Convention rhetoric: facts for consensus building

Accepting that 90 percent of what we’re going to hear this week will offend that "reasonable person" standing steely-eyed above the fray, it will be interesting to note how often the celebrated data men leading the Republican Party use facts and evidence reasonably. Stanley Crouch offers a fine reminder that facts, too, can appeal to our better angels.

“In theory, liberal and conservative perspectives should better each other by making realistic demands the opposition can meet. They should use facts like ice water, dousing those who have grown too hot with their own ideology.

“Facts do not dissolve under microscopes of serious scrutiny the way factoids, or half-truths, do. For years, Americans could battle with facts. We had a democratic sense of government that faced human limitations and foibles but remained focused on progress from some kind of ignorance to some kind of enlightenment. Consequently, this spirit of compromise worked past the inevitable corruption coming from the left or the right.

“We have thus created a society of enormous individual freedom and success, but it has been paced by a sense of empathy.”

—By Stanley Crouch in The New York Daily News, August 20, 2012

Will either Romney or Ryan speak in detail about the $billions in tax loopholes that actual registered voters—in their millions—can now do without?

Will they explain how America’s strained social safety net can accommodate their proposed cuts in food aid and Medicaid transfers to the states?

After decades of winning elections explicitly to lighten the cost of government, federal government spending keeps growing. Will they finally ask seniors to vote for less support? Will they explain how more spending on them can be possible, without tax increases and less support for defense and younger Americans?

Obama, they say, has been naïve about how to fight recession, and Federal Reserve Chair Ben Bernanke shouldn’t expect to be re-appointed; the two of them let China get away with a cheap currency while not caring to maintain a strong American dollar. Romney and his team claim that Keynesian economics doesn't work, even in a crash. Would they cut the deficit next year even if the recovery stalls at home and globally? Would they cut the deficit and cut taxes at the same time?

Who from literature or economic theory would Ryan quote to justify such a policy?

Thinking about the next economic crisis could help Obama

Economic issues, everyone says, are more important today than social issues. Yet, same-sex marriage, contraceptives, and respect for family pets keep interfering. Putative vice-presidents even have to clear up what they think of Ayn Rand’s novels; Mother’s Day has become a political mine field.

The “It’s the economy, stupid” Cult complains that getting off the economic issues is amateurish (Republican primary losers) or cynical (White House election planners). Nevertheless, they keep doing it because they find it rewarding; the so-called distractions actually get people talking about politics and the candidates.

America’s unsatisfying economic recovery handicaps the presidential candidates. But, as entertainment, it’s not much better than watching paint dry.

It marginally benefits Romney, the boring bystander with steady management skills, and it threatens to put Obama into that deadly Democratic frame—another ineffectual do-gooder, another Jimmy Carter. However, the voters and the partisans aren’t going to spend the next 5 months spinning the increments and decrements of the monthly US labor market surveys.

Republicans want Obama to try to persuade Americans that they were lucky to even have peas to eat over the last four years. They want voters in November to be frustrated about the economy and ready for further tax cuts.

Republicans would like Americans to be a little more hopeful about the future. Conversely, Democrats should want them to worry about what could happen next.

Obama needn’t simply generalize about the choices for America. He can ask: who do you want to be your leader in the next big crisis?

In the words of Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke, the US will face a “fiscal cliff’ on Jan. 1, 2013. The New York Times put it succinctly:

“If a bipartisan agreement cannot be reached before the end of the year, nearly $8 trillion in deficit reduction could go into force in a sudden rush, a boon to budget hawks but a potential disaster for the fragile economic recovery.”

Click on: www.nytimes.com/2012/05/13/us/politics/tea-party-focus-turns-to-senate-and-shake-up.html?pagewanted=all

This crisis is baked into the law; it is the all-American consequence of procrastination, gridlock, and extremism. Its resolution will be messy and will offend diehard conservatives and liberals. Who is president—who drives the compromises and holds the final pen—will determine whether the economy continues to grow.

It’s not easy for any president to talk about a problem that is growing on his watch. However, this problem is about to finally blow up and its dimensions add flesh and bones to the real election issue: who do you trust to protect your interests?

Obama has done well in two domestic crises already. He won the last presidential election, in part, because he looked like the safest bet to tackle the financial crisis of the winter of 2008-09. As a pragmatist ready to compromise, he also came out of the debt-ceiling crisis of last summer in much better shape than the Republican leadership.

Optimism about the future will not grow, as this crisis gets closer. Obama’s prospects for re-election will not harden until he gets more concrete about the issue and more insistent that the Republicans could mess it up.

Investment analysts pick their winners

Last month, Bloomberg News released a survey of fourteen hundred investors and analysts that ranked world leaders according to their efforts to create a “more favorable business climate." Click here to read more: 

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-09-22/merkel-wins-most-with-investors-worldwide-in-poll-on-policies-for-business.html  

Angela Merkel came in first with a “mostly favorable” rating of 56 per cent. This isn’t that surprising. Whatever you think of Germany’s incremental domestic policies, she did consent recently to bail out the Greek government and, thereby, save several European banks from possible bankruptcy. And we’ve come to understand that professional investors are bred and paid to think short-term.

Obama hasn’t saved a bank in over a year. But, is it credible to rank him almost last—at only 37 per cent, behind two appointed central bankers and Hu Jintao, President of the Republic of China and General Secretary of the Communist Party of China?

Let’s not take this too far. Those who keep small investors, economists, and entrepreneurs up at night probably aren’t, by nature, authoritarians who prefer un-elected technocrats to politicians and, when they do, they are like a lot us. But it is a bit disheartening. These people have a big say in shaping the global economy and, yet, show little regard for how the checks and balances of liberal democracy create long-term economic wealth.

Ben Bernanke could not have stopped the recession by himself and enjoys the powers he has by the consent of a duly elected senate and president. Unlike the President of China, Barack Obama cannot choose winners and decide for now that profits are more important than health services and pensions. As long as Hu Jintao gets results, no organized force can get in his way. However, surely, Western investors ought to appreciate that a superior climate for investment by capitalists requires a broad-based liberal consensus—popular support for property rights, open markets, an independent system of courts, and freedom of expression for journalists and knowledge workers, for instance.

The maintenance of that consensus in the United States and amongst its principle trading partners is surely a test of leadership that deserves to be weighed in the balance. And, in the long-term, may place Obama in a very positive light.