Kim Yu-Nationalism, Or How Middle Powers Assert Themselves in Global Politics

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Nothing verifies the claims of my last two posts about the jingoism and politicization of world sport as much as the national euphoria here that greeted Yuna Kim’s Olympics victory last week. Koreans reacted to her medal the same way Americans did to the US hockey’s team 1980 victory – it became a banner symbol of national greatness in world society. Kim has become not an image of skating beauty, but rather the latest capture of an unrelated event to serve Korea’s near obsessive effort to be noted in the world politics. This is how states reinforce themselves in the era of globalization, and this is how middle powers tell the world to pay attention to them.

Here are just a few headlines, to remind you that her victory is not just a gold medal, but a “world historic event,” as one Korean put it to me:

“Yuna Becomes ‘Golden Queen’: Kim Yu-na’s Olympic triumph cements her status as the megastar of figure skating and the sport’s most transcendent personality since Germany’s Katarina Witt.”

“Beyond Perfection: Fascinating the world with dazzling performance”

“Kim Yu-na: Figure skating queen aids Korea’s Olympic dreams”

“Olympic favorite Kim Yu-na delighted fans around the world”

“Korea Energized by Figure Skater’s Olympic Debut: Korea is ablaze with excitement”

This sort of purple rhetoric should convince anyone of the way the state instrumenatlizes sports for nationalist assertion. Kim is a fine athlete obviously. But the far more interesting story for a political scientist is the way her victory was ‘captured’ for the interest of state and nation. Indeed so fanatical have Koreans become about Kim, that she now practices mostly in Canada  in order to avoid the cult of personality that has grown up around her.

Maybe I’m Huntington’s flimsy de-nationalized globalist, but I can’t help but find this sort of adulation extremely discomforting, and not just as  foreigner living here. Aren’t modern, liberal states supposed to outgrow this sort of clannishness? Aren’t cults of personality, uncritical coverage of national ‘heroes,’ and jingoistic assertions of the ‘world’s joy’ over an athlete (?!) a sign of political immaturity and hard-edged nationalism, the sort of thing we associate with dictatorships banking on nationalism as a legitimizing ideology?

My sense is that if Korea really wants to be taken by the rest of the world as a serious, perhaps even leading, member of the G20, this sort of nationalism will need to fade. Like much of East Asia, Korea is torn between a deeply held nationalist narrative of its uniqueness (frequently drifting into racial blood-and-soil narratives of the minjok), and the desire to be cosmopolitan and open to world of globalization (‘Global Korea‘). (China too has the struggle, between the CCP’s growing racialization of Han ethnicity, and the need for Walmart and more FDI.) Yuna Kim embodies both of these trends, as she is both instrumentalized for Korean national purposes (carrying the flag everywhere, eg), yet also reasonbly fluent in English. It is not clear to me which way Koreans want to go.

‘Andrew Sullivan is an Anti-Semite,’ or the Israel Lobby is in a Panic

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In the last few weeks, the literary editor of the New Republic, Leon Wieseltier, accused Andrew Sullivan of being an anti-Semite for his changing, increasingly tough views on Israel. For original post, go here; for Sullivan’s response, here; Greenwald, as usual, gave the most insightful read of the whole thing. Also, Cole, Chait, and Mead.

1. My sense of Sullivan’s work – from reading his blog irregularly, his essays at the Atlantic, and his book Conservative Soul – is that the charge is ridiculous. Sullivan is as thoughtful a writer as they come. I can’t think of anyone who has so openly showed, through his blog, the humanist thinking process day-by-day. Unlike academics who strive to present iron-clad work as if they’d thought of every angle, Sullivan has basically thrown open his brain so the whole world can watch him think. He routinely retracts, modifies, and apologizes when he makes mistakes or reconsiders. In this way, he is wonderfully honest – head and shoulders above the partisan hackery of most of American punditry. The blog is essentially the organic thinking process of classical liberal, with a touch of conservative sadness, muddling through tough questions, as we all do, only for the whole world to watch in print. It is a fascinating process, occasionally mundane or humorous, frequently engaging, but prejudiced? Hardly. That violates the very spirit of thinking-out-loud behind his blog that has made it so popular.

2. Wieseltier’s piece is pretty shoddy. It is a collection of extrapolations, slippery allegations, and ad hominem shots. Name-dropping Niebuhr and Auden was pretentious and served no point. I would not have accepted this from a graduate student. You can’t write this way unless you have an assured platform. Wieseltier is a like PhD who just got tenure – ‘now I’ll say anything  I want.’ If he weren’t an editor of one the best intellectual-policy magazines in the US, no one would have read this essay. It is telling that most of the debate has either sided openly with Sullivan or suggested that Wieseltier overreached or overreacted.

3. The real story, as Greenwald and Walt have also suggested, is the growing panic of Israel’s deep supporters in the US. The ground is shifting against Israel, particularly because of its continuing hard-right insistence on retaining the West Bank. The current prime minister, B Netanyahu, has clearly deepened the rift with the US by his open recalcitrance on the settlements. Much of the credit for this shift on Israel is due to Walt and Mearsheimer’s book and the subsequent flood of discussion it unleashed and legitimized. (They too enjoyed the institutional power of saying whatever they want; tenure in top 10 schools gives you that kind of space.) Walt’s blogging, relentless, measured and intelligent, has kept up the pressure. Increasingly it has become clear that the biggest obstacle for peace is now the Israeli religious right, not Hamas or Hezbollah. The fundamentalist-zionist Orthodox have now pulled Israel’s otherwise modern, liberal population into a semi-imperialist venture that increasingly smacks of permanent apartheid for the Palestinians. There is simply no way the US can support this; Israel’s friends in the US know this, and they are panicking. The consensus of elite opinion on Israel is swinging against them, and anti-semitism charges against the likes of Jimmy Carter, Walt, Mearsheimer, and now Sullivan, tells you more about the changing American debate on Israel, than it does about these writers.

3. I find the charge of anti-semitism thrown at intelligent writers like these inappropriate, because it is a prejudice we associate with crass, vulgar, unrefined thinking. That is, we assume the racism and other bigotry reflects a lack of thoughtful thoroughness. So ‘X is an islamophobe after 9/11, because he has no idea about Islam, but still makes snap judgments based on minimal information.’ Yet clearly, Sullivan, Walt and the rest do in fact know a great deal about Israel, Judaism, and the associated issues. They have a long, substantial body of work over many years demonstrating, rich nuanced thinking on all sorts of topics. Their work, not just on Israel, but on lots of topics, is not a collection of from-the-hip prejudice, but usually pretty well-thought out. That’s why people read them to begin with. (Remember that Mein Kampf was a publishing failure originally; before reading it was coerced, the normal German saw right through it for the bigotry and poor thinking it was.)

