The Good Fight: Can Liberals-And Only Liberals-Win the War on Terror?

Originally published June 20, 2006 for the Center for American Progress

Can liberals develop a more vigorous foreign policy that will resonate with American voters? Today the Center for American Progress hosted a panel to discuss that question.

The panel centered its comments on The Good Fight, a newly released book by Peter Beinart, editor-at-large of The New Republic and fellow at the Brookings Institution. William Kristol, editor of The Weekly Standard, and Jeffrey Goldberg, Washington correspondent for The New Yorker, joined Beinart on the panel. Lawrence Korb, senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, moderated.

In Beinart’s analysis, liberals are able to debate particular policies but are less successful than conservatives at articulating first principles. By better understanding the history of liberal foreign policy, he believes that a “liberal story of how you protect America and make a better world” can be told.

The key to creating a liberal story in today’s global environment is to emphasize that “what happens inside other countries can threaten America,” and, according to Beinart, “America cannot do it alone.” We have neglected a legacy of building legitimacy through strong international institutions, leading to suspicion and distrust of America’s intentions. “Critical to American power,” Beinart said, “is American legitimacy.” This legitimate power is not inherent to our country, he argued, but the result of our own constant struggle to build a more democratic society. When we claim to have crossed a “democratic finish line,” said Beinart, where we hold other countries to increasingly stringent democratic standards while allowing our own to relax, our global legitimacy is threatened.

Beinart concluded by presenting two principles for a strong liberal foreign policy. First, legitimacy is power and “international institutions are the vehicles for making American power legitimate.” Through strong institutions, governments can be held to a higher standard. Second, “economic opportunity is key to the spread of freedom.” People turn away from democracy for social and economic reasons, and understanding those reasons is important in moving towards democratic governance.

Kristol, in response, noted the similarities he saw between Beinart’s ideas and the neoconservative movement. He also questioned the relevance of principles. “At the end of the day,” he said, “foreign policy is about real choices in the real world.” Using specific examples, he looked at recent U.S. history and concluded that it is better to “err on the side of action instead of inaction” because often there is not enough time to fit threats into an intellectual framework. For Kristol, our national interest comes first. “Legitimacy,” he said, “is helpful to power, but power is power.”

Goldberg added a perspective on the domestic and electoral implications of a stronger liberal foreign policy. He emphasized how important it is “to meet the American people where they are.” After traveling the country researching Democratic politicians in conservative states, Goldberg said that a lot of frustration with American foreign policy stems from the execution rather than the basic idea. The biggest danger to foreign policy of any ideology, he said, is from “world fatigue” and isolationist backlash.

The panelists agreed that with the international character of the threats facing our country, the costs of a withdrawn United States could be substantial. Beinart’s belief is that a stronger liberal foreign policy can quell backlash and strengthen America at home and abroad.

Ending Child Poverty

Originally published June 15, 2006 for the Center for American Progress

Governments can effectively decrease child poverty by implementing progressive policies. This message was bought to the Center for American Progress on Wednesday by The Right Honorable John Hutton, M.P. and Secretary of State for Work and Pensions in the United Kingdom.

Hutton joined Peter Edelman, professor of law at Georgetown University, on a panel entitled “Ending Child Poverty: The United Kingdom’s Commitment, the United States’ Challenge.” Using the example from Britain’s success in reducing child poverty by 17% since a government commitment to the problem in 1999, Hutton relayed strategies for success and lessons learned.

Both Hutton and Edelman agree that empowering families through work is critical for ending child poverty. Effective policies include raising the minimum wage, family tax credits, improving employment adjustment for those that lose their jobs, and increasing public investment in income equivalents like health care, child care, and housing. Implementing these policies within a framework of specifically defined targets helps to make them politically effective.

According to Hutton, the central issue is building the right incentives for work while also having a meaningful social safety net. “It’s a bad thing to have millions of people on welfare. It’s a sign of economic weakness.” It is a sign of economic strength, he said, to have full employment and a system that helps those that cannot help themselves.

