if your new job does not pay well enough to allow you to service your debt, you might be lucky enough to find a banker who will allow you to take out another loan so you can pay off your mortgage.

Usually, this happens when you are too big to fail, when the bank cannot recoup its money by foreclosing on your property.

If the bank is doing you this favor, you will be hiding your shame, but you will know that this is not going to last forever. Worse yet, the longer it goes on the more you owe. Eventually, you will get to the point where no job pays well enough to allow you to pay it off. Or better, when the bank runs out of money.

The latter circumstance most accurately describes our nation’s current relationship to debt. We keep borrowing money; people keep lending us the money; and we know that we will never be able to pay it all off.

We could argue about who is at fault, the borrower or the lender, but still, when you are the borrower, and you depend on the kindness of strangers, you start feeling like you are receiving charity.

You lose your sense of self-reliance; you lose your self-respect; you feel like a beggar. After all, you have little to offer in return for the loan.

The bank’s generosity, or foolishness, is merely postponing the inevitable.

As Hanson suggests, this costs you your pride and your reputation. And it makes you feel depressed.

You will travel around the world, hands outstretched, palms up, not in a gesture of friendship, but in a plea for help.

All the while you know that you are not going to be able to pay it all back.

You will feel bad enough for knowing that there is no quick fix. How will you feel when you recognize that there does not even seem to be a slow fix.

Or else, as everyone seems to know, the only way we are ever going to have a chance to pay off our debt is by inflating our currency. We cannot pay it off with today’s dollars, so we can only hope for, or, in the case of the Federal Reserve, work to produce inflation.

But, paying off debt with inflated currency feels like cheating. If you borrow $1000 when $1000 will buy a laptop and pay it back at a time when $1000 will buy two candy bars and an iced latte, your lender will feel cheated.

You will not feel that you have restored your good name. Worse yet, your lenders will start thinking of you as a bad credit risk.

For the foreseeable future, you will have more and more difficulty borrowing money. And when you do, you will be paying much higher interest.

As the national debt ascends into the stratosphere, many Americans have figured out that it can never really be paid off. No matter what they do, they will come up short.

When you see alternatives that are not real alternatives, you are going to become depressed and demoralized. When action seems futile, you retreat into passion. Then you will start feeling angry.

Under the circumstances, it might be the only sane emotional response.

A Bipolar Presidency

In America we have Republicans and Democrats and Obama.

More than a few of us have suspected that Obama belongs in a category all his own. For his radicalism, he is sui generis.

Granted Obama seems to be trying to bridge gaps. But in trying to occupy both ends of the political spectrum, he ends up sounding bipolar. He seems to jump from one extreme to the other, and the bridge, like the shovel-ready projects, remains unbuilt.

He is not governing according to conservative or liberal principles, but from a set of fictions that he is imposing on an increasingly unwilling nation.

By now we are all too familiar with Obama’s fictions. One of them insists that big business exploits the disadvantaged, that it robs from the poor to fatten the rich, and that a president’s duty is to redistribute income, to right wrongs, to punish the successful, and therefore to produce social justice.

This morning Ken Langone, one of the founders of the Home Depot, wrote an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal where he offered his analysis of the Obama approach to business. Link here.

Langone was responding to an exchange he had with Obama at a town hall meeting. If Obama was trying to engage with businessmen at a town hall meeting, he clearly failed. As Langone wrote: "I must say that the event seemed more like a lecture than a dialogue.”

For those of us who believe that Obama takes everyone to be his “teachable” pupils, Langone’s description does not come as a surprise.

It should also not be surprising to read Langone's take on Obama: namely that he feels that business is a corrupt enterprise that can only be saved by accepting his guidance and regulation.

Addressing Obama directly, he writes: "For more than two years the country has listened to your sharp rhetoric about how American businesses are short-changing workers, fleecing customers, cheating borrowers, and generally 'driving the economy into a ditch,' to borrow your oft-repeated phrase."

He adds: "My question to you was why, during a time when investment and dynamism are so critical to our country, was it necessary to vilify the very people who deliver that growth? Instead of offering a straight answer, you informed me that I was part of a 'reckless' group that had made 'bad decisions' and now required your guidance, if only I'd stop 'resisting' it."

Ken Langone is a distinguished businessman. He is one of the titans of American business. He went to a town meeting with the president of the United States and got dressed down. He was accused of having caused the nation's economic difficulties. Could we hope for a better example of gross incivility.

As we know, Obama believes that his problems with business are more about bad communication than bad policy. Ultimately, he feels misunderstood. Thus, he likes to hold town hall meetings because they give him the opportunity to show the business world that he knows what is best for them.