Certainly ‘smart’ people can be racist or anti-semitic, but I bet the proportion is lower. Why? Presumably, all the reading, traveling, and reflection we associate with intelligence leaves some sort of intellectual mark. This is why we send our children to school to begin with. Presumably it humanizes the thinker to the circumstances of other people, encourages one to try to see the world through others’ eyes, and expands one’s sense of self. Consider Walt. He is the chairman of the finest political science program on the planet. Do you really believe the people who vetted him throughout the long institutional path to this height somehow missed his latent anti-semitism? Hundreds, maybe thousands, of professors, students, and administrators somehow missed this roaring prejudice? Is it possible? Sure. Probable? That question answers itself. So leave the racism charges for uneducated boors like Timothy McVeigh; it’s just a gimmick to stifle debate of things you don’t like.

The Olympics are a Moral Equivalent of War

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William James wrote a great essay in 1906 entitled the “Moral Equivalent of War.” (That I never read it or even heard it discussed in my graduate training is but the latest example on this blog of how myopic, unhistorical, and excessively ‘scientistic’ IR has become.) I’ve always thought it provided a good key to explain the nationalism suffusing world sports, especially the sheer jingoism of the Olympics.

The Olympics provides a way for nation-states to engage in all the nationalist passion and competition the human dark side craves, yet in a way that does not involve mass-killing and property destruction. It is therefore James’ moral analogue or equivalent to international conflict or war. The Olympics allow us to reenact global conflict in zero-sum environments, but safely. Indeed, this is probably the great social benefit of the Olympics: they are a safety valve for nationalist furor to be channeled into neutral non-malign outcomes, but for the occasional soccer riot. Far from a being a global event that celebrates our common humanity, the Olympics is a good example of the state’s and its citizens’ resistance to globalization. The deeply-rooted nationalist passion of most people is easily on display; how often do you see supposedly mild Canadians drunkenly screaming and waving their flag? So forget that ‘we-are-the-world’ blather from the opening ceremonies. Let’s get to some serious national a— kicking.

War in the modern world has become ridiculously destructive and expensive. Nuclear weapons especially have made war nearly unthinkable among the biggest nuclear weapons states. This is excellent of course; nukes seem to be having a wholly unanticipated pacifying effect. But human bloodlust needs to be sated somehow. A moral equivalent of the ‘value’ of war is needed: defeat of an enemy, tales of courage and heroism, the exhilaration of triumph in a zero-sum competition for high stakes, the desire for mass rallying around distinct in-group symbols, an unashamed outlet for bigotry and prejudice, the lionization of physical beauty and strength, the unambiguous assertion and celebration of in-group superiority. There is a reason why the best movie ever made about sport was a by a fascist enamored of male virility filming an Olympics.

The Olympics is a great source for all those dark sides of world politics, and you don’t really need to look hard to see this. Consider the picture above. I saw some Korean iceskater the other day take a victory lap with a taeguki wrapped around his shoulders, and Koreans in the room with me were clapping and cheering. But the best know example is the US hockey team’s defeat of the Soviet team in 1980. Americans went bonkers, because everyone read it as some (bogus) triumph in the Cold War. Just in case your overweening sense of American awesomeness ever flags, you can watch this (unbelievably schmaltzy tripe) to remind yourself why America is the most amazing place ever.

Or consider the introduction of the teams on day 1. Did anyone else notice that when the Iranian team was introduced that the applause level dropped suddenly? Wasn’t it obvious how the introduction of those players of ‘global’ sport came under the moniker of national titles? What better way to reifiy and reinforce the state in an era of challenge by globalization. Even our athletes are national tools; they’re our athletes.

So please, spare me the multicultural fluff about the Native Americans in Canada, how the Olympics is ‘for love of the game’, your ‘appreciation’ for the success of other countries’ athletes, how you really do pay attention to curling beyond the two-week period it became your favorite sport. At least be honest that you want to see the Jamaican bobsledders crash and that you chest tingles when your flag goes up.

The Politicization of the Olympics

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Honestly, I have never understood the appeal, much less the fanaticism, of professional athletics. To quote Ian Malcolm from the Jurassic Park (the novel), grown men swatting balls is not serious as a career, nor particularly entertaining. I certainly understand that there is something admirable in watching highly trained people perform their expertise, but MDs, PhDs, and soldiers are all highly trained too. At least what they do with all those long years of training is socially meaningful (health care, education, national defense). Beyond entertainment, it is not clear if there is any benign social purpose professional athletics serves. Note further, that its malign social impacts are well-known: corruption of US collegiate education, dead-end hopes with squandered education for millions of poor kids dreaming to be Michael Jordan, a huge diversion of social attention away from meaningful social questions to the ‘sports page,’ families and teen health ignored so athletes can spend 6 hours a day in the gym. I admire the old British tradition of the ranking amateur with a proportional view of athletics as part of physical health. How all this stuff can be a career genuinely baffles me.

As for the viewer, I think we watch not just for the entertainment of competition, but also for darker reasons. First, there is definitely freak-show curiosity. There is something deeply creepy about Barry Bond’s biceps being larger than your thighs, or those misshapen teen athletes who sacrifice their menstrual cycle to become Olympic gymnasts. That is why we respond so lightly to doping and steroids; we kinda want to see what these aliens will look like. Part of us is curious to see the East German women’s swim team with hairy chests or Mark MacGuire’s robo-body perform, even though we all know he cheated. I also think we find a dark pleasure in watching people with unique abilities purchased a terrible cost. Watching skiers fly into moguls at 100 mph or boxers get the hell beat out of them is part of the bloodsport of it all. You didn’t turn away when those lugers crashed, did you?

Nor is there any doubt that professional athletics, especially across borders, gets deeply politicized and nationalized. Today on the radio I talked about how South Korea has used the Olympics as a wedge against North Korea for decades. There is a long tradition of politicizing the Olympics that goes back at least to Hitler’s perversion of the games in 1936 into a demonstration of Aryan physico-racial superiority.

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TRANSCRIPT – DR. ROBERT E. KELLY, PUSAN NATIONAL UNIVERSITY

BUSAN E-FM: “MORNING WAVE”

MONDAYS, 8 AM

February 22, 2010

 

Petra:

Hello everyone and welcome to …..

Right now we have our weekly foreign affairs expert for some commentary on Korea and Northeast Asia. Dr. Robert Kelly teaches in the Political Science and Diplomacy Department at Pusan National University. He’s been living in Korea about 18 months now, and his area of expertise is the international relations of East Asia. If you wish to contact him, please see his website at http://www.AsianSecurityBlog.WordPress.com.

