Ron Paul suspends his campaign to play the delegate game instead. Roni and Chris discuss.

Questions addressed:

• Does Ron Paul still matter?
• Will he affect the convention?
• Will Paulies swing the party?

Episode 177

The Interview Portion

This is why we have… The Overflow!

Episode 176

The Overflow Section 

As President Obama continues his coordinated ‘cool’ campaign in dive bars and on Jimmy Fallon, his administration continues to boast about killing Osama bin Laden.

The New York Times considers how odd this approach is:

Presidents running for re-election typically boast of programs they created, people they helped or laws they signed. They talk about rising test scores or falling deficits or expanding job rolls. President Obama is increasingly taking the unusual route of bragging about how he killed a man.

This coordinated ‘cool’ campaign and bin Laden braggadocio are byproducts of Obama’s nerdiness.  Obama has talked about being bullied.  Obama has talked about being a Trekker (even stopping to flash Leonard Nimoy the Vulcan salute).  Obama has repeatedly used the line ‘the kid with the big ears and the funny name’ when describing himself in speeches.  All of these things, coupled with Obama’s approach to governance, begin to build an image of a beta male.  Perhaps this is, in fact, the key part of his relative strength (10 points better) with white males in the 18-30 voter demographics.  Yet, while the National Institutes for Health talks about the health benefits of being a beta male and authors like David Anderegg argue that nerds and other beta-types are actually the key drivers of our society, there has been little discussion on whether or not a beta male (whoever that beta might be) is right for the presidency.

I should note that this Obama-as-beta-president has been a meme among conservatives for a while.  However, they typically (and cynically) argue that this means that Obama will compromise with our ‘enemies’ (whoever those may be) and that he is predisposed to be a wimp; they cite examples of him bowing to Arab leaders and other trivialities to bolster their case. While I reject the logic (or lack thereof) employed to arrive at the conclusion that Obama is a beta president, I don’t feel that this conclusion is false but I disagree with how those beta qualities are manifesting. Obama’s nerdiness forces a bellicose overcompensation in the opposite direction and that overreaction does Obama a disservice.  Rather than behaving like a wimp, he behaves like a small man threatening people with a big stick (couldn’t resist the Biden reference).

Michael Crowley with TIME notes that, in fact, capturing bin Laden would have been (as Spock might say) highly logical:

For one thing, interrogating bin Laden might have been hugely valuable. Trying him would have made a powerful statement about the rule of law. And the legalities of the killing have always been murky.

Obama, in fact, is now attempting to portray Mitt Romney as wimpy, even suggesting that if Romney were president he wouldn’t have killed Osama bin Laden.  As the legend of bin Laden’s death continues to evolve, Panetta has boasted that bin Laden ‘didn’t have much time to say anything‘.  It is unclear that the Obama administration even recognized the value of a captured bin Laden. Even the legend of the raid itself has become more ‘beta-like’ as the administration offers revisions and updates to the story, shifting from a badass Rambo-like firefight with bin Laden (presumably aided by an army of ninjas) in initial accounts to a group of soldiers encountering an unarmed Osama bin Laden and shooting one of bin Laden’s wives in the leg before shooting bin Laden himself likely, in a execution-style position.  Spock’s approach to the bin Laden raid would likely have been quite different.

Obama, both complementary and pejoratively, has been compared to Mr. Spock over the last several years.  Lamentably, there are vast differences between Obama in Spock.  Obviously, Chief Science Officer is not an elected position.  However, Mr. Spock has a respect for Starfleet’s General Orders and Regulations one wishes Barack Obama had for international law.  Mr. Spock’s approach to solutions and leadership is not one based on appeasement and compromise.  Spock, in fact, can be quite unyielding.  Spock’s approach to solutions is calculated logic with an eye toward efficiency.  President Spock’s ‘politics of the logical’ would be vastly different than President Obama’s ‘politics of the possible’.  Those qualities may make Spock a terrible politician, but when handed leadership, he is able to handle the task at hand ably; Spock is an excellent model for the vice presidency.

Conservatives also argue that Obama marks a recent shift towards beta males as presidents.  Even worse, that beta males are simply endemic to the Democratic Party.  This is simply not the case.  Beta males have dominated presidential politics on both sides of the aisle since the 2000 election.