Child poverty creates far-ranging consequences for society, and early intervention can prevent problems later in life. Hutton and Edelman cite education as a key area for breaking the long-term poverty cycle. Hutton noted the “important role of education in breaking down barriers to social mobility.” Ample data suggests that impoverished children are less likely to be successful in school, more likely to have low-paying jobs, and more likely to commit crimes. Tackling child poverty means developing solutions that involve all levels of government, according to Edelman. “This is not just a matter of federal responsibility, but the federal government is not doing enough.”

Hutton places child poverty within the larger context of globalization. Rapid changes in the global economy resonate throughout our societies, and we face a choice. “Do we want to progress together, grow together,” he asked, “or do we want to grow apart?” As the future character of the North Atlantic democracies is shaped, successfully tackling poverty is part of the answer. “We are a decent society,” said Hutton, “and poverty is an insult.”

The Great Debate

Originally published July 17, 2006 for the Center for American Progress

In navigating the complex issue of “net neutrality,” the government should protect consumers’ rights amid a rapidly changing and dynamic Internet. Two experts agreed on that much Monday during a panel discussion hosted by the Center for American Progress, but they disagreed on how to do that without stifling innovation.

Bringing together two of the Internet’s founding figures, the Center welcomed Vint Cerf, Vice-President of Google; and Dave Farber, Distinguished Career Professor of Computer Science and Public Policy at Carnegie Mellon University. Carl Malamud, the Center’s Chief Technology Officer, moderated.

Cerf began by quickly surveying the history of net neutrality. From its inception, the Internet has been open to any kind of application or content provider, and those providers could be accessed by any Internet user over a neutral network. “People didn’t have to get permission” to try new ideas, said Cerf, which “helped to stimulate and sustain innovation.”

In a competitive and innovation-rich environment, Internet Service Providers acted as neutral facilitators between content providers and consumers. Consumers paid carrier companies to access the Web, but once they got there they could tap into the full range of content. The recent shift to broadband Internet service, though, creates “a significantly different environment,” according to Cerf.

Compared to the age of dial-up connections, consumers have fewer broadband service carriers to choose from. It is, said Cerf, “at best a duopoly, and half the time not even that much.” Those broadband companies are pushing for the ability to charge content providers, in addition to consumers, who use their networks. The danger is that discrimination will result based on one’s ability to pay, meaning the Internet will no longer be neutral for creative innovation. Instead it will be biased toward big businesses that can afford space on a high-speed Internet. Such a model “will seriously inhibit innovation on the network,” particularly if consumers have no choice in Internet access.

Farber, while largely agreeing with Cerf on the dangers of monopolistic broadband carriers, cautioned against uninformed government interference in a rapidly changing field. We must, he said, “make sure we don’t prejudge the path technology takes.” Concerned about the unintended consequences of hastily conceived legislation, Faber said that there are “plenty of mechanisms in place to solve and to change bad actions on the part of a carrier.” He and Cerf both mentioned the Federal Communications Commission, the Federal Trade Commission, and the Department of Justice as the primary regulators of the Internet.

Cerf, though, was skeptical of the effectiveness of those agencies in managing abusive behavior. Regulation tends to be too reactive and case-specific. In the absence of market competition, he favors legally prohibiting broadband carriers from access discrimination. Otherwise, the ability of consumers to access Internet content may be compromised. “What’s worse than a regulated monopoly?” he asked in reference to broadband carriers. “An unregulated monopoly.”

Both Farber and Cerf agreed that the issues surrounding the Internet need to be better understood in Congress before any decisions are made. Right now, the policy debate is convoluted and reduced to slogans. If legislation is needed to protect the consumer, they said, “it needs to be unambiguous and actionable.”

Orioles Tragic

Originally published March 31, 2008 for SpliceToday

Remember how much you cared about the fads and trends you liked in middle school? No one obsesses like a pre-teen struggling through puberty, because no one else is so painfully in need of something to identify with. Nothing makes sense for kids at that age. You know you’re not supposed to be a kid anymore, but all you really understand about maturity is a shimmering mirage of the real thing. In that chaotic search for self-esteem we all latch onto anything that gives us definition and acceptance. Inevitably this something is simple, and arbitrary, and we love it desperately. When so much of the reality inside you and around you is constantly changing, your idols become your anchors.

Maybe you idolized a band, or the way the popular girls dressed, or a certain magazine. To my regret, I idolized the Baltimore Orioles. The Orioles were the only major sports team in town at that point: baseball’s long season, arcane rules, and peculiar attention to statistics provided a ready obsession that distracted me from the inescapable shame of being in seventh grade.

