Marbury

why rick perry's candidacy is a gift to george bush

Plenty of those who dismissed George Bush as an idiot ended up feeling pretty stupid themselves, particularly when they found themselves on the wrong side of a political battle with him. Bush was certainly intellectually lazy, and he was never the most articulate of politicians, but he was smart enough to grasp tightly the ideas of his mentor Karl Rove, and - even more importantly - to deliver them with enormous discipline and conviction on the campaign trail. "Compassionate conservatism" may have been Rove's strategy but it was Bush who made it sing.

Whether or not the world needed a reminder of just how good Bush was as a campaigner, it now has one. We are watching his successor as Texas governor, Rick Perry, thrash and flail his way through a presidential campaign like a gorilla with a migraine in search of the right remedy at a drugstore. Perry had a difficult start, and OK that's understandable - a presidential race already underway is a difficult to thing to jump into - but right after he supposedly retrenched and reset he's put his cowboy boot in it again, this time by reigniting the 'birther' issue:

Governor, do you believe that President Barack Obama was born in the United States?
I have no reason to think otherwise.

That’s not a definitive, “Yes, I believe he”—
Well, I don’t have a definitive answer, because he’s never seen my birth certificate.

But you’ve seen his.
I don’t know. Have I?

You don’t believe what’s been released?
I don’t know. I had dinner with Donald Trump the other night.

And?
That came up.

And he said?
He doesn’t think it’s real.

And you said?
I don’t have any idea. It doesn’t matter. He’s the President of the United States. He’s elected. It’s a distractive issue.

It's difficult to work out what on earth Perry was thinking here, although that verb may not be appropriate at all (note that in his first answer Perry seems to suggest that he can't be sure whether or not Obama was born in American until Obama has seen Perry's birth certificate). He then declares it a 'distractive' issue. It sure is, Rick - and by raising it you distractived the media's attention from the new tax plan you wanted them to focus on this week.

In case you're still thinking this was some subtle ploy to fire up the right's enthusiasm for his candidacy, note that a couple of days later he backed away from his comments. So his original remarks almost certainly weren't made with any strategic or tactical end in mind - he just blundered into them. As the English saying goes, "a gentleman is never rude, except on purpose." Perry is no gentleman, of course. He's no president either.

time: the rubbery thing

This is from an interesting interview with the neuroscientist David Eagleman, who specialises in the way our brains process time:

We all go through life assuming that time is an external river that flows past us. But experiments in my laboratory over the past decade have shown that this is not precisely the case. Time is an active construction of the brain. We can set up simple experiments to make you believe that a flashed image lasted longer or shorter than it actually did, or that a burst of light happened before you pressed a button (even though you actually caused it with the button), or that a sound is beeping at a faster or slower rate than it actually is, and so on. Time is a rubbery thing.

Link to interview.

(Annoyingly, Eagleman is also an excellent writer: his book of short stories about the afterlife, Sum, is mindblowingly good.)

smokin'

Sorry for the light-to-non-existent blogging, for which there are various dull reasons. Perhaps you'll forgive me if I show you this (do watch to the end):

lip-reading romney (badly)

Apparently, 'Bad Lip-Reading' is a thing. It's put to very good effect in this video, which just gets funnier as it goes on:

handbags

 

Last night's GOP debate (and yes, if it seems like they're happening every two weeks that's because they pretty much are) was more entertaining than most. Gloves came off, handbags were drawn. Possibly the key exchange of the night is the one above. It shows Perry dredging up a story from four years ago about Romney once having illegal immigrants working in his home. Perry's record on immigration is, from a GOP primary perspective, a big vulnerability, so this was an attempt to deflect attention and go on the offence. Romney allows himself to get a little testy here - he can come off sounding like a priggish head boy, over-keen to enforce the rules - but I think he gets the better of Perry.

Overall, most commentators scored last night as a win for Romney, though only just. The other candidates are finally starting to land some punches on him. But they're also landing punches on each other; Cain's 9-9-9 plan came under sustained attack for the first time - you can watch it being artfully dissected by Romney here (apples and oranges?!). Perry showed signs of life, being more aggressive and on his game than in the last couple of debates. But the truth is he's just not smart enough or disciplined enough to do well in these forums.

When Romney is gently patronising him, Perry has the most extraordinary look on his face - it's like watching a pug being teased by a cat. 