George W. Bush, as well, fell victim to this overcompensating beta male tendency.  Unlike Obama, whose beta qualities stem from his nerdiness, Bush’s beta qualities stem from a life of privilege and being the beneficiary of his families accomplishments.  The stigma of being a ‘daddy’s boy’ (even sharing the name of his father) manifested itself in George Bush’s need to invent his own origins and embellish his accomplishments.  George W. Bush labored to ‘identify’ himself with the Texas cowboy identity as a way of building gravitas.  He is not a native of Texas and only went to school in Texas for 2 years and that wasn’t at a public school. Will Ferrell masterfully tapped into this in his 2004 George W. Bush re-election parody ads where Ferrell (as Bush) attempts to build a fence but has no knowledge of how to use tools that a rancher would be intimately familiar with.  Evidence of Bush’s beta temperament was also seen during his administration.  Some feel that Dick Cheney was, effectively, president and the other veterans of the first President’s Bush’s administration were actually pulling the strings.  An alpha would not allow this.

The presidential challengers have also been beta males.  John Kerry and Al Gore were decidedly beta-like, lacking the compelling oratorical and personal qualities required of an alpha male.  John McCain, while perhaps alpha-like at one point, was certainly not behaving alpha-like in any way during his 2008 campaign.  An alpha male does not have a vice presidential candidate forced upon him.  Mitt Romney synthesizes the beta qualities of both Bush and Obama.  Like Bush, comes from a family of privilege.  Like Obama, he is easily cowed by public opinion and has a hard time ‘leading’ preferring, instead, to ‘lead from behind’ when possible.  However, the most beta-like quality of Mitt Romney is his predisposition to always play it safe.

Are there still alphas in American politics?  Perhaps.  Hillary Clinton and Chris Christie both exhibit alpha tendencies.  Both have strong personalities and exude self-confidence.  Additionally, they both exhibit the ability to be politically courageous.  Would either make a good president?  Maybe. Maybe not.

We shouldn’t elect an alpha just because he or she is an alpha.  We should be looking for an alpha with some of the alpha qualities that made past presidents great.  The alpha qualities that made Eisenhower great was wisdom coupled with his aura of reassurance and stability; the alpha qualities that made Kennedy great was his vision coupled with his courage.

America desperately needs the alpha qualities of wisdom and vision to return to our presidential politics.

Don’t Worry About The Government has been bitten by the austerity bug! In this installment, Joe Geni is gone due to the enacting of Chris’s tarp plan, leaving Chris and Roni to discuss the austerity bug that seems to have bitten many of the leaders of the European Union.  They discuss the French election and what the likely election of Francois Hollande means for the E.U. going forward as the E.U. continues to struggle with recession.  Domestically, they discuss the Social Security Fund Trustees’ report that Social Security is ‘going broke’ and how legitimate that really is.  They also discuss North Korea’s unique approach to austerity in the form of poorly constructed phony missiles.  Lastly, they discuss Paul Ryan’s massive flip-flop regarding his admiration for Ayn Rand.

Episode 175

There is a growing battle between the doctrines of austerity and growth being waged on editorial pages and in the voting booth in Europe.  While many things this week (such as the Dutch rejecting austerity measures and a growing chorus of papers arguing against austerity) have suggested a shift away from austerity, this growing popular dissent against austerity is perhaps best embodied by the front-runner status of Francios Hollande in the French presidential elections.  As Nicolas Sarkozy desperately attempts to court the 18% who voted for Marine La Pen (he needs approximately 80% of those votes in order to have a chance to win), the editorial pages of esteemed financial publications like The Economist wring their hands regarding the prospect of Hollande’s likely election along with Angela Merkel and the Germans (who have been the chief proponents of European austerity).  Until now, there has been a consensus among the leaders of Europe favoring austerity.  Hollande’s election would mark the end of this consensus among the political elite. However, support for austerity has been eroding, more broadly, since the German austerity regimen was implemented.

The New York Times reports:

With political allies weakened or ousted, Chancellor Angela Merkel’s seat at the head of the European table has become much less comfortable, as a reckoning with Germany’s insistence on lock-step austerity appears to have begun.

“The formula is not working, and everyone is now talking about whether austerity is the only solution,” said Jordi Vaquer i Fanés, a political scientist and director of the Barcelona Center for International Affairs in Spain. “Does this mean that Merkel has lost completely? No. But it does mean that the very nature of the debate about the euro-zone crisis is changing.”