Langone responds: "Your insistence that your policies are necessary and beneficial to business is utterly at odds with what you and your administration are saying elsewhere. You pick a fight with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, accusing it of using foreign money to influence congressional elections, something the chamber adamantly denies. Your U.S. attorney in New York, Preet Bahrara, compares investment firms to Mexican drug cartels and says he wants the power to wiretap Wall Street when he sees fit."

Finally, Langone offers his concept. He describes the Obama Obama presidency in terms that would make it functionally bipolar.

It vacillates between manic, but empty, displays of pro-business feelings, displays that have nothing to do with reality, followed by depressing and increasingly hostile actions that deprecate businesspeople.

In Langone’s words: "That short-sighted wavering—between condescending encouragement one day and hostile disparagement the next—creates uncertainty that, as any investor could tell you, causes economic paralysis. That's because no one can tell what to expect next."

Old Habits Die Hard

All of us have problems changing our habits. Replacing a bad habit with a good one often involves reconstructing our lives.

Career criminals have it harder than most of us.

In a blog post last month Dr. Stanton Samenow showed why career criminals, no matter how much they want to mend their ways, tend to fall back into their old patterns. Link here. (Thanks to Ari Mendelson for forwarding this to me.)

Dr. Samenow writes: “Old patterns do not die or even diminish without great effort. The scope of the task of change is far more all encompassing then they ever imagined. "What do you have that compares to cocaine?" one offender asked. He was referring not just to the drug but to the entire way of life that drugs offer -- the people, the places, the thrill of the deal, and the other illicit activities that are part of the world of drugs and crime. He found that working at a day to day job, trying to make ends meet financially, attending meetings, and living an ordinary life was excruciatingly boring. Initially very sincere about change, he had done well by any standard. But he gave it all up and returned to crime, eventually getting arrested and returning to confinement with new charges and probation violations.”

He continues to explain that the same rule applies to weight loss: “Perhaps an analogy is a person who is enthused about losing weight. He readily sheds a few pounds. Then he sees what weight reduction that is enduring requires, namely an entire new set of eating habits. Only with the offender, he is confronted with changing an entire way of life. This is doable, but it is accomplished only with prolonged effort -- not doing things he wants to do and doing plenty of things he does not want to.”

Change, real consequential change, whether it is about moving out of the world and life of crime or out of the world and life of weight gain, requires work. It takes more than a change of attitude or a boost to your self-esteem.

Did Obama Lie?

A few years ago, Democrats succeeded in branding George Bush a liar.

But, when George Bush claimed that Saddam had WMDs, was he really lying? Or was he misinformed?

If you believe that Bush knew that there were no WMDs, and that he was intending to deceive the public, then you can say that he was lying.

If he was misinformed, and if he held the same misinformed belief that most Congressional Democrats also held, then he was not lying.

If the latter is true, then the Democrats and their supporters were lying when they said that Bush lied. Hmm.

Give them credit for their success. As any propaganda minister will tell you, the more you repeat a lie the more it gets accepted as gospel truth.

Now, will the press and the pundits and the political class apply the same standards to President Obama?

When Obama was trying to sell his stimulus bill in 2009, he declared that the money would be used for “shovel-ready projects.” The phrase was repeated so often, by so many of the bill’s supporters, that it became the bill's mantra.

This Sunday the New York Times Magazine, in an extensive and exhaustive report on Obama’s “education,” will report that: “He realized too late that 'there’s no such thing as shovel-ready projects' when it comes to public works.” Link here.

Now he tells us. Does this mean that Obama was lying when he said that all of these infrastructure projects were ready to go, waiting for a little monetary stimulus?

Did Obama know that his stimulus bill was not going to rebuild America’s decaying infrastructure?

Did he lie or was he misinformed?

The difference lies in his intention. But how to you know what was in his mind? We aren’t mind readers, after all.

If Obama did not know the truth about shovel-ready projects, then he did not know what was in the stimulus bill. I imagine that that is a possibility, albeit a remote one.

In fact, pro-Obama commentators noted at the time that there was very little spending for shovel-ready projects. Take the contemporaneous discussion between Chris Matthews and Jim Cramer in late January, 2009. Link here.

They were remarking, in surprised tones, that of the approximately $800 billion in stimulus spending, only three or so percent of the money was dedicated to infrastructure projects… to bridges, tunnels, roads, and other public construction projects.

That makes it far less likely that Obama did not know. But, if Obama also knew the truth, why would he have sold the bill, and risked his prestige, on an outright lie?

Did he imagine that once the economy recovered, no one would much care? Or, is he merely a creature of political expediency?

Surely, Obama should give thanks that no one is judging him according to the standards that were used to label George Bush a liar.