I was not alone in this obsession, which was sort of the point. The Orioles have a special place in the hearts of the people of Baltimore. We do strange things to support our team, like scream “O” in the middle of the national anthem. In many ways, their history is our history. Baltimore, as a de facto rust belt city, suffered a slow economic decline after World War II. The Orioles, after assembling some of the best teams ever during the late 60s and early 70s, gradually lost ground to the changing economics of baseball.

The O’s last won the World Series in 1983, when I was two months old. My mother assures me that I was watching when a humble young shortstop named Cal Ripken caught the last out. It would be 13 years until they reached the playoffs again. In the meantime, as I meandered through childhood, the Orioles suffered. In 1988 they set a record by losing 21 games in a row to start the season. Between 1990 and 1996 the Orioles let pitchers Curt Schilling, David Wells, and Kevin Brown leave the organization, a trio that has combined for 616 wins, six World Series championships, one perfect game, and one no-hitter.

Sure there were a few exciting moments. Camden Yards defined the retro stadium era when it opened in 1992. Cal made everyone forget about the players strike when he broke the record for consecutive games played, personifying working-class Baltimore in the process. But for the most part, they weren't an easy team to root for.

When the 1996 season kicked off I was finishing up sixth grade. I was gangly, crippled by the presence of girls, and had just started shaving. I really needed the Orioles. And that summer, they finally came through.

Behind the strength of Robbie Alomar, B.J. Surhoff, Cal, Mike Mussina, and a resurrected Eddie Murray, the Orioles made it back to the playoffs. The experience couldn't have been more glorious. The team bombed balls out of the park in the halcyon days of blissful steroid ignorance, setting a record for the most home runs hit on the road in a season.

The Orioles dismantled the Indians in the first round, setting up a seven game series with the Yankees. This was the ultimate test, our chance to slay the most hated team in the sport. The series started in New York. I stayed up late with my dad and my brother watching the Os take a 4-3 lead into the eighth inning. A smarmy rookie shortstop named Derek Jeter hit a long drive to right field, but it looked like the right-fielder Tony Tarasco could make a play. He backed up to the wall, and just as he was preparing to look the fly ball into his glove, Jeffrey Maier, a pimply middle schooler like me, reached over with his glove and snatched the ball away. It was as clear as day. (Watch it here.) Tarasco immediately pointed to the offender, but the umpire ruled it a home run. Tie game. The Orioles manager raged in a Sisyphean effort while Yankee fans shook that damn kid’s hand and bought him hotdogs. The Yankees won the game in extra innings and took the series in five.

I was crushed. The one sure thing in my life had evaporated. The world had proven that it was not merely indifferent to my life, but was actively conspiring against me, and using some New York City punk to do it. That kid, meanwhile, was treated like a hero, going on Letterman and receiving a key to the city as his team won the World Series.

I was stuck trying to make sense out of my now-rudderless existence while my doppelganger lived the dream. The whole experience psychologically branded my young brain, horribly conflating my Orioles fandom with my quest for self-understanding. It would take me many years to get over it.

The Orioles made the playoffs again the year after but it was never the same. 1997 would be our last winning season. As the Yankees—and later the Red Sox—spent astronomical amounts of money on Rolls Royce rosters, the Orioles overpaid for a used rental car in a sad attempt to keep up. Every year owner Peter Angelos hobbled the team with long-term contracts for crappy veterans, teasing fan expectations while consistently losing most of the games. The waste and profligacy reached comic proportions, mocking the blue-collar success of past Orioles teams. Albert Belle was paid $39 million over three years to not play after retiring due to a bizarre hip injury. Some major league impersonator named David Segui made $28 million while playing, on average, 50 games a year.

As I grew up I kept buying into the false hope. I needed the Orioles to be good again before I could bury my seventh grade sense of self. It never happened. While the O’s continued spending millions on the walking embodiments of mediocrity, the rest of baseball changed. New management styles took over. Smart, well-run organizations with half the payroll of the Orioles kept making the playoffs.