Professor Kelly comes to us each Monday to talk about big issues in Korean foreign affairs. And this week we are going to discuss the two Koreas at the Olympics. Hi, Dr. Kelly.

REK:

Hi, Petra. Thanks for having me

Petra:

 

Thanks for being with us again today.

REK:

 

It’s my pleasure.

Petra: 

This seems like a lighter topic than usual. Why are the Olympics important for the inter-Korean relationship?

REK:

It is a lighter topic. We can’t always discuss trade or border conflicts in the Yellow Sea. But it is also true that countries take their international tensions into world sports. You can learn a surprising amount about the workings of the global economy or nation-state competition by watching the Olympics.

Petra: 

How is that? Aren’t they just athletes?

REK:

Well, yes and no. The Olympics is supposed to be apolitical, but they are very clearly not. The International Olympic Committee has been riddled with corruption for years. Countries are regularly caught trying to bribe the committee members to vote for their cities. Host countries routinely use the Olympics to display their modernity, prestige, economic growth, etc., to a global audience. Or countries that are competing with each other in more serious global arenas, like security or ideology, frequently seek to win medals at Olympics as a marker of national greatness or triumph in the larger international contest. In fact, athletes frequently allow themselves to be used in this manner. Korean athletes, for example, routinely carry the Taeguki in their victory laps. This is unnecessary, of course, and violates the Olympic spirit, but it is a hypocrisy that most countries demand from their athletes. In the Korean case, carrying the Taegukgi is a way to prove to the world that South Korea, not North Korea, is the real Korea.

Petra:

I never thought of that Olympics as so politicized…

REK:

Well sure. Let me just give you a few examples. In 1936, the Nazis used the Berlin Olympics to show the world that Germany had recovered from the devastation of World War I, that fascism was the wave of the future, that Germany was racially clean and hence physical superior. It was consequently a huge embarrassment when an American black, Jesse Owens, defeated German athletes. In 1980, before professional athletes were allowed in the Olympics, the US hockey team, composed of mostly amateurs from college teams, played the highly professionalized Soviet team and won. Americans took this as a huge underdog victory in the Cold War, and there is even a movie about it. More recently, Greece used the 2004 Olympics to prove that it was a modern European country that rightfully belonged in the European Union and the euro currency zone. Today we know how wrong that is, as Greek debt is now threatening to destroy the euro. In 2008, China used the Olympics to prove that it was rich, modern, intimidating, and a great power. And all Koreans, of course, will recall how South Korea used the ’88 Olympics as a world-wide coming out party or fashion show for the Korean economic miracle. Indeed, so highly politicized were the Seoul Olympics that North Korea engaged in terrorism to stop them. Kim Il Sung knew, correctly, that a successful Olympics in South Korea would be a significant defeat for North Korea in the inter-Korean competition.

Petra:

Yes, of course. And the 88 Olympics did presage the North Korea’s very difficult problems of the 1990s. It really did mark the beginning of South Korea’s victory in that competition. So what about today?

REK:

Well the Olympics today are relevant for South Korea as a continuing global marker of North Korea’s defeat and humiliation. The North Korean team is small, poorly-trained, and their performance has been weak. North and South Korean athletes did compete against each other in a few events, with the Northern athletes easily trumped. With no medals, no one in the global viewing audience will see the North Korean flag raised, nor hear the North Korean national hymn. By contrast, South Korea is wealthy and populous enough to field a major team. Yuna Kim of course will get lots of publicity, and other South Korean athletes will win here and there. So the monolithic image of Koreans in this global forum will be of South Koreans

Petra:

It sounds tough for the North.

REK:

Yes it is. Very clearly. Which is probably why the North declared last week yet another round of military exercise in the Yellow Sea, and yet more zones of military exclusion that will provoke the South Korean navy. Rocket tests are troublesome way to remind South Koreans and the world that Yuna Kim is not really that important.

Petra:

And South Korea has been trying to get another Olympics too, hasn’t it?

REK:

Yes. South Korea has come pretty close in the last few years to winning another Olympics. And it seems likely that it will get one again reasonably soon. This would be yet another humiliation for the North. Two Olympics in a row in the South, and none in the North. You can imagine the torrent of bellicose Northern rhetoric that another Southern Olympics would bring.

Petra:

This is somewhat cynical view of the Olympics as a tool of countries to show off and compete with each other. What happened to the idea of global sport something all people can enjoy, regardless of the nationality or citizenship?

REK:

Well, there is some of that. When the classical Greek city-states started the Olympics, they really did see them this way. But today, they really aren’t. The Olympics have become about much more than the sports – particularly money and nationalism. I would blame a few things. First, the Cold War. The East-West competition for decades all but insured that just about every Olympics would be highly politicized. The importance of Yuna Kim today as a triumphant South Korean athlete, fits exactly that Cold War context. Second, I blame television. TV has turned the Olympics into a global bonanza for countries – and companies – to strut their stuff. In the same way that TV and money have corrupted American college athletics, they have also corrupted the Olympics. Consider all the advertising revenue Yuna Kim will earn from her Olympic performance. She is clearly doing this more than just love of skating. Finally, I blame the host countries. Hosts as diverse as the Soviet Union, Greece, the Nazis, the Chinese communists, or South Korea have all sought the Olympics for primarily political purposes, and used the Olympics as such. Just recall how intimidating and subtly threatening the Beijing Olympics seemed; the whole vibe of Beijing 2008 was China rising. I even went to a political science conference last year on this topic! Even the mild-mannered Canadians used the opening Vancouver ceremonies as a celebration of Canadian nationalism, not a global sport community.

Petra:

So the Olympics are a nationalist backlash against globalization? It’s a global sporting event in which the athletes wear their national colors?

REK:

I think so. Certainly, Koreans don’t treat the Olympics as just a global sporting event. My impression from Korea’s coverage of the Olympics is that it is highly nationalized and politicized.

Petra:

Ok. How depressing. Thank you professor for coming once again. See you next week.

More on Institutional Reform in the US: Our Greco-Japanese-Californian Future

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Walter Russell Mead (above) has a thoughtful addition to the accelerating debate on reforming US institutions, even though I think he is wrong on every point. The end of this discussion is to slow the pace of US decline. China is coming on strong; the US debt and deficits are crushing. The argument says that America’s institutions are getting old and creaky; they are too overrun with interest groups to allow the general will to break through. No one, not even the president, can overcome the hyper-partisanship and break the gridlock in the name of the national interests. In a metaphor, the US is like an aged machine, slowly running down, increasingly in need of major overhaul, not just a tune-up.

