When Losing Is Winning

I really like John McCain. I actually think he is more qualified to be president than Barack Obama.  Still, I hope the Republicans lose.

McCain doesn’t deserve to be beaten, but the GOP, as presently constituted, needs a wake-up call. I consider myself a Republican, but it seems the so-called base of the party has a problem with anyone who holds a moderate or balanced view, or penchant for seeking common ground with opponents, or respect for intellectual capacity and breath of knowledge. 

Most McCain-watchers have for years appreciated his independence, his willingness to reach across the aisle, and his insistence on transparency in government. But then they told him he had to do something to appeal to his party’s base, and presto, Sarah Palin, who is given all this credit for energizing the party. But how many has she alienated? How many are insulted by the notion that this is the best the Republican Party can come up with as a vice-presidential candidate? Why couldn’t they let McCain be McCain, and why did he allow himself to be manipulated? You can’t get me to believe that he willingly chose Palin as his running mate. It just doesn’t compute.

It seems all the GOP has left is this “base,” because everyone else who might be attracted to the party has been shown the door. And it’s not the door to a big tent, but to the doghouse.

Perhaps a Republican defeat next week would lead to a badly needed rebuilding of the party. Maybe this time, Republicans will learn that its time to find a new base on which to build.

There, now I’ve said it.

From Powell's Mouth to God's -- and Obama's -- Ears

If Barack Obama ever needed the hep of a 700-pound gorilla, he got it on Sunday with the endorsement of former Secretary of State and retired Gen. Colin Powell.

Powell praised Obama’s calm, patient and intellectual approach to problem solving. He said it’s time for a generational change and a fresh set of eyes on the challenges this country faces, and noted that Obama’s election would help patch up our reputation in the rest of the world.

He wasn’t rejecting John McCain so much as the Republican Party, saying the focus of the GOP campaign has become narrower and narrower, and that the party needs to change direction. His feelings about his party certainly aren’t new, but perhaps this endorsement will make its members sit up and pay attention.

As for Sarah Palin, he gets it; the vice-president’s primary job is to be a spare president, and Palin is unqualified, in Powell’s judgment, to do that job. But when is Palin going to get it? Sorry to break it to you, Governor, but there’s a great gulf fixed between “Live, from New York, it’s Saturday night!” and a State of the Union address.

As for Obama’s ears, the cartoonists and now even the candidate himself have had a lot of fun with the organs seemingly borrowed from Alfred E. Newman. But will Obama use those ears to listen? Clearly he isn’t going to be able to pursue a classical liberal agenda in the current economic climate. The government is too busy with the bailing cans to think about spending any new money – there is none. Campaign promises are so much air; it’s the qualities the candidate brings to the table. After this crisis passes, he'll need those qualities to deal with the next one.

There, now I've said it.

Fighters and Boxers

In the boxing world, sometimes it takes three fights between the same two rivals to determine who’s the better of the two. There are fighters, and then there are boxers.

John McCain is the fighter. He swings and tries to score on his opponent, not caring much about style – and he occasionally connects. Barack Obama is the boxer. He doesn’t usually throw knockout punches, but scores points with style and deftness.

If you watched Wednesday night’s debate, you saw McCain score points by painting Obama as a tax-and-spend liberal, which he is. McCain made convincing arguments about cutting federal spending. But can either of these guys actually come up with a radical new plan to fix the economy? That would have been the knockout punch, and it didn’t happen in that debate.

Obama had the clear advantage on health care, and McCain’s lame attempts to link him to reputed former terrorist William Ayers fell flat. As for Joe the Plumber, I don’t think he worked very well as a debate device, but with all the publicity he got, he should be able to buy his own business after all.

I did find Obama’s answer on appointments to the Supreme Court. It sounded an awful lot like he would employ a litmus test, and I agree with McCain, who said it should be all about the qualifications of the nominee. So how does he explain Sarah Palin?

With McCain, you can always tell where he stands by his facial expression and body language – he may be a good fighter, but he’s a terrible poker player. It’s not as easy to read Obama. Do you prefer passionate or inscrutable?

The pundits can pund all they want, but in a boxing match, it’s up to the three judges to come up with the official score – and the commentators are sometimes left with saying, “Where did that come from?”

In spite of all the polls, it’s clear to me that this race is not over by any means. Just like those at the press table at ringside, we’re going to have to wait for the judges’ decision next month.

There, now I’ve said it.