2005 proved to be a turning point. Before the season five players were dragged in front of Congress to testify on steroid abuse. Two of them were Orioles—recent addition Sammy Sosa and Rafael Palmeiro, one of the few vestiges from the last playoff team. Raffy made me proud during those hearings, emphatically pointing at his questioner as he swore he never used steroids. The team then seized first place for 62 days straight during the first half of the season. For the first time in a decade I felt a tentative confidence that the Orioles were a good ballclub.

Fate, however, was not done toying with my fragile and complex relationship to my team. Only two weeks after collecting his 3000th hit, Raffy became the first prominent major leaguer to test positively for steroids. At the same time the team suffered an epic collapse, led by Sosa, a suspected user and one-time 60-home run hitter who could barely hit the ball out of the infield. Just to make sure the hitters didn’t get all the attention, overweight pitcher Sidney Ponson was arrested for DUI three weeks after Palmeiro was busted.

That summer, as countless embarrassing stories about the Orioles blanketed the sports media, I realized that they had become the joke in our relationship. The Orioles needed me far more than I needed them, an understanding that liberated my middle school attachment. They were the shameful ones, the needy ones groping for an identity. I had finally put them in the proper perspective, and it only took the baseball equivalent of Greek tragedy to do so.

One final act remained in the form of Jeffrey Maier. Maier had gone on to play baseball in college. In 2006, as the Orioles looked to move past the worst year in franchise history, there was talk that the team might actually draft Maier into the organization. This was flirting dangerously with baseball superstition. Bringing in the kid that started a decade of losing might have cleansed the Orioles, but it could just as easily have cursed us for another 10 years. The Orioles didn’t tempt the baseball gods and stayed away.

I like to think that rejecting Maier cleared away the ghosts of the past enough to start a legitimately new era in Orioles baseball. Last offseason the team traded away their best pitcher and a steroid tainted slugger for prospects. They’re actually rebuilding for once, committing to the baseball equivalent of going through puberty. I know they’ll feel self-conscious and embarrassed as they go through awkward growing pains. I’ll be the rock this time. I’m there for you, Orioles. Maybe I’ll treat you better than you treated me.

Learn to Stimulate Yourselves

Originally published March 14, 2008 for SpliceToday

Start the bank run, everyone. America’s financial leaders have sounded the recession alarm, and judging by their solemn words the economy is rapidly descending into the Greater Depression. If drastic and immediate action isn’t taken, it sounds like in a year we’ll all be riding the rails from shantytown to shantytown, seasoning boiled leather soup with ketchup as we pray for the next available spot in the Weedpatch Camp.

Before everyone adopts a Steinbeck character as a recession persona, it’d be wise to step back and think about what’s really wrong with the economy. It’s pretty much accepted that the current downturn is rooted in overvalued real estate and easy credit, exacerbated by years of questionable deals on Wall Street and profligate spending in Washington. These sound like the problems of a billionaire CEO. I’m not a real estate mogul, venture capitalist or financier who thrives on risk, so it’s hard to feel any kind of solidarity with the wealthy individuals charged with diagnosing and curing our economic malaise. Those titans created this mess, but they want the help of us commoners to dig out of it.

In May most Americans will be getting a big fat check for at least three hundred large, courtesy of the government. According to both Republicans and Democrats, our patriotic duty is to stimulate the economy by spending this cash. Since consumer spending (an insulting euphemism for people buying lots of crap) makes up approximately two thirds of our economy, we can kick start the sputtering engine through a collective shopping spree.

In reality Wall Street and their Washington buddies are playing us for suckers. Congress has found a rare common purpose in attempting to convince Americans that they can conjure money out of thin air. We’re supposed to believe that the government is giving us a gift; it would be a neat trick if it worked, but the $147 billion stimulus package is coming straight out of our future earnings. Our elected officials are tacking this onto Uncle Sam’s debt and acting like they found the money in an old coat.

So let me get this straight, government. You’re going to give me $300 that’ll have to be paid back with interest so I can go out and buy a Wii? Thanks, but I already have a credit card. When I get my check I’m going to pay down the Visa and those student loans you don’t subsidize enough. I guess I’m not a good American, but taking care of personal debt is more important to me then helping Wal-Mart meet their third quarter earnings projections.