The Daily Dish's round-up of responses here.

what dave can learn from rahm

It's been said before, but the Coalition government needs to find a way of being about more than just deficit reduction. For one thing, it's a relentlessly negative message - it's all about the nasty medicine rather what the patient will feel like after it's worked. For another, it fixes the party to an economic platform, which is dangerous; David Willetts has observed that the Tories lost three elections in part because they had become known as just "the economics party". When the economy turned down they were lost, out of touch with the electorate's wider concerns. Finally, Britain has big structural, long-term problems and unless the cuts are tied to a forward-looking programme of reform, these will remain unaddressed (there was interesting piece by James Purnell in the FT that touches on this).

Of course, Britain's politicians aren't alone in facing this challenge; to varying degrees, it's the challenge of all the big developed economies, including America. While Washington fiddles, some of America's governors and mayors are getting to grips with what comes next. One of the most interesting is the new mayor of Chicago, Obama's former chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel. His mantra, as reported by Tom Friedman, is "cut and invest". It means making cuts in areas that, despite being defended interest groups, aren't delivering value to taxpayers, and investing resources in new ways that do. It means not pretending that things can or should go back to the way they were:

In laying out his new budget last week, Emanuel summed up what it means to be a progressive in this age of austerity. “I want to be honest about this budget,” the mayor declared. “Almost every one of these ideas has been discussed and debated before. But politics has stood in the way of their adoption. Maybe in the past, we could afford the political path. But we have come to the point where we can’t afford it any longer. The cost of putting political choices ahead of practical solutions has become too expensive. It is destroying Chicago’s finances and threatening the city’s future. In all of these reforms, we will be guided by principle, pragmatism and progress — not politics. What we simply cannot do is to temporize any longer. We can’t kick the can down the road because we’ve run out of road.”

Actually, Friedman seems to have cheerfully forgotten about another column he wrote, at the end of last year, which suggests that Emanuel has borrowed some his rhetoric from another mayor - the mayor of Atlanta, Kasim Reed. But anyway the point is this: these are politicians who are shaping tough stories of change and renewal out of the mess we're in, which is something Cameron hasn't come close to doing yet.

The same applies to Labour, by the way. Yes, there's an important argument to be had on how to revive the economy in the short term, which is what Miliband and Balls are focusing on. But much more important is that they are seen as having a credible and appealing vision how to run the country after the money has run out.

Link to Friedman on Emanuel.

Link to Friedman on Reed.

would steve jobs still be alive if he'd trusted medical science?

Artist Alex Wer's pumpkin-based tribute to Steve Jobs.

Ramzi Amri, of the Harvard Medical Faculty (department of surgical oncology) believes that the answer to this question is yes:

I have done 1.5 years of research on the type of tumor that affected Steve Jobs and have some strong opinions on his case, not only as an admirer of his work, but also as a cancer researcher who has the impression that his disease course has been far from optimal.

Let me cut to the chase: Mr. Jobs allegedly chose to undergo all sorts of alternative treatment options before opting for conventional medicine. This was, of course, a freedom he had all the rights to take, but given the circumstances it seems sound to assume that Mr. Jobs' choice for alternative medicine has eventually led to an unnecessary death.

He goes on to explain why in some detail - do take a look.

As David Brooks has pointed out, Jobs's worldview was formed at the intersection of very different cultures - Californian hippy spirituality, computer geekdom, and 1980s enterpreneurialism. Living that culture clash was part of what made him great. It also helps explain why somebody so brilliant and scientifically literate could put their faith in the unscientific, even at the risk of their own life.

where ed miliband stands

But it's OK, because the centre-ground has shifted, right? Right?

via YouGov/Coffee House

2012: a choice of technocrats?

In a piece for Slate, Jacob Weisberg ponders a paradox: the Republican Party is more dominated by conservative ideologues than it has been in decades. Yet, as things stand, the man most likely to be their presidential candidate is a moderate, and a political pragmatist. In fact, Romney is what you might call an extreme pragmatist; there is no position to which he feels a sufficiently strong attachment not to reverse through 180 degrees if it becomes politically expedient for him to do so. I should add that I'd much rather see a pragmatist within spitting distance of the White House than an ideologue. Here's Weisberg:

To the disappointment of both radical conservatives and Obama liberals, the former Massachusetts governor is a sane, intelligent, and reasonable man. Unlike some of his rivals, he is not hostile to undocumented migrants or homosexuals. He doesn’t deny the facts of climate change or evolution. He isn’t proposing vast tax cuts or reductions in social spending. Romney’s politics express the worldview of a successful businessman who became the technocratic governor of America’s most liberal state...