To the Moon, Alice

The good thing about being a former media person is that I won’t have to stay up all Election Night doing broadcasts or trying to meet a newspaper deadline. I may be up anyway, but it will be a lot easier consuming the news than reporting it. But why does it take so long?

It’s 2008, and I’ve felt for years that Election Night should take about 15 minutes. The last polls close and bang! There’s the final number. Here’s another sentence that begins, “We can send men (and women) to the moon, why can’t we…?

Elections should be simple and standardized, and I’ve always wondered why we all couldn’t vote on the Internet. You can buy almost anything securely; many folks even file their tax returns electronically. So why couldn’t they vote the same way? There wouldn’t be a need for expensive voting machines of multiple kinds. We are used to the Internet now, and those who aren’t could be easily shown how to vote by click. After you vote, you could print out a record of what you’d done. Heck, maybe you could even change your mind at the last minute, by signing in securely and amending your vote. 

Before I began the third sentence of the last paragraph, I already heard the screams: YOU’RE NUTS! I know -- some hacker could run away with our election. Like there aren’t zillions of “hacking” incidents already going on, even with paper ballots.

But I have a feeling the real obstacles in the way of an accurate count have to do with the non-standardization of laws and procedures and plain old human error, and I cling to the feeling that these problems are soluble. Yeah, it takes money. But what could be higher on our priority list than bringing our voting systems up to speed? Why can they count votes in Iraq faster than here?

We’ve been to the moon so often that it’s almost boring. Can’t we have our best minds working on this problem?

There, now I’ve said it.

The M Word

Some day, the long fistfight over whether same-sex couples should be allowed to marry will be over. Both sides will have punched themselves out.

I don’t mean to trivialize this, but if I could write the law, it would come out something like this. For the purpose of rights and responsibilities, there would be no such thing as “marriage” in our legal codes. All couples, regardless of gender, seeking what we now call marriage would get some kind of certificate of union, with all the rights and privileges –- and I mean all -- currently afforded couples whom we now call married. But issuing that certificate would be all that government could do, and the spiritual and emotional components would be the province of some other entity. 

This way, the county clerks wouldn’t be in the position of having to perform any ceremonies, and their sensibilities, or their biases, if you prefer, would not be part of the equation. If a couple wanted to find a church or some other party to perform a ceremony so they could call themselves “married,” that, in effect, would be none of government’s business.

We could avoid the insoluble arguments over which kinds of couples are more capable of raising children, or whether a same-sex union lasting 20 years is more valid or justified than a heterosexual union lasting only three years. etc. Clearly, if two people of any sex want to make a long-standing or even a till-death-do-us-part commitment to each other, that’s something that society should encourage. And it appears that a certain percentage of human beings, indeed, mammals in general, are gay. They can’t “fight” it; why should others waste time trying?

I know this horse left the barn a few thousand years ago; I’ll leave it to the interpreters of the Bible or other books to tell me how many thousand. Just so you know, I will vote against California’s Proposition 8. But I’m hoping that evolution takes us past this discussion eventually and that we can focus on other issues. How about ending war?  Well, there’s a horse that may never leave the barn, but we can hope, can’t we?

There, now I’ve said it.

The End of the Credit Card?

Are the days of the credit card, as we know it today, numbered?

This may be the next big shoe to drop in the current financial mess. Indeed, it has already started. The card issuers are notifying their riskiest customers that their credit lines are being cut to about what they owe. In other words, those proud of themselves for not being maxed out may soon find themselves instantly maxed.

Could you function without a credit card?  You may have to someday. But think about it – would that be such a bad thing? We’ve heard a lot about predatory lending over the past few months, but the credit card could be the most predatory instrument of them all. How many Americans are indentured servants to some card issuer?

In the interests of full disclosure, we have credit cards in our family, and more often than not, have had running balances of various sizes. We have never missed a payment in more than 30 years, and the card companies have always treated us fairly.  But for many of us, the running balance is an institutional part of our finances.

The current crisis is all about credit. There’s nothing evil about credit per se, it’s just a tool. But misusing it has become a way of life. The banks and other card issuers have been dangling the bait in front of us for a long time, and we’ve taken it. Now it’s crunch time, and they’re likely going to pull in their lines. And the regulatory fever that’s coming may make it very hard for many of us to get a credit card in the future.

Credit cards began their lives as charge cards many years ago. You had to pay off the balance at the end of each month. How many of us do that today?