While I certainly agree with Mead and the conventional wisdom that the US institutions are not aging well and that the US interest groups distort national politics, I just don’t buy it that fixing the Senate or restricting campaign cash is the answer. (Although both are good ideas.) The real problem is attitudinal:

The US population does not really accept that the US is on a fiscal crash course. Like the Japanese, Greeks, and Californians, we just refuse to see the looming reckoning. Americans are unwilling to reduce their expectations of government, but they refuse to pay more for it. The Tea Partiers are the best example of this oxymoron. They loathe the federal government, but they come from states and demographic brackets that benefit most from government redistribution. Who do they think has kept logging companies from clear cutting the inland Northwest? Who built the highways on which they can drive their pick-ups? Who subsidizes their retirement and health care so that they have time to go to Tea Party rallies? Who supports universities in the Rocky Mountain states that no one would otherwise attend or work at?

Money is made in the US in from suburban residents between the ages of 25 and 65, and some of it is redistributed as taxes. Part of the social compact is helping the elderly or rural populations, and we all accept that as a reasonable cost of building a just society. But the Tea Party bites the hand that feeds it. For all their complaints about ‘socialist tyranny,’ how many of its elderly members refuse Medicare/Medicaid/Social Security, how many of its Western/Plains States members refuse the massive federal assistance for agriculture, cattle, and land-use rights? Their stark ingratitude, and staggering ignorance (of how and where resources are generated in the US), tells you that real issue of American decline the radical expansion of the entitlement mentality.

So all these institutional fixes are just changes at the margin. The real trick is to show the US public the real cost of government and force them to decide how much or little they want. That would be an absolutely delicious moment. But of course it won’t happen, so our future is increasingly that of Japan, Greece, and California: big fiscal holes, gradual erosion of competitiveness, a craven political class unwilling to show the voters the hard choices that need to be made.

So my sense is that Mead is dancing around the real changes necessary:

1. Reviving Federalism

I don’t know why this helps. It just rearranges the deck chairs. I suppose we could force the states to pay more of their own bills, but remember that they already routinely get lots of resources from the Feds. They are already broke. Most states can’t balance their budgets without federal assistance: CA is just the worst of a thoroughly national trend already. In the last 50 years, the states voluntarily gave up their fiscal sovereignty in exchange for more dollars. So now we are going to reverse the flow? I guess, but I am not really sure how that helps. Americans expect a huge amount from the federal government, and most people aren’t federalist or states-rightists out of principled commitment, but rather based on which parties control which levels.

2. Congressional Term Limits

I don’t think this helps at all. In fact, the evidence from the states suggests the opposite. When legislators come and go quickly, interest groups (and staff!) peddling greater ‘knowledge’ gain even greater access. ‘Yeoman legislators’ has a nice jeffersonian ring to it, but in a highly technical, highly legalistic, highly complex bureaucracy, they will simply get lost, just like Jefferson Smith did in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. In Ohio, term limits have been a disaster: they increased the constant campaign, adding a new ‘merrygo-round’ feature as legislators looked for ways to bounce around both chambers and then the executive branch bureaucracy, and empowered staff and Columbus-area think-tanks.

3. A bigger House of Representatives

Again, Mead’s working assumption seems to be that legislators ‘closer’ to the people will govern better. Again, it feels good; it invokes  Rousseau and Jefferson. But I am not sure how much this help. In fact, there is good evidence from Africa and East Asia that a certain amount of state distance from the cacophony of rent-seeking private interest groups improves state effectiveness. This is not an endorsement of the Beijing Consensus for dictatorship, only a warning that socially entrenching the American state even deeper in the population does not help the government made hard choices. If we change the mathematical ratio of voters to MCs, how does that compel making tough choices?

4. Unicameral  State Legislatures

This is a good cost-saving measure. It is less expensive, and reduces transaction costs unnecessary at the state level. But doesn’t this clash with number 1? You don’t need two legislative houses at the state level, if the politics at the state level isn’t really that important. But if you revive federalism, and state politics becomes more consequential again, doesn’t it provide a rationale for keeping a more lengthy legislative process?

5. More States

Yet more decentralization. As with the above, I do not see the casual relationship between a government ‘closer to the people’ and therefore more responsible. More states means more transaction costs, but I don’t see the benefit.

Reform of US Institutions to Prevent Decline?

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James Fallows had a good piece at the Atlantic on US decline. This sort of writing is all the rage now of course, given the huge US debt and deficit and the indefatigable rise of China. Zakaria made a fortune and got a gig at CNN on the back of punchy neologism ‘the post-American world.’ Fallows is a nice antidote to the simple ‘power is moving to the East’ schtick of so many, especially out here. Asians love this discourse – for obvious reasons – but don’t really see the limits on the flow. There is too much enthusiasm out here, not enough analysis. For my short take on this, see here.

Fallows makes some solid arguments about Asia’s limits: gross levels of corruption, weak education systems that encourage volume over quality, limited, messy semi-democracy, socially circumscribed personal freedoms (due to strong social pressure to conform) and consequently lower creativity. All this is true. To it I would add the huge informalism and personalism of the economy. Massive amounts of money sloshes about illegally, informally, or simply ‘off-budget’ (what a wonderful euphemism for your slush fund!). As I have remarked before, the grey economy here is pretty big. I am always prompted by small vendors out here to buy in cash, not on a credit card. Credit card purchases are used for tax purposes, so this is basically a form of quiet tax fraud. I wish Fallows had actually written more on these bureaucratic-institutional limits on Asia’s rise. They don’t get nearly enough attention, as the GDP expansion stats dominate the debate.

But for Americans, probably the most interesting claims he makes concern US institutional reform. He notes that the US Constitution is over 200 years old. While this is a source of pride, it is also that case the the original document grows distant with each passing day from the realities of American life. Further, the simple age of the US government has insured the now long accretion of interest groups around the Washington policy process.

Fallows particularly targets the Senate, in which the divergence of voting weights runs from 1 senator per 18.5 million Californians, to 1 senator per 270,000 Wyomingans. Furthermore, the rise of the filibuster threat by the minority in the Senate means that a functioning majority in the Senate is now 60%, not 50%+1. Targeting the Senate for reform is popular at the moment. Obama hinted obliquely at it in the SotU.

The problem with reforming institutions, particularly the Senate, is that we have been here before. Robert Dahl noted many years ago about how the Senate wildly overrepresented agricultural interests in the US. The Progressive moment also thought that Congress got in the way as much as it worked constructively. It upheld the president as the sole carrier of the national interest, because he was the only one to get elected from a fully national constituency.