...This managerial malleability alarms Tea Partiers, but it should come as a relief to everyone else. Romney is not a radical and will not govern from the far right, unless the country has truly gone there first. And when the time comes for him to behave responsibly, he will have less trouble than his rivals might in accepting the necessity of higher taxes. For those interested in the economic choices that America’s next president will face, Romney’s nonideological nature is a significant plus.

Agreed. Of course, in key respects, the national politician Romney resembles most is the current occupant of the White House. Both are pragmatists, led by the head more than the heart, who instinctively head for the middle ground of any debate. Both are political geeks, readily engrossed by the details of policy or strategy, and uncomfortable with the people side of their profession. Neither Romney or Obama (unlike, say, Clinton) enjoy gladhanding donors, schmoozing political opponents, or working a ropeline of voters. They've accommodated themselves to such activities, because, being pragmatists, they know they're important. But they're not naturals. Obama's favourite presidential responsibility seems to be national security (unusually for a Democrat), and I suspect Romney, if he makes it to the White House, will be the same. It's the part of the job that requires very little retail politics, and rewards the ability to absorb and analyse data, converse with smart people, keep secrets and take cold decisions. It's a much more tangible set of skills than those needed to get and stay popular. I think that Romney would have similar trouble to Obama in forming a bond with the electorate.

It's a strange paradox that in these ideological times, the two leading politicians in Americans should be technocratic conciliators by nature. The 2012 question for the non-ideological observer of American politics will be (if Romney is nominated), which of these pragmatists will be more effective at fixing America's problems, primarily the economy? It's too early to get into that, of course. But at the outset, I'd say there seems to be a good case for Romney. It may be that a moderate Republican president will be much better able than any Democrat to manage a rabidly partisan congressional GOP. The chances of Romney getting tax rises through, for instance, would seem higher to me than Obama doing so.

hoopla

Photograph: PIETRO CROCCHIONI/EPA

I have a piece in the Guardian today on the story of Amanda Knox and what it tells us about ourselves. Although my piece doesn't focus on the Italian police's sexualising of Knox, that it is certainly one of the most remarkable aspects of the story. An excellent Rolling Stone account of the case contains the following eyepopping anecdote, which of course tells you far more about the role of femininity in the Italian male psyche than it does about Knox:

(A)n older male detective claimed that, upon returning with detectives to the murder scene, Knox had spontaneously broken into a seductive, hip-rolling dance, popularized in old Italian sex comedies, called La Mossa. Knox, the detective claimed, had shimmied her hips like Monica Vitti, shouting "Hoopla!"

Link to Rolling Stone story.

steve jobs r.i.p

'But Steve...it's just a big typewriter.'

As if Steve Jobs could ever rest in peace! That wasn't really his style.

President Obama's tribute contained a very good line:

There may be no greater tribute to Steve's success than the fact that much of the world learned of his passing on a device he invented.

I read about it on an iPad. 

The best thing I've ever read about Jobs is this interview with John Sculley, which gives you real insight into the man and his methods. My gloss on it here.

the anti-speech

Sitting through so many cliché-filled speeches to conference, I sometimes wish that somebody would stand up and deliver a speech like this one:

Conference, we come together today at a difficult time for this country. People are anxious about their jobs, their homes, and their families.

The naysayers will tell you that our difficulties are insurmountable. They are right. The situation is hopeless. But we must carry on, firm in the knowledge that everything we do is futile.

I'd like to say a word about my family. Last year my son fell ill, and he received wonderful care from the nurses and doctors of the NHS. I say to you, from the bottom of my heart, that I will never, ever, let anyone else in this country receive as good a service as our family did! My wife is here today. Without her presence by my side these last few years I would still do the job that I do. In fact, I would probably do a considerably better job without her.

These are tough times for all of us. In tough times, people come together. But not everyone is pulling their weight. We hear a lot about the irresponsibility of the rich. But what about those at the bottom of society? The homeless, the unemployed, the ill? They must play their part too. 

The riots that we saw over the summer were carried out by a very small number of criminals. The vast majority of people in this country are dishonest, feckless, shifty layabouts who do the minimum they can to get on in life. I call them 'Time-Serving Britons'. They have been coddled and pandered to for too long!

(PAUSE FOR APPLAUSE)

Conference, we in this party have always believed in the welfare of the few, not the many. There is no doubt we face some tough choices in the months to come if we are to ensure that the pain is spread unequally. But I relish those decisions.