Maybe there’s a stop on the gravy train short of cold turkey. Suppose your credit card company gave you a credit line for each quarter, and you had to pay it down to zero by the end of the quarter, or not get the next one? 

The mess this country is in – indeed, the mess we have put the rest of the world in – can onlybe  cleaned up by a massive shift in thinking, and for many of us, it has to start at home. This is the only kind of “trickle up” economics that is going to save us.

There, now I’ve said it.

Pick Your Battles

So now it seems a legislative committee in Alaska has concluded that Gov. Sarah Palin exceeded her authority by canning Public Safety Commissioner Walt Monegan for refusing to fire her former brother-in-law, state trooper Mike Wooten.

For me, this whole Troopergate story has been a complete waste of energy, if not an outright red herring. From what I read, this Wooten guy’s record was pretty awful, and he probably wouldn’t be a state trooper in any other self-respecting force. And it was a family thing, with the Alaska First Dude on the phone trying to get the firing done. In many quarters, Sarah Palin’s efforts to root a bad guy out of the police force and out of her family might be applauded, so the Democrats are wasting time trying to make an issue out of this. Too bad for the governor that Tony Soprano doesn’t live in Alaska. Otherwise, Mike Wooten might have had an unfortunate highway accident with a moose in some remote area – and there are lots of those  -- moose and remote areas – in Alaska.

The Troopergate issue ranks right up there with the William Ayres allegations against Obama. The public just doesn’t care about this stuff, which seems petty compared to the hardships they will soon be facing, if they haven’t already.

Let’s close the gate on Troopergate and move on. Democrats, if you really want to go after Sarah Palin, there are plenty of other issues available. On the face of it, does she really have the experience and confidence to be vice-president, and potentially, president of the United States? Compared to that, Troopergate is small potatoes indeed.

There, now I’ve said it.

New Rules

Many of you have likely seen Bill Maher’s feature New Rules on his HBO TV show or have read his books with the same title. It all takes off from the old comic theme, There Oughta Be a Law, which inspired one California state senator  to create a contest inviting his constituents to come up with ideas for bills to deal with problems the professional legislators have overlooked.

We’re likely to have a whole bunch of new rules to govern our financial system going forward. For those who complain, “There should have been a law,” well, look at it this way. It’s taken about a century for our motor vehicle laws to catch up to what they’re regulating. The rules usually follow the abuses.

To start with, how about the creation of a financial FDA, to which new instruments like credit default swaps could be submitted for study and testing before they’re deployed in the marketplace?

There are a number of institutions that were created following the Great Depression, like the FDIC and the Securities and Exchange Commission, which are still there helping us today. As serious as our current situation is, it would be a lot worse if we didn’t have these institutions protecting us from further harm.

Wild Wests always have to be tamed if progress is to be made. The challenge is finding a balance so that the new rules don’t stifle exuberance and innovation, but protect us all from damage. Sounds kind of like raising children.

Many of us would like government to go away, but there are times when government is needed, and it seems clear to me that this is one of them.

There, now I’ve said it.

Credit Where It's Due

It makes me gag to have to give Sarah Palin credit for something, but in that vice-presidential debate, she made a good point.

It was about living within our means as individuals. It’s easy to blame Wall Street and the predatory lenders. They were offering deals that were too good to be true, and as the old saying goes, they were. But the borrowers have to share some of this blame for taking the bait. Some even lied on their loan applications, though of course, the lenders didn’t fall all over themselves looking for the truth.

There is nothing inherently evil about credit. It’s just a tool like any other. The problem comes when it’s misused. Credit cards are a convenience – they give us the freedom to make decisions out in the marketplace easily and quickly. You don’t have to have a degree in economics to know that when you overextend with credit, you get into trouble.

We’re constantly told these days to conserve, to cut back on our usage of gasoline, electricity, water and the like. How about cutting back on the use of credit? Note that I didn’t say stop, I said cut back. Wouldn’t we be helping the economy, and the health of our financial institutions, if we reduced our credit load? It seems to me that credit is like any other commodity – if we used less of it, the price might go down. But hey, I don’t have a degree in economics, and I’m among the offenders here, to be frank.

When it comes to credit cards, I’ve always found it amusing that when customers miss payments, the card companies jack up the interest rates to 29 percent or so. As if the way to get blood out of a stone is to pound on the stone.

Is it my imagination, or is my postal mailbox only half as full as it used to be? I’m just not seeing those credit card offers that I spend a good part of my time shredding. Maybe we’ll save a few trees. At least there’s room in the mailbox now for all the political junk mail, but fortunately, that will be over soon.