But ultimately, I am not really sure if the problem is institutional, but rather popular. The US public is simply unwilling to pay for  the expense of the services it wants from government. The country is now so large, so heterogeneous, that it is easy to adopt a NIMBY approach to tax hikes and spending cuts. The pool of US resources is still enormous. So its easy to lose sight of the costs your selfishness. Someone somewhere else is paying for you Medicare. Or perhaps even worse, we are losing the sense that behind government spending are the taxes that we pay. So of course we can raise unemployment benefits; it would be cruel not to, right? Of course we know in the abstract, but the bite of reality – of higher taxes when we demand more unemployment or Medicare – is lost. The chain of steps between completing our 1040s in the spring and the receipt of grandma’s social security check is now so long, that we not longer see the causal relationship. This creates the illusion that someone else can pay, but you can keep your redistribution or tax credit. So let other see their services cut and/or their taxes go up.

Hence, my sense is the problem is attitudinal. As US dominance ages, we have become more and more accustomed to more and more. We have lost the gritty bootstrap spirit that rising actors always have, whether they be emerging nation-states like China, or upstart interns at work.

As our sense of entitlement has expanded-  due to the sheer scope of US influence and wealth for 3 generations now – we  have accrued wildly unrealistic expectations of what government owes us. Bush 2’s fiscal policy is the perfect embodiment of that explosion of unrealistic expectations. He said we could have it all: tax cuts, wars, more Medicare. Serious people knew this was unsustainable, but the great damage done has been to the US citizen’s perception. We have been borrowing from the future for so long, that these expectations are now set; they are locked into the psychology. This psychology of being owed a lot, not institutional blocks in the Senate or K Street, is the real problem. And it may very well take a national fiscal calamity to change popular attitudes downward. By way of example, this happened in Korea in 1997/98. The Asian financial crisis brutalized the country, but helped insure a national seriousness about growth and taxes that you just don’t see in the US.

Would it just be Easier to Pay-Off our Middle Eastern Opponents?

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I recently watched Generation Kill, the HBO miniseries on the invasion of Iraq. It is quite good, particularly on the huge uncertainty generated by the fog of war, and the consequent overuse of violence to protect oneself from that uncertainty. At one point in the miniseries, a town is being hit by Tomahawk cruise missiles, and a soldier makes the interesting remark that with all the money put into just a few of those Tomahawks, they probably could have just bought off the local Fedayeen or Republican Guard units, or bought off enough locals to kill or arrest them. It is an interesting notion, and once I can’t say has ever received scholarly treatment in IR or strategic theory. Here is another good master’s thesis waiting to be written.

Instead of killing these people, can we just throw money at them? Fred Kaplan asks this question, and so does Michael Semple. Both are dubious. But I am not so sure, especially given the huge costs of Westerners trying to coerce the Taliban, ex-Baathists, and other various alienated Muslim/Arab elements around the Middle East. The obvious retort is that money does not buy allegiance, only temporary quiet. Money does not ensure ideological affinity or loyalty; it does not make its recipient a liberal committed to the democratic processes or central governments of Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, etc. This is so, but consider the following counterpoints:

1. The US military, as the soldiers in Generation Kill pointed out, is an extremely expensive machine. The just-released 2011 US defense budget is $700+B. That is a staggering sum of money. The cost of using such an expensive force is high too. US equipment is super-expensive, given increasing computerization and integration (the ‘networked battlefield’). It will cost another mint to replace and bring back up to par US military stocks around the world when the GWoT ends (someday, we hope). What the US military spends in the GWoT every day certainly out-costs what bribery would cost by at least an order of magnitude (billions vs millions).

2. Shooting people instead of buying them has huge costs too. As we have learned by now, we are never going to kill every terrorist on the planet. We cannot kill our way to victory. Worse, in tribalized cultures like the ME, for every person we kill, there is a brother, son, uncle, friend who gets pulled into a blood oath to avenge that death. We have created spirals of ‘accidental guerillas’ through less-than-ideal discrimination in the use of force (another point Generation Kill demonstrates very well). Every unnecessary or partially necessary combat fatality creates a high possibility of more and more irregular combatants joining up for revenge. We might stanch the inflow of new recruits if we kill fewer and buy off more. Indeed, many people, Kaplan included, have noted that funding the Sunni gunmen to fight against al Qaeda in Iraq was the turning point in Iraq, not Bush’s surge. We also used bags of money in in Afghanistan in late 2001. So there is some evidence that this might work.

3. Isn’t paying off people morally superior to coercing, much less shooting, them? I am aware of course that the die-hards of al Qaeda and other Salafist groups cannot be bought. But there are many others who might be ‘buyable.’  I think a morally superior use of American power would be to purchase their temporary quietude than to hunt them.

4. You might object that simply buying them just delays the fighting. When the money drys up, then they will go back into the bush. Maybe, but

A) Buying them off, even temporarily, buys the government time to reach out and reconcile them. It gives exactly the ‘breather’ to the Iraqi or Afghan central government that Bush claimed they needed to get on their feet. But instead of the US military coercing a pause in violence, the dollars buy it. But in the end, the effect is the same. And if the Iraqi or Afghan governments can’t use that pause to get their acts together, then no amount of US killing will help them in the medium-term. Whether you choose policing/coercing or buying, you still get the same outcome (the pause), which our ME client-friends must then use (but they will likely squander).

B) Buying them indefinitely is still probably cheaper than a medium- to long-term US commitment, like the new Afghan surge Obama just announced in December. Everyone seems terrified that the US will be in the Middle East for decades, as it is in Germany, Korea, and Japan. Ok, so instead of hotly disputed withdrawal deadlines – which get flim-flammed anyway by ‘conditions on the ground’ which warrant that trainers, pilots,  the CIA, etc. to stay behind after the withdrawal date – why not substitute pay-offs for awhile? I realize it is hardly ideal. It’s US-funded local graft. But consider the alternative.

These are just some initial thoughts. As I said, this is a wholly under-researched question, probably because it feels morally uncomfortable, shady, or sleazy. It reeks of corruption. And it surely does, but given the alternatives, particularly the use of US force, I think the moral equation is overbalanced in its favor actually. But this needs more serious investigation.

Why Does North Korea Ritualistically Provoke South Korea?

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In the last few weeks, North Korea once again threw out a wild, unpredicted military tantrum. Now it has decided to start shelling the weakly agreed-upon sea border, the Northern Line Limit, in the Yellow Sea. For the details, try here or read my radio transcript below.

Less interesting than the details of the latest provocation – these things are terribly formulaic, to the point of ritual – is the IR theory question why. As I note in the transcript below, these gimmicks never work. In fact they usually backfire. Instead of frightening the SK citizenry or elites, these incidents usually stiffen the spine, because they look like bullying, and fairly crude at that. Further, NK truculence always serves to re-gel any possible rifts between SK, the US and Japan. In the same way that the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan reenergized NATO after the ‘alliance politics’ of the 70s, NK provocations routinely evince thicker and more explicit commitments by the US to defend SK.