I am also compelled to note that the Times article is entitled: “The Education of President Obama."

Happily, this title echoes a theme that I posted about yesterday. The best defense the Times can find for Obama’s first two years is to say that he is receiving an education in the White House.

If so, it is saying that he is teachable, but that he is not coachable.

This is hardly encouraging.

It’s like a person who has been chosen to play for a championship, in golf perhaps. Unfortunately, that he does not really know how to play the game.

As he ends a predictably bad first nine holes, his defenders try to console us with the thought that he has been receiving an education in golf, thus, that he is learning to play the game.

As Bob Schieffer told David Axelrod last Sunday, on a different issue: “… is that the best you can do?”

Teachable Moments or Coachable Individuals?

I have nothing against teachable, but I would prefer that we refer to people, not moments, as teachable.

In today’s political lexicon, a teachable moment refers to an event that can profitably be used to teach us all something.

But, if a tragic event makes us more susceptible to a teacher’s influence, that need not be a good thing. It may involve exploiting someone‘s post-traumatic vulnerability.

As I suggested, moments are not really teachable. The expression is a figure of speech. But it does make sense, so I cannot object to its usage.

All things considered, it is a step beyond the phrase: “the audacity of hope.”

Two years ago I pointed out that “the audacity of hope" is a grammatical error. It’s not very clever, and does not rise to the level of a figure of speech.

Ever since, I have wondered whether, perhaps, if the nation had been in its right mind, it would still have voted for a candidate who did not understand the difference between “of” and “to?”

Reasonably enough, teachable moments come down to us from the classroom. They involve the interaction between teachers and pupils or students. Teachability is the province of youth, of the unformed and the uninformed.

This means that when you try to turn current events into teachable moments, you are treating the citizenry like your students, like people who are in need of academic instruction.

Don’t be too surprised if they take offense to the implied condescension. You are saying that if they do not agree with you, that can only mean that they are ignorant.

Teaching involves the exercise of power. Whether it is in a classroom, a lecture hall, or a seminar room, teachers are going to test you, to see if you have learned your lesson.

You are going to be graded by, you are going to be judged. Not judgmentally, of course.

In a strange way, the Obama administration seems to think elections are like final exams. The only thing is, it sees the voters as the ones being judged.

Think about that for a bit.

For most of its history psychotherapy has functioned as a form of teaching. It was invented by an auto-didact and still works to teach people lessons, about their past and their motives.

In its original form, it relied heavily on whatever the patients was dreaming of feeling about the analyst. Dreams about the analyst were the original teachable moments.

Cognitive treatment broke decisively with this form of therapy. It does not involve helping you to understand yourself; it aims at retraining your mind or your behavior.

It prescribes homework exercises, which are like mental workout sessions, helping you to strengthen your mental muscles so you can better handle depressive thoughts.

I have consistently compared cognitive therapy to coaching. A cognitive therapist works like a coach who tells you to do a certain kind of warm-up, followed by an exercise routine, followed by extra work to improve your swing. He wants you to develop your skills, not to learn what might make you tick.

As all cognitive therapists and coaches know, some people do these exercises dutifully. Others do not. This has little to do with curability. It involves the person’s coachability.

Someone who is teachable is apt to learn and to absorb new ideas, be they good or bad. Someone who is coachable is willing to follow direction and to improve capacities that he already has.

Let’s say you are an aspiring entrepreneur. You have a great idea and you want to start a business. You are seeking investment capital, and you present your case to an angel investor like Catherine Mott, just for instance.

In an interview with the New York Times Mott explained that when she is evaluating a business plan, she is more interested in the people than in the idea. Link here.

It is great to have a great idea. But, even if it is coupled with great enthusiasm and passion, a great idea is not enough.

An investor like Mott wants to know whether you will be able to implement your idea, to turn it into a successful enterprise.

When Mott is evaluating you as a future executive, she will want to see whether or not you are coachable.

But what does she mean when she says that she is looking at whether or not you are coachable?

It means that you will know who you are, what your strengths and weaknesses are. If you have had a distinguished career as an IT executive you shouldn’t make yourself the director of marketing. If you have had a career in sales you should not pretend that you will be able to manage a biotech startup without the collaboration of technically skilled colleagues.

Coachable means building on strengths you already have. It does not mean acquiring skills in fields you know nothing about.

Coachable also means being able to take advice. If Mott advises you to do this and that, if you fail to follow through, she will judge you ill.

She is looking for someone who takes advice easily, who implements it effectively, and who does not let his or her ego get in the way.

A coachable person does not merely take advice; he is sufficiently humble to allow his own ideas to be challenged.

In a couple of words, coachable means that you have good character.