We’re a nation at war. But we’re always at war against something. If it isn’t Iraq, it’s poverty, drugs, teenage pregnancy, you name it. How about a war to save our economy? The last time we were all asked for individual sacrifice to support a common effort was World War II. Americans put up with a lot of drastic regulation in those years, because they knew what the goal was.

Now it’s time to do our bit for the war to save our economy, and whether we like it or not, we’ve all been drafted into this one. If it means keeping the old plastic thing in its holster a little more often, is that too much to ask of ourselves?

There, now I’ve said it.

Advanatage, Obama

We always learn a little something in debates, almost in spite of the speechifying.

First, let’s agree to dispense with the words winning and losing, when we talk about performance. At the most you can say who did better and who did worse in Tuesday night’s town hall meeting.

Many voters want these guys to come up with a definitive plan to save the economy. Fact is, they don’t really have a clue. The best economic minds in the country are working on this now, and these two candidates are just lay people when it comes to this stuff.  John McCain’s suggestion (which he is not the first to make) that the government take charge of distressed home loans and renegotiate them to allow residents to stay in their homes makes perfect sense. But if you step back and ask which of these two men could be the most effective at pulling the nation through this crisis with him, I would say Obama has the advantage – at least that’s the one with whom I’m most comfortable.

I think McCain showed his age in the debate, pacing around in circles and petulantly calling Obama “that one” on one occasion. I also wish he’d stop using the words victory and defeat when talking about Iraq, though his closing remarks were eloquent indeed.

We’re all getting tired of what each of these candidates did in the past, or what they say they other guy did in the past -- and I wish both campaigns would learn that. If it comes down to which one I believe, at this moment, could best take us us into the future, even thought I disagree with him in many respects, it’s Obama.

But perhaps both hopefuls can take comfort in the fact that I won’t be mailing my absentee ballot in for a while yet.  I want to see what happens in the next episode.

There, now I’ve said it.

Lusting After An Elitist

I’m sorry,  Governor Palin, I don’t think I want a hockey mom for Vice President of the United States. When it comes to really high office, I want someone more qualified than I am. I know my limits. Why don’t you?

Being a hockey mom qualifies one  to manage a kids’ hockey team, not to be a spare president. So don't keep pushing that as a plus. True, you're a governor;  I  seriously believe you would make a fine congresswoman or senator. Put in a term or two at that first,  then come back and run for the big prize. 

Deliver us from people who want to be our leaders and look like us at the same time. I don’t want anyone as my leader who has to come down to my level. My name isn’t Joe, and it’s been a really long time since I had a six-pack (or even drank one), so that approach doesn’t cut the ice with me.

By the way, there are other voters in this country besides average people. How about those poor abused elitists – don’t they deserve representation, too?

There, now I’ve said it. 

The Only Thing We Have to Feahh.....

My head is really in the clouds today. Maybe it just seems that way because I have cotton for brains right now, just trying to get the aforementioned head around this economic mess. But I’ve been thinking a lot about faith.

For those fortunate enough to have a lot of gold holdings, why is gold valuable? Gold, believe it or not, has some spiritual qualities. Not only is it beautiful, but it doesn’t corrode or tarnish. It’s solid, and it will still be there when other metals have rusted and disintegrated – it has that feeling of eternity to it. And it’s relatively hard to find. Of course, the real value of gold to an owner is that others value it, too. People have faith in it.

It’s also interesting to see people are buying up U.S. Treasury bills as they seek a safe haven. A Treasury bill is only a piece of paper, but it’s said to be backed by the full faith and credit of the federal government. That is, of course, if you have any faith in the federal government or feel like giving it credit for anything right now.

FDR said, “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” How about the flip side? The only thing we can really have faith in is faith itself. When you invest in something, you have faith that it’s going to bring you a return, and when you lose that faith, you sell it. The Bible says, “Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.”

The things that make some of us feel safe at the moment won’t save us from every calamity. If you had a brick of gold, but, as an example, were really thirsty after being lost in the desert for a week, you’d part with it in a New York minute for a drink of water, if that meant your survival. All those pieces of paper you’ve put under the mattress are worthless unless backed up by something and, as a consequence, valued by others. In some circumstances, the mattress itself may have more value than what you stuffed under it.

I’m sure you’re saying, “My life savings are on their way to being wiped out, my house is upside down, and I can’t afford the gas to get to work, so thanks a lot for this little talk.”

