William Yale

A president needs empathy and emotional intelligence, so that he can prevail in political dealings with his own party and the opposition in Washington, and in face-to-face negotiations with foreign leaders, who otherwise will go away saying that this president is “weak” and that the country’s leadership role is suspect. He needs to be confident but not arrogant; open-minded but not a weather vane; resolute but still adaptable; historically minded but highly alert to the present; visionary but practical; personally disciplined but not a prig or martinet. He should be physically fit, disease-resistant, and capable of being fully alert at a moment’s notice when the phone rings at 3 a.m.—yet also able to sleep each night, despite unremitting tension and without chemical aids.

Ideally he would be self-aware enough that, in the center of a system that treats him as emperor-god, he could still recognize his own defects and try to offset them.

From James Fallow’s latest cover story on Obama in The Atlantic.

I’m taking a class on journalism that requires us to blog (not a journalism class, but a class on journalism). So I thought I would put those posts here too. Readings from the class will be referenced (but don’t worry, the references are quoted and explained).

In asking, “What is news?” I was reminded of a question recently posed in the form of a blog post by Arthur Brisbane, the New York Times Ombudsman: “Should The Times Be a Truth Vigilante?” Should newspapers point out that X politician made Y and Z false statements? The obvious answer is yes (Jim Fallows at The Atlantic generally summed up my views). Fallows’ critique of the media is common today, and has been common for a long time: that many journalists engage in superficial “horse race reporting” (where facts are presented without context and meaning) and “false equivalence” (where two opposing truth claims are treated as equally plausible). This critique is even mentioned in one of the readings, “If you call to mind the topics which form the principal indictment by reformers against the press, you find they are subjects in which the newspaper occupies the position of the umpire in the unscored baseball game.” (Lippmann, 50)

Some of our readings make the opposite case. According to Halberstam, news is not about providing context or explanation: “News reports, on the other hand, need not be explanatory and those explanations which do appear in news account are often adscititious intrusions.” (Halberstam, 13) Halberstam’s definition of the news would seem to rule out a lot of important news. Financial reporting on the recession, for example, would be useless without context and explanation of the causes and actors involved in the crash. Similarly, Halberstam’s emphasis on events as news would rule out most news stories concerning global warming, or other long-term patterns that impact us in dramatic ways.

I know that personally, I would like to believe that journalists exist as the fourth estate, uncovering malfeasance and inserting themselves into the political process in a way that makes everyone else more informed and better citizens. This sort of reporting would require context and explanation of events and long-term patterns. Lippmann argues strenuously against this idealistic vision: “If the newspapers, then, are to be charged with the duty of translating the whole public life of mankind, so that every adult can arrive at an opinion on every moot topic, they fail, they are bound to fail, in any future one can conceive they will continue to fail.” (Lippmann, 117-118) That might be a straw-man argument. I don’t think that the media, by fulfilling its public purpose, will hand down the truth from on high to the masses. Every person makes autonomous judgments. Rather, news media should seek to make people better-informed citizens, regardless of the political conclusions those people make. After all, Morson’s example of the degraded conditions at the Ridge Home nursing center could lead someone to conclude the government should improve the center, or that the government should abolish the center.

It is thrilling to follow Andrew Sullivan’s chronicle of the tension, release, drama, and aftermath this evening. Also, Nicholas Jackson‘stech and political insights (source of the “Rainbow Empire State Building” photo at right).

Ten years from now, it will seem as hard to believe that couples of the same sex could not get married as it was, by the late 1970s, to believe that couples of different races could not get married in a number of states barely a decade before. This barrier will fall much more quickly than that one did.

A long and happy marriage has been the main positive event in my life. I am glad that more people will have the opportunity.

Please just read him already!

James Fallows calls this ad “the first spot from this campaign season you can imagine people actually remembering a decade from now.” Besides its glaring economic inaccuracies, the Chinese in 2030 come off looking rather evil. They’re really, really, really not!

Published in the Trinity Tripod.

Martin Peretz, of Harvard University and editor of the magazine The New Republic, recently wrote, “Frankly, Muslim life is cheap, most notably to Muslims.” He added, “I wonder whether I need honor these people and pretend that they are worthy of the privileges of the First Amendment, which I have in my gut the sense that they will abuse.”