Competitive capitalist economies typically go through cycles. Corporations, as well as small business and government itself, need to feel the pain in order for that good old-fashioned American ingenuity to kick in. Maybe I missed something during college, but I was taught that top-down centralized management of the economy in the pursuit of uninterrupted, uniform economic growth is, well, kind of naïve and idealistic. At least that’s what we said when the Soviets tried it.

Without a doubt the near future is going to be hard. Real estate values are still falling. Credit is all over the map. Unemployment is rising. But as serious as these problems are, they’re not that exceptional over the long run. A recession happens once a decade or so and we generally recover quickly enough to avoid the economic dark ages.

Sure, the value of the dollar is down. While that’s bad news for anyone dreaming of Eurorail passes and hash brownies in Amsterdam, a cheaper dollar makes it easier for Americans to make stuff and sell it to the rest of the world. Considering how much we rely upon gorging our consumer desires to drive our bloated economy, maybe we need to go through a transition where we end up producing goods instead of buying tainted ones from East Asia.

It feels strange to be saying this as a 24-year-old, but we need to toughen up and keep things in perspective. The country’s been through many economic slumps before and we always emerge better off for it. We learn from our mistakes, adjust our expenditure of resources, and start growing again. That’s supposed to be the good thing about capitalism.

The corrupt version of capitalism that relies on hocus pocus to put $300 in our pockets is just cushioning the fall for those who are already rich. For most of us, here’s where the economic pinch really hurts. The price of gas is shooting up. Everything at the grocery store is more expensive. College costs as much per year as a new car. People are losing their homes. And the only thing we can do to keep up is chase more debt down the rabbit hole. These reflect fundamental problems of a lazy economy quixotically trying to keep itself on cruise control, and they are not problems that an extra $300 can solve.

I don’t need new stuff. My discretionary income is already running pretty thin and I’m spending plenty of it. When I get that check there’s no way I’m cashing it in on chintzy Chinese junk from big box stores, and my economic policy overlords need to be okay with that. If they really want to spend $147 billion on my behalf, here’s a wish list: fix old bridges, give more people healthcare, build more trains, and get ready for the next Katrina.

Washington and Wall Street want us to act as a defibrillator for the compulsively consumptive heart of our economy. No thanks. A slight decline in the investment portfolios of the obscenely rich is not exactly a country on life support. I’ll keep working on my Tom Joad impression in the meantime.

Too Complex For The Highlight Reel

Originally published May 8, 2008 for SpliceToday

There is a sublime kind of genius at work in the production concepts of ESPN. At virtually any time of day a viewer can tune into one of ESPN's many media properties and, within 15 minutes, see some sporting issue neatly cleaved into two opposing perspectives. Sometimes one commentator is forced to provide yes-or-no opinions in a contrived exercise, like the (I'm not making this name up) Coors Light Cold Hard Facts "Six Pack" of questions. More often the contrivance is presented as a debate between two experts. The questions are arbitrary, the answers typically meaningless and speculative, but the experts know their role and play it well. They yell, and insult each other, and try their hardest to never agree. Entire half-hour shows with flourishes like point values, flashy graphics, and running clocks are built around the idea of the dueling commentators.

This constant bombardment of short, snappy bits of synthetic argument is ESPN’s genius. Philosophers from the time of the ancient Greeks have observed the deep human need to have the world explained to us in black and white, good and bad, yes and no. ESPN has taken this old insight, applied it to the information-rich world of sports, and strategically married it to the ecology of modern media. Who had the best draft pick, the Falcons or the Raiders? Are last year's Red Sox the greatest team of all time, yes or no? Nobody involved cares about whether the answers to these silly questions are correct or not. What's important is that sides are taken clearly and concisely enough that the meager attention spans of the audience grasp the terms of the argument without realizing how artificial the set-up is.

As a result sports commentary on ESPN ends up mirroring sports itself and opinions can be divided as clearly as competing teams on the playing fields. This communications style is harmless and even a little fun when the subject is as innocuous as sports. But, as contemporary media technologies continue whittling away our ability to concentrate for more than five minutes, the ESPN-ization of the media is skewing our ability to communicate as a society. Unaccountable and flashy opinion-makers that construct false dichotomies for the sake of argument are fine for football. They’re not acceptable when we need national discussions on complicated issues touching on history, politics, and culture.