Assuming the North Koreans aren’t stupid, the obvious question is why? I can think of two reasons, with a hat-tip on number 2 to Bryan Myers of Dongseo University in Busan, with whom I have discussed this at length. As always, this is a good IR master’s thesis-in-waiting.

1. Kim Jong Il is not fully in control of the NK military (the KPA) anymore.

This would not be a great surprise to anyone. Dictatorships are almost always heavily reliant on the military, and North Korea more than most. Indeed, it is hard to think of many truly civilian dictatorships. Most communist dictatorships slide into militarism, and even the Islamic semi-dictatorships of the Middle East usually have deep roots in the military. In the case of NK, this is even more extreme. When Kim the elder passed, so did communist party/civilian rule. Kim the younger immediately began placating the military as a means to neutralize the greatest threat to his shaky authority. In the mid-90s, NK declared a ‘military-first’ policy, whereby the military would have first claim on national resources. In the current NK constitution, Kim Jong Il rules as the chairman of the National Defense Committee, not as the civilian president. So extreme has this militarization become, that Bryan calls the DPRK a ‘national defense state,’ not a stalinist one.

So in such an environment, it is not hard to imagine the KPA high brass insisting on regular displays of their cool toys as means of justifying their insanely large budget, and otherwise trying to impress everyone, Kim Jong Il included, of the KPA’s inordinate influence over peninsular affairs.

 

2. NK faces a permanent legitimacy crisis which must be regularly ‘abated’ through external confrontation.

Clandestine traffic from China over the Yalu river has introduced far greater awareness of the wider world to North Koreans over the last 15 years. It was the non-response of the regime to the late 90s famine that drove the  Chinese connection originally, and now cell phones and VHS have illicitly gotten in. Indeed, the regime has lost so much of its information control, that is longer tries to claim that it is wealthier than SK. So if East Germany collapsed, if it gave up after 45 years of trying (and failing), why does NK hang on? How does NK legitimize itself when a prosperous, happier Korean national analogue is right next door?

By claiming that SK is an American colony and/or subject to ongoing Japanese control. Hence Myer’s description of NK as a ‘national defense state.’ It is defending the nation, where SK has sold out. To maintain this narrative however, regular tensions with the South, the US and Japan are necessary. Hence outbursts like last November’s North-South naval clash in the Yellow Sea, and now this artillery barrage.

The most gloomy part of this logic is that it predicts that NK will never surrender its nukes, and that it will continue to regularly, indeed, ritualistically, provoke SK.

_________________________________________________________________

TRANSCRIPT – DR. ROBERT E. KELLY, PUSAN NATIONAL UNIVERSITY

BUSAN E-FM: “MORNING WAVE”

MONDAYS, 8 AM

February 8, 2010

Professor Kelly comes to us each Monday to talk about big issues in Korean foreign affairs. And this week we are going to discuss North Korea’s recent artillery firing into the East Sea. Hi, Dr. Kelly.

REK:

Hi, Petra. Thanks for having me

Petra:

Thanks for being with us again today.

REK:

It’s my pleasure.

Petra:

So in the last few weeks, the North Korean military fired artillery shells into the East Sea. Why? What purpose does this serve?

REK:

Well, as usual, the North Korea government gave us no clear reasoning about this. The stated purpose was practice firing, but no one believes that. More likely, is saber rattling in the current North-South negotiations over pay at the Kaesong industrial park. If the artillery fire scares the South somewhat, perhaps it will make a better deal with the North over the salaries at Kaesong.

Petra:

That seems like a fairly crude negotiating stratagem.

REK:

Yes, it is. This sort of military posturing is a commonplace from North Korea. Far more interesting is that it does not really work, yet the North keeps doing it.

Petra:

Why doesn’t it work?

REK:

Well, the South Korean government and citizenry are simply inured to this now. For decades the North has acted like this to extract better deals from the South, but the South has never really given in to this. Southerners are just use to this by now, and they ignore it. Indeed, one can read the North’s nuclear program the same way. It is an elaborate and expensive tool for North Korea to club South Korea, the US and Japan into giving more aid.

Petra:

But this doesn’t work well…

REK:

No not really. The response of South Korea, and by extension Japan and the US, to these sorts of provocations is to stand firm and in fact to stand more closely together. In this way, it is rather foolish. Every time NK tries to bully South Korea and its allies, it backfires. It causes the opposite response. So Robert Gates, the US Secretary of Defense, pledged last year, the most public commitment ever that the US will use nuclear force to protect South Korea, because last year, the North’s rhetoric and behavior was so aggressive.

Remember too, that when South Korea has reached out to North Korea, it has been because of internal change in South Korea; that is, South Koreans the voted for left-leaning Presidents Kim and Roh, and they tried the sunshine policy. If North Korea really wants South Korea to help, you would think they would want to facilitate the election of more such presidents. But events like last week’s artillery barrage serve the opposite. They justify the hawkish, conservative vision of North Korea of the current Lee administration.

Petra:

So why do they do it then?

REK:

Good question. I have two educated guesses on this. First, the civilian government in North Korea can’t fully control the military. Second, these sorts of provocations of the South serve internal North Korean political purposes.

Petra:

Can you explain that a little more?

REK:

Sure. In the last 15 years, the North Korean military has increasingly dominated the government as a whole. The declaration of the ‘military first’ song-gun policy was the end of communism or Stalinism in North Korea, and the most obvious marker that North Korea was evolving into a military dictatorship. Recall that Kim Jong-Il’s title in the North Korean constitution is the Chairman of the National Defense Committee, not president. Kim Il-Sung is the eternal president of North Korea. Kim the younger rules from a military post. So it seems possible that the military was free-lancing last week with these artillery tests. Making trouble like this in inter-Korean relations is a good way for the military to make known its authority over North Korea.

Petra:

Ok. You also suggested there might be a domestic political purpose.

REK:

Yes. The regime suffers from a permanent legitimacy crisis. South Korea is wealthier, healthier, happier, etc. Most North Koreans have learned this in the last 20 years from information filtering in from China. The regime can no longer hide how far behind it is in the inter-Korean race. So an obvious question for any North Korean, is why North Korea still exists, long after the Soviet Union and East Germany are gone.

The regime’s answer to that problem is to manufacture a regular series of external crises. So long as the US, South Korea, and Japan are implacable foes intent on destroying North Korea, then the government can justify to its own people why it persists. This is why things like the artillery shelling last week or the naval skirmish last year in the same area, happen. The North cannot ‘win’ these sorts of stand-offs, but they do serve a domestic political need.