But the bottom line, as everyone says these days, is what you have faith in. As for me, I have faith that eventually our faith will be restored. But let’s not be surprised if we find that faith resting on something different.

There, now I’ve said it.

Enough, Already

How much is enough?

Looks like the answer to that question is in for a makeover.

A few years ago, when I was in radio news, I covered a speech by actor Edward James Olmos to an audience of high school students, and it left an indelible impression. In a lesson about human nature, Olmos told the students that he was being paid $10 million for his role in an upcoming movie. That probably sounds like chump change today -- perhaps even to him. His message to the students was, there’s never enough. “If they pay you $5, you want $10,” he said. “If it’s $100, you want $1,000. If it’s $10,000, you want a million.” The point being, there’s no such thing as “enough” when it comes to human nature. But at some point, we all have to define the word for ourselves. Typically, if we don’t come up with the right answer, life gives it to us.

A few years ago – actually about 20 now – I thought my credit card interest rate was too high and I was shopping around for something better. There was a little bank in the South that got a reputation for offering the lowest rate in the country. Problem was, you had to qualify for it, and I quickly realized that I just couldn’t  – their income standards were much too high for me. That southern bank was Wachovia.

This past week, on Jim Cramer’s Mad Money show on CNBC, he talked about the once-proud American Express, reminiscing about the time when the only cards they issued were the kind where you had to pay off your balance in full every month  -- no exceptions. When you flashed an American Express card, people knew instantly about your standing in life.

Then, Cramer said, the company started issuing credit cards – the kind you didn’t have to pay off every month, and that became a major part of their business. Of course, their business grew – but at what price? Now, he said, there is a lot of “toxic waste” on Amex’s books, and the company is a shell of its former self.

After I left radio, I went into the newspaper business. Newspaper companies were used to having dominant positions in local markets and making enormous profits, but now many are in trouble, because those profits aren’t there any more, due to fierce competition from the Web. The newspaper conglomerates whose business models are based on the traditionally huge percentages of profit are having to live with less, and because of their outstanding loans, some of them just can’t do it.

The current economic collapse is forcing huge corporations and kitchen-table budgeters alike to take a hard look at that little word enough. It’s best summed up by a line from that Oliver Stone movie Wall Street, when Charlie Sheen says to Michael Douglas, playing the ruthless Gordon Gecko, “How many yachts can you ski behind?”

There, now I’ve said it.

Great Expectations

There was no knockout, so as announcer Michael Buffer says,  after 12 rounds, we go to the scorecards.

Sarah Palin did a lot better than expected, though I thought all along she would do well. It’s about what she did well at. 

She looked right into the camera; she spoke plainly and with energy, and she connected with her audience.

But she didn’t answer some of the questions – at one point, even downright refusing to do so. She relied a lot on sloganeering and talking about the subjects she was comfortable with – energy and corruption on Wall Street. But could we follow her arguments? I felt kind of like a hunter trying to chase a fox down a  long, twisty path. I never knew where the path led, but it didn’t matter because I knew I would never catch the fox. 

As for Joe Biden, he, too, did better than expected, with a clear command of the issues and his arguments. But I thought he spent too much time looking backward, as Gov. Palin said, and while his energy level wasn’t bad, it didn’t come up to hers. He won most of the arguments, but not necessarily the points.

I think it’s safe to say that if John McCain is elected President, Sarah Palin will be the reason.

Only, please, God, don’t let anything happen to him.

There now I’ve said it.

Don't Take the Points

If you're counting on Joe Biden to put away Sarah Palin in the vice-presidential debate -- well, don't.

We've heard a lot about the bar being lowered so far that Palin only has to avoid stumbling to "win" the debate. But "winning" and "losing" are words that make almost as much sense in this context as they do in t he Iraq war.

First of all, Sarah Palin is not stupid,  and I have no doubt that she's a quick study. She's been going to debate camp. It's too bad the GOP couldn't have let her cut her teeth on some more interviews, so she'd be more comfortable. But she's going to do just fine in this debate situation.

So what does a debate actually tell you? It's a great measure of debating skills, and some are just plain better at that than others. Palin may actually out-debate Joe Biden.

But what it all comes down to is this: Would you rather have a quick study who does a credible job after two weeks of debate camp, or someone with 30 years of experience dealing with foreign policy issues and with a solid knowledge of how government works as your next vice-president?

It all comes down to that.

There, now I've said it.