For example, suppose we needed a discussion on the electability of America’s first black president. A discussion where we talk about the changing identity roles a black man must navigate as he advances in a white-dominated career; talk about the shifting company he keeps at different points in his life as he grows into a public figure; talk about the occasionally contradictory groups he must appease as he necessarily seeks to be both a product of black culture and to transcend it. Add in a little psychology about the “blackness” of a man of mixed race who grew up across the Pacific rim and whose decendents weren’t slaves. Then talk about the meaning of latent racism and how to deal with it. That’s a discussion that doesn’t break down cleanly into two opposing soundbites. That’s a college semester’s worth of discussion, and our media appears to be structurally incapable of having it.

In our short-fused, artificial, two-sided media environment, anything that takes more than a paragraph to explain gets buried. Anything best understood as shades of gray instead of black against white becomes muted. But oversimplifications, codewords, and outright lies that are consistently repeated stick. Savvy political figures understand this ESPN effect and use it to manipulate the public conversation. It’s been a feature of the 2008 presidential campaign so far, and despite Barack Obama’s remarkably successful efforts to rise above the normal constraints of political discourse, his opponents will continue to hammer their “message” as methodically as a mechanic smoothing out a fender.

Say you’re threatened, scared, or otherwise made uncomfortable by the prospect of a President Obama. You think that associating him with our nation’s historical distaste for angry black men will hurt his campaign. Here’s what you do: find a major media outlet. Set up your own artificial yes/no argument by asking whether Obama must “answer” for attending Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s church. Then say yes, ignore Obama’s actual answers, and reference Wright’s angry black bogeyman statements. It’s like having your own Coors Light Six Pack of Questions, except that you’re undermining democratic discourse instead of breaking down a playoff game.

Like this:

George Will, country club conservative: “Wright's paranoias tell us something—exactly what remains to be explored—about his 20-year parishioner.” Ah ha! Something dark and mysterious is out there to be found, like Kurtz exploring the Congo.

Michael Gerson, moralizing former Bush speechwriter: “A smart, passionate pastor such as Wright naturally wants his views to influence his own congregation. He has every right to ask Obama, ‘Have you just now noticed my most basic beliefs? Have you really been asleep in the pew for 20 years?’" See, Obama can’t disagree with Wright, or at least he shouldn’t if he’s a good Christian.

Ed Koch, crotchety old Clinton supporter: “He has not explained why he sat in the church's pews for 20 years without complaint.” That’s not true: Obama delivered an entire speech explaining that.

The kamikaze campaign controversy piloted by Obama’s old pastor is the latest example of a multi-faceted issue of national importance getting distorted in the media for political advantage. Judging by the results in North Carolina and Indiana it obviously hasn’t derailed his campaign. But we haven’t seen the last of Rev. Wright, or other examples of “the politics of division and distraction” as Obama put it in his speech Tuesday night, because division and distraction are operationally fundamental to the modern news media. Division and distraction is its bread and butter, the key to a desperate bid for eyeballs and advertising dollars when so much information is now available for free. Traditionally campaigns, especially losing ones like Clinton’s and McCain’s, are happy to ply the media with disciplined message politics. Obama’s campaign isn’t perfect, but as a candidate he’s shown with issues like race and the gas tax that sometimes principle overrides easy answers.

ESPN’s genius works. For the past decade the sports network has been remarkably profitable, carrying once dominant sister companies ABC and Disney on their back. ESPN has made itself essential to the lives of practically every sports fan and professional athlete by building an empire where nuance is sacrificed for the sake of simplicity, entertainment outweighs accuracy, and the biggest sin is to leave your audience with an ambiguous conclusion.

But sports are diversions, something that can be endlessly and simply argued about becuase the results of a game don’t cost 4,000 American lives in Iraq. Games don’t have anything to do with the executive branch’s erosion of the rule of law, or economic policy favoring the rich at the expense of the poor, or the legacy of racism. Those issues are decided by politics, and in politics sometimes the truth doesn’t fit onscreen in a colorful banner graphic. It’d be a welcome change if our leading media outlets realized the difference.

State Broadband Initiatives

Conducted research but did not write. Originally published July 2008 for the Alliance for Public Technology.

The full report can be downloaded here.