A German-inspired austerity regimen agreed to just last month as the long-term solution to Europe’s sovereign debt crisis has come under increasing strain from the growing pressures of slowing economies, gyrating financial markets and a series of electoral setbacks.

Despite the rising criticism, Berlin did not seem ready to concede defeat for its austerity plan.

“We certainly still have many difficult reforms, measures and times ahead of us,” said Martin Kotthaus, spokesman for the Finance Ministry. “But the path appears to be correct. At least that is what the development of the last weeks and months proves, and also — as far as I can tell — the surveys of the populations of the European Union.”

It was only in March that leaders from 25 of the 27 European Union countries gathered to sign the fiscal compact championed by Ms. Merkel. Her plan, combined with $1.3 trillion in cheap loans injected into the banking system by the European Central Bank in December and March, raised hopes that the worst of the crisis had passed.

In Reuters, a couple of weeks ago, a lengthy analysis piece consulting a number of different analysts offered that, indeed, austerity is exacerbating (rather than ameliorating) problems:

“Unless we believe that the long-term real borrowing costs for western Europe as a whole will be more than 5 percent per year, spending cuts now to reduce the deficit are likely to erode rather than bolster the overall fiscal situation,” DeLong said in a contribution to the VoxEU debate.

U.S. private economist David Hale, who runs a Chicago-based consultancy, said European countries should be reducing deficits more incrementally, stretched out over a longer timetable than the EU Commission has set.

“What the Europeans are doing now is depressing revenue, which means they’ll miss their fiscal targets,” he told Reuters.

Rather than embracing these analyses, while the French election has been afoot, an austerity cabal has been forming.  Angela Merkel, while campaigning for Sarkozy, has secretly met with other center-right leaders from Europe:

“Merkel secretly agreed with Italian Prime Minister Mario Monti and Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy that Hollande should be shunned; British Prime Minister David Cameron also agreed not to meet him.”

The approach of shunning Hollande, beyond being akin to the behavior of petulant children who are upset that they didn’t get their way, is actually counterproductive to Merkel et al’s mission (quixotic as it may be) of saving the Euro.  Merkel herself has admitted that Germany cannot save the Euro alone.  Can she honestly expect to save the Euro without working with France?

Consider also the coalition she’s assembled: Britain’s economy is officially back in a recession, as is Spain’s (and their credit rating just dropped) and the Italian business morale has actually fallen as austerity has been implemented (both domestic demand and European exports are down).  Which one of these countries is she expecting to do some of the ‘heavy lifting’?

Other European countries being asked to implement austerity measures are looking at the (lack of) results from the courses of action these countries have taken and are taking pause.  Passing austerity measures is a politically challenging task.  Passing austerity measures without the ability to cite an example where austerity measures are visibly ‘working’ (however one might define that) is, both tactically and politically, stupid.  Selling the idea of ‘passing austerity measures’ to other countries in the E.U., as the Germans hope to do (when, at present, the most likely outcome is recession), is deluded.

In a way, the defensive behavior of Merkel and Co. is understandable.  Their party is ending and they don’t want it to be over.  Hollande’s election will change the European economic approach from an unpopular leader-led consensus to a dialogue about growth versus inflation.  Merkel and Hollande will have to find a way to manage inflation while creating growth.  Merkel and the Germans will have experience more inflation than they’d like and Hollande and the French will have to scale back the ambitiousness of growth they’d like.  This dialogue will prove difficult and will necessitate both sides conceding.  At least, within this, there is the potential to find a solution.  The status quo, the consensus of the cabal of austerity, is no longer tenable and has failed to fix Europe’s economy.

UPDATE:

The Germans seem to be ‘walking back’ their positions:

Francois Hollande, the Socialist favoured to win a French presidential runoff on May 6, promises to shift the debate in Europe towards promoting growth if he is elected, criticising Chancellor Angela Merkel’s emphasis on economic reform and budget cuts.

Merkel’s spokesman played down their differences and stressed that Berlin had been pushing measures for months to bolster growth in recession-hit countries like Greece and Spain.

“For some time now, growth has been the second pillar of Germany’s crisis-fighting policy,” Steffen Seibert told a news conference on Friday.

“Growth was the subject of the European Council in January, in March, and the topic of boosting growth and employment will play a massive role at the June summit. Germany will be active, as it has been in recent months, in looking for the right measures with its partners,” he said.