Petra:

So what is it about the East Sea that creates these sorts of problems so much anyway?

REK:

Good question. The East Sea, or in its international title, the Yellow Sea, is a good place for such North Korean shows, because the border there is so imprecise. After the Korean war, there was no formal border commission, on either land or sea. Remember that the war didn’t really cease, it just stopped temporarily. As we all know, this temporary border on land hardened into the demilitarized zone. But on land that was easy insofar as one could easily see where the battle lines between North and South were.

Petra:

But on the seas, no one really knew.

REK:

That’s right. It was just wide open. So the US and South Korea simply declared a de facto border that we call the Northern Limit Line. And in fact, it is drawn awfully close to North Korean islands. When we drew the line, it basically cut north immediately from land. It does, arguably, discriminate against North Korea. One can understand why the North rejects. But it also reflected the balance of seapower in the area in 1953. The US navy controlled the Yellow Sea, so the NLL also correctly reflects the geopolitical realities from the time. It is also worth mentioning that there is a annual crab harvest in the area. So every year, fishing boats from either side wander over the line. All in all, it is a messy, disputed area, so it is ideal for North Korean provocations whenever one is needed.

Petra:

So we should expect more of these sorts of provocations and clashes?

REK:

Yes, I think so. The NLL area is ripe for miscommunication, especially given the fishing traffic. Serious naval clashes have happened there three times in the past. Last November was the most recent. North Korea claimed that last week’s shelling was an annual exercise, so we might expect it again next spring. But honestly, I cannot recall that something like this happened last year, so I am not sure how ‘annual’ it really is. As so often with North Korea, it is murky. But I think you are right that we can expect fairly regular low-level conflict there indefinitely.

Petra:

Ok. Sounds gloomy. Thanks again for coming professor. We’ll see you again next week.

Korea’s Post-American Alliance Choices (1): India?

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This will be an occasional series. The US is entering a period of decline. Its ability and willingness to meet its alliance commitment to South Korea is waning. So Korea is, quietly, beginning to poke around in Asia. It is setting up preferential trade areas where possible, signing up whomever it can for ‘strategic partnerships,’ and generally branching out in the region. This serves both its desire to be a more regional player (rather than be permanently trapped in its peninsular ghetto with NK) and its growing need for friends beyond the US. The US has neither the money nor the domestic will to fight another Korean war. So it makes sense for Korea to look around, even if no one will admit that that is what it is doing.

On Monday, I spoke on the radio about this. Last week, the president of Korea had a state visit to India. India is a good choice for several reasons. Like Korea, India is

1. a liberal democracy with a lot of religious diversity.

2. worried about China’s rise.

3. an American ally.

4. Bonus: India is not Japan.

While more common than in the past, stable democracy is still hard to find in Asia. It makes sense for Korea and India to hang together. Of course, the closest democracy to Korea is Japan, but the mutual loathing is so severe, that Japan is a last ditch alliance choice for Korea. Further, both have a good tradition of internal tolerance based on their religious diversity. Everyone knows of India’s of course, but Korea too is one of the most religious fragmented states in Asia (sizeable minorities of Catholics, Buddhists, born-again protestants, and agnostics, with no dominant bloc).

This commonality of values is complemented by a commonality of interests, or rather an interest: China. Both are edgy about its quick rise (no surprise there), and both continue to hedge it and ally with the US in order to do so.

The downsides though are high. India is far away. It does not have the two-ocean fleet necessary to project serious power into Northeast Asia, and it is still losing the race with China.

__________________________________________________________________

TRANSCRIPT – DR. ROBERT E. KELLY, PUSAN NATIONAL UNIVERSITY

BUSAN E-FM: “MORNING WAVE”

MONDAYS, 8 AM

February 1, 2010

Petra:

So President Lee went off to India last week. What happened? Why is this important?

REK:

Two reasons. First, Korean has a trade relationship with India. Second, Korea is slowly poking around Asia for other friends and possible partners.

Petra:

Ok. Is Korea’s trade with India significant?

REK:

Middling. Korea is India’s 9th biggest trading partner. That is ok. But there are 1.3 billion Indians, and they are getting wealthier. So it makes sense for Korea to try to push into this market. This is similar to the growth of China. As China and India both develop and get wealthier, their huge internal markets will attract interest from around the world.

Petra:

So if this was basically a trade mission, why did President Lee go?

REK:

Well, it was more than that. President Lee was a guest of honor for India’s big national holiday. It was an official state visit. Such trips fit President Lee’s style of diplomacy. First, the president has increasingly used his position to act as a salesman for Korea industry. You may recall his earlier bout of commercial diplomacy in the United Arab Emirates regarding Korean-designed nuclear power plants. Second, the pursuit of trade agreements has grown into a major Korean foreign policy tool in the last decade or two.

Petra:

Can you explain that a little more?

REK:

Sure. The bedrock of Korean foreign policy is the security alliance with the United States. But increasingly Korea has looked for an autonomous economic foreign policy. And Korea’s chosen manner of reaching out, especially in Asia, is trade deals. Korea has sought all sorts of preferential and free trade areas, and President Lee has made this a regular focus of his trips abroad.

Petra:

Has it been successful? I thought Korea belonged to the World Trade Organization which organizes global trade rules.

REK:

That’s true. But the WTO is stuck right now. The current round of trade negotiation, begun in Doha in Qatar in the Middle East, has been bogged down for years. With the Doha round frozen, Korea has turned to bilateral and regional trade deals in its foreign policy. This trip to India, as well as the recent sale of nuclear reactors in the Middle East is a part of this process.

Petra:

So the WTO is stuck, and President Lee is trying to push Korean exports on his own on these trips?

REK:

Yes, that’s right. In international relations, we call this commercial diplomacy, and President Lee is getting quite good at it. The big prize, an FTA with the US, is still out of reach though.

Petra:

Ok. Let’s stay with India. You said something about Korea looking for other friends and partners. What does that mean?

REK:

Well Korea is a tight neighborhood. It is surrounded by three big countries – Russia, Japan, and China – who have traditionally bullied or informally dominated the Korean peninsula. Korea’s political geography, or geopolitics, is quite poor; it is encircled. This is the great benefit of the US alliance. The US is too far away from Korea to dominate it, but the US alliance does help Korea prevent itself from being dominated by others. As long as US troops are in Korea, Korea can push back any encroachment by China, Japan or Russia.

Petra:

So what does this have to do with India?

REK:

Well, the US is in trouble now. The US deficit is gigantic. The US public debt is too. The US is fighting two hot wars in the Middle East, and several clandestine conflicts there as well. It is eight and a half years now since 9/11, and Americans are exhausted with all these wars and conflict.