A month ago protests sparked over the construction of a Muslim community center, the Cordoba House, several blocks away from the site of the World Trade Center. For two years, a vocal minority of Americans have posted on internet forums and passed on viral emails written loudly in all caps: “BARACK HUSSEIN OBAMA IS A MUSLIM!”

Each of these controversies stem from a stereotypical representation of Islam and its adherents – stereotypes that are bigoted because they aren’t true. From my travels in Xinjiang, China and living amongst Uyghur and Kazakh Muslims, I’ve found that bigoted beliefs can only arise out of a profound “poverty of experience.”

Last week I stayed for a few days in Hemu, a tiny village on the Kazakh, Russian, and Mongol borders. The natural scenery was beautiful, but more important to me were opportunities to speak with local Tuvans (a Mongolian tribe), Uyghurs, and Kazakhs. After spending an afternoon at a school cultural exchange, I learned that Kazakh teenagers are surprisingly good basketball players and admire Kobe Bryant. It’s probably because the basketball courts are the only fun thing in town.

After dinner with the family of the head schoolteacher, they taught us how to dance to the ethno-pop of Shahrizoda (three Uyghur girls who are all the rage in Xinjiang – their music is incessant). The dance was a traditional Kazakh line dance, and very similar to line dances in Texas. We were also served horse milk wine – think sake with a tinge of milk flavor.

The next night, we got to practice our newly-learned line-dancing skills at a dance party. In Hemu. Population: less than 2000.

After all that, how can I ever stereotype a population of one billion people – it’s futile!

I am an avid reader of James Fallows, correspondent for the Atlantic Monthly, who in response to Mr. Peretz wrote, “The real secret of American inclusion through the generations is that when you grow up with, work with, live next to, intermarry with, and in all other ways get to know people from different categories, you have less patience for generalizations about ‘the blacks’ or ‘the Irish’ or ‘the Jews’ or ‘the gays’ or ‘trailer trash’ etc.”

When you come into contact with those unlike yourself and expose yourself to the alien, “poverty of experience” is erased; you cannot be bigoted, because what was once alien you now recognize as familiar.

Not everyone can make the trek to one of the most remote places on earth to learn this lesson – but Americans need not to. My “wealth of experience” includes not just getting to know Kazakh teenagers in Xinjiang, but also growing up and going to school in a racially and socio-economically diverse community. I am sure the Tuvans, Kazakhs, and Uyghurs I’ve met are well-represented by others in the states (not to mention Muslim and Arab cultural groups on this campus). If you have the opportunity to study abroad, it is the best choice you can make, but it is certainly not the only path out of bigotry in this country.

One of Ezra Klein’s blog posts today reminded me to write a little note clarifying an earlier post – “Rebuilding America”. That post was more of a broad overview on the inability of the federal government to enact any further fiscal or monetary stimulus. I argued that President Obama needs to make an unequivocal case for ‘rebuilding America’ with the type of “Grand American projects” associated with the strategic visions proposed by Steve Clemons and James Fallows.

What I was unclear about was what the term “Grand American projects” meant. My working definition now is long-term fiscal policy designed to quantitatively improve the working class’ quality of life and productivity, and to reduce the income gap. In short order, to revitalize the social mobility that was characterized by the 90′s. This is a broad definition – it includes investments in renewable energy, transportation networks, urban renewal and planning, other infrastructure, and education (this list is by no means exhaustive). These policies need to be passed now and take effect over the next several decades, rather than serve as a reactionary measure a la the 2009 stimulus.

What about what has already been signed into law? I view financial reform as a necessity, but not a Grand American project; it’s mainly a reactive measure. Part of health-care reform would qualify – R & D, IT investment. The rest of the bill is absolutely vital in improving quality of life and productivity, but is not intended to radically improve social mobility. Finally, tax-code reform (this calculator from CEPR is useful – I would add more income levels in the tax code and tax the top marginal rate higher) is necessary to fund these investments and reduce our debt obligations.

The US has been wracked for the past decade with what Ed Luce calls “the Great Stagnation”. Real income has decreased, and we’ve let our regulatory system grow dysfunctional from disuse and our infrastructure system decrepit from under-investment. We’re also competing with foreign industries to accomplish the same goals. I don’t believe foreign growth is bad – on the contrary, Chinese growth opens up Chinese markets to our goods and services. But I do think that US stagnation is bad. We vitally need a positive vision of a more equitable America. I don’t use the word ‘vision’ lightly. It can’t be anything less than a ‘vision’. Anything less would be disastrous.