Let me tell you why I came into politics - about my irresponsible core. I came into politics because I was offered work experience in my uncle's office. He was an MP. I found that I rather liked the smell of power, and soon, I would do anything to get it. Now I will do anything to keep it.

So I say to you today: I will always put short-term popularity ahead of this country's long-term interest.

(APPLAUSE)

 Our children and grandchildren can, frankly, look after themselves.

My friends, Great Britain was built on the idea that success in life depends on where you born, not what you do. I don't want to live in a country in which what we earn is linked to effort or ability, and I'm sure none of you do.  That is why this party is pledged to abolish the link between merit and reward once and for all! (APPLAUSE, EXTENDED).

I firmly believe that there is a brighter past behind us. So let us look back, not forward.

If we stick together and ride out this storm, an even bigger one will come along and blow us all away.

(END. OVATION.)

when it comes to business, big is good

Photo: Christopher Furlong/Getty Images

We've been hearing a lot of love for small businesses at the party conferences. Tories love them because they supposedly represent the innate entrepreneurial spirit of the British people. Labour and Lib Dem politicians love them because they are the acceptable face of capitalism, the honest strivers, the anti-Goodwins. They are portrayed as the answer to Britain's economic woes (as they are in the United States). Nearly every speech contains an idea for helping the nation's small businesses hire and retain staff.

But if we focus our efforts this way, we may actually do more to hinder growth than help it. Despite our romantic affection for them, small businesses aren't a lot of help when it comes to getting a modern economy growing or lowering unemployment rates. A report from Business Week (based in part on some US research that almost certainly applies here too) reminds us of several reasons why.

First of all, small companies tend to stay small. Most of them are restauranteurs, plumbers or independent retailers who have no particular desire to build empires or hire the extra people needed to do so. They just want the satisfaction of running a successful business and can do without the stress of expansion. The Dysons and Apples of the world are in the minority.

Second, small businesses tend to have a much higher turnover of staff than big businesses, and they tend to pay their employees at lower rates.

Third, big businesses are better for the economy. A cross-country analysis of business surveys revealed that a country's wealth is inversely proportional to the number of people who earn their livings from small businesses. This is because big businesses tend to have much higher productivity rates than small ones.

So if politicians want to create stable, well-paid, productive jobs, it's big business they should be assisting, not small.

Link to Business Week report.

why are england so bad at penalties?

Scoring a penalty isn't, in theory, a hard thing to do. The shooter has most of the goal to aim at from close range and holds a key advantage of the goalkeeper: he knows where the ball is going to go. The biggest challenge, of course, is psychological. How do you keep your nerve under the intense pressure of thousands of screaming fans, the knowledge that your team's success is dependent on you getting this right, and that you're being watched by millions of people on TV?

Of course, professionals prepare for this pressure, and the better teams retain a high rate of success in these situations. But as even casual followers of the national games will know, England have a long tradition, stretching back decades now, of losing big championship matches on penalty shoot-outs. More so than other top teams, our players have a tendency to "choke", skying the ball over the bar, tapping it tamely into the keeper's arms, or taking a comedy fall as they kick the ball, skewing it wide.

A new study suggests that in these circumstances, history matters. A team's history of failure can hurt the performance of its players - even including those who haven't been part of a losing effort in the past. In this way, a team's history of failure can become self-perpetuating, handed down from generation to generation. This is from a report on the study:

A research team led by Jordet examined video footage of every penalty shootout held in two major international soccer tournaments — the World Cup and the European Championships — between 1976 and 2006. Such shootouts are used to decide a winner when two teams are tied after overtime play.

The researchers looked at the talent level of each team, plus their records in earlier games in the tournament. Then, for each of the 309 penalty kicks, they assessed a) whether the winning goal was scored, b) whether the winning goal was scored the last time the team was in this situation, and c) which members of the squad were on the team when that prior won or loss occurred.

They found teams that had lost the preceding shootout made 65.7 percent of these game-winning goals. That’s far below the 85.1 percent of such goals made by those teams that had won the previous shootout. Those with no previous major penalty shootouts made the goal 76.4 percent of the time. Intriguingly, the researchers report this pattern was “also found with players who took no personal part in the preceding games,” which had sometimes occurred years earlier. 

My proposed solution? Implant false memories into young England players of watching England teams do spectacularly well in penalty shoot-outs.