Petra:

Does that include Korea?

REK:

Not really, but Americans certainly don’t want to get pulled into a big conflict here. As most Koreans know, the US military footprint in Korea is shrinking, and the US will officially relinquish wartime authority of the Korean military in 2012. In short, the US is increasingly looking for ways to lower the costs of the Korean alliance.

Petra:

So Korea is shopping for other friends?

REK:

Probably, quietly. I certainly would be. The US looks at Korea, and it sees a wealthy modern country that it believes should be able to defend itself without much US assistance. So Korea is wise to begin to think about friends and possible allies beyond simply the US.

Petra:

So can India be an ally to Korea?

REK:

Maybe. India has some definitely upsides for Korea. Like Korea, India is a democracy. Democracy in Asia is still somewhat rare, so Indo-Korean cooperation on security makes good sense. India also worries a lot about China’s rapid growth. India has an ongoing border dispute with China, much as the two Koreas and China do over the ancient Koguryeo role’s in history. So there is a community of values between India and Korea – liberalism, democracy, religious tolerance – as well as a community of interests – careful observation and response to China’s rise. Finally, both Korea and India are American allies.

Petra:

So how is the Korean government proceeding?

REK:

Well President Lee and the Indian prime minister agreed to upgrade Indo-Korean ties to a ‘strategic partnership.’ That implies that the two see each other as more than just trading partners or friends. President Lee pursued the same approach with US President Obama in the summer 2009. But for observers, it is hard to know the details of this new partnership. There will be regular meetings between officials of the two countries’ ministries, but it is hard to know how serious this will be.

Petra:

So there is no Indo-Korean alliance in the offing?

REK:

Probably not. Better to see this another sign that Korea is aware that the US is in trouble because of the long war on terrorism and the huge financial burden of the crisis. Korea is wise to start poking around for new friends, if not trade partners, and India is a good choice.

Petra:

Thank you coming again, Professor.

Republican SotU Response: Vote for Me because I Read the Bible and my All-American Sons Love Football – Bleh…

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Part one of this post, on Obama’s State of the Union address, is here.

If Obama’s speech seemed tired and rather boring, I must say I found the Republican Response simply atrocious – Vote for me because my all-American sons love sports just like you! It was Palinism; i.e., decadent, late Bushism.

The Democrats cheering at just about every line was sycophantic and annoying. Just saying flim-flam like, ‘I want America to be the best at future technologies,’ got Obama mawkishly long applause, and after awhile it got really tiresome. Agreed.

But the GOP response was downright disastrous. Here the applause really was scripted as syncophantic. What is it with the GOP and her0-worship? Ech! They even hooted and ho-yahed for McDonnell. And did you catch the unbelievably ‘diverse’ cast of worshippers behind the governor –  a soldier, a black,a policeman, an Asian, an old woman? This is supposed to be the contemporary GOP? Of white protestant tea partiers in Virginia of all places? Good lord. I laughed out loud the first time they panned the backstop audience.

It all reminded me of the GOP 2004 convention, a) with its painfully overchoreographed image of diversity for a party whose voter base is overwhelmingly white, born-again protestant, and b) the hero-worship of W as just a regular good ole boy who rose to greatness by his wholesome American gut values. Only in Virginia, this guv made sure to tell us his beaming daughter served in Iraq, and his snappy young sons like Sportscenter. Hah! What unbelievably smarmy crap! Do Americans really fall that?

If you thought Bobby Jindal was bad last year, at least he didn’t ask his family to perform the family-values  swimsuit competition for the religious right: ‘the Scriptures say families and America are great, so vote for me!’

The riposte captured all the banality and policy bankruptcy of the current GOP. The US economy nearly melted down, and there is wide consensus that massive government intervention scarcely averted another Depression. Yet the GOP response told us only that government is going to stifle America. That’s it?! When corporate and private spending is down all over the place, and the only big source of demand in the economy right now is government? That is your answer? Government is the problem when the only reason unemployment isn’t worse is government? C’mon. How can I take this seriously as policy?

On foreign policy, McDonnell was just as bad. He could only complain that we mirandized Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab. I take it to mean that we should torture the hell out of him or otherwise deny him any rights. When did torture become a litmus-test for status as a conservative?! Creepy…

I was once again struck by the utter failure of the GOP to respond seriously to Obama’s election and the scope of the financial crisis. This is still the GOP of the W years. Governor McDonnell told us nothing we haven’t heard before, and he did it in the worst Rovian fashion – a highly controlled, hyper-scripted environment filled with sycophantic, awestruck faces, the shameless exploitation of his family, an even more shameless diversity ploy, Bible citations – excuse me, ‘Scripture,’ the recitation of same points again and again, now matter what the topic of discussion, and a bullying tough guy approach on foreign policy. They should have just let Palin do the response; she really believes W was one of America’s greatest presidents ever.

If Obama came across as exasperated or tired, McDonnell broadcasted unreconstructed Bushism. Stick with the former until the GOP can finally figure out how to move on.

_____

Finally I must add one professorial, intellectual barb to the whole proceedings:  it was remarkably, staggeringly shallow at almost all times for anyone with a serious knowledge about or education in the big issues in American life. I spent 2-3 hours watching the State of the Union, the GOP response, and some of the punditry on CNN. I was amazed at how little genuine expertise, technical detail, or serious, apartisan/non-spin, cost-benefit analyses of policy choices were included. It was almost all just campaign spin (how will this or that play in the red states?; speaking of, will Maitlin and Carville please finally go away?!), agonizingly cheese-y anecdotes (tell the woman making brake fluid in Des Moines that America has lost its edge), inspirational vacuities (America’s promise for the future), and shameless partisan positioning (my daughter went to Iraq, and my handlers made sure to place a black and Asian behind me – look! don’t miss ‘em!).

What junk! I mean really. How unbelievably insulting. Can’t our public officials treat us as reflective, deliberative voters, instead of dupes who think you’re great because you quote the Bible? How gratingly, offensively shallow. Grrr. WE ARE NOT CHILDREN.

If you have any kind of serious education in politics and economics, this was 3 hours of your life wasted. You learned almost nothing serious about the coming year’s policy debates – other than unintended signals that the GOP is lost in time, Obama doesn’t know what to do with health care, and no one is serious about the deficit.

Most of my day is spent reading technical work in political science and economics, so I imagine this is why it seemed so jarringly childish and evasive of serious issues. But honestly, if you had read even a few articles in the Economist or Financial Times about US politics, you would have learned more. I could have given a better talk than any of those guys, and in less time. This is why we have the democratic legitimacy crisis Obama mentioned. If you treat the population like idiots, they become disaffected.