Category Archives: Politics

Steve Jobs

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This is not a recounting of all that Steve Jobs has accomplished, the ways in which he has forever altered the trajectory of our world. You can find plenty of such tributes on the web.

Today, I merely want to say thank you to Steve Jobs for the huge and enduring impact he has had on my own life.

The first computer I bought was a original Macintosh back in 1984. I never looked back. Every single computer I have owned since then has been from Apple — all the way to my current sheer delight, a MacBook Air.

I did make one brief detour back in the 1990′s and purchased a Gateway PC. It was not a replacement for my Mac, but an addition. I had agreed to write a cross-platform book and needed the Gateway to do the PC side of the book. I hated every minute of it. I sold the computer within a year and withdrew from my book contract.

In this century, my love affair with Apple products extended beyond computers to iPods and iPhones and iPads. [The Macworld Expo where Steve introduced the iPhone is still the most amazing fall-off-my-chair event I have ever attended.] Again, I never considered buying any competing device. It was Apple or nothing.

For me, like for so many others, Apple products were unlike any other purchase. I didn’t simply buy an Apple computer, I established a relationship with it. It became a member of our family. I recognized a spark in the design of Apple products that was missing from the competition, no matter how things might have stacked up on a spec sheet.

My passion for Apple products eventually blossomed into a satisfying and enriching career writing about Apple. It began with writing magazine articles and eventually extended to books and websites.

I bled six-colors, as they used to say back when the Apple logo sported a rainbow.

I say all this because I am certain that, without Steve Jobs at Apple’s helm, none of this would have happened. The products that I so admire would never have been created without Steve to oversee their development. Whatever else might have filled their place would have been far less exciting. They would never have ignited the passion that led to my career as a technology writer. The arc of the past four decades of my life has been altered by Steve Jobs more than any other person outside of my immediate family. For this, I will be forever grateful.

I didn’t agree with everything Steve did. In recent years, I have been especially critical of Steve’s positions regarding control of the App Store and jailbreaking of iOS devices. Regardless, with Steve in charge, I remained confident that the big decisions would be in the best interest of Apple and its customers. Put it this way: I’d much rather have a CEO that created an iPhone that disallows jailbreaking, than someone who would have never created the iPhone in the first place.

I am one of the lucky ones. I have been able to live the advice Steve Jobs gave at his 2005 Stanford commencement address:

“You’ve got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle. As with all matters of the heart, you’ll know when you find it.”

I found it, Steve. Thanks to you.

Steve Jobs died today. There are no words that can express the sorrow I am now feeling. The world was a better place because Steve Jobs was in it. Life goes on — as it always does. But the world will never seem quite the same again.

Intelligence, Evolution and Politics

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In the most recent Sunday New York Times, Frank Bruni argues that being “smart”, at least in the scholarly academic intellectual sense that President Obama is generally considered to be smart, is not a guarantee that a President will be a strong leader, or always make wise policy decisions, or have the ability to effectively carry out their decisions.

I agree with the basic assertion. There are multiple components to intelligence. Being good at one aspect does not automatically make you superior in all aspects. If it were otherwise, it would mean that nearly everyone on the faculty at Harvard would necessarily make a great president. I don’t think anyone believes that. It’s no different than athletic prowess. Being a good sprinter does not mean you are also a good long distance runner.

However, it does not follow that “intellectual” intelligence is irrelevant to being a good President. I believe a substantially above average intellectual intelligence should be a bar which all viable presidential candidates should be expected to surmount. In the extremes, there is no argument here. That is, while I doubt anyone would contend that being able to read guarantees that a person will be a great President, we all expect our President to be able to read.

So where do we set the bar? How much intellectual skill should be required for a Presidential candidate?

Here is where we can get into legitimate debate. If we can all agree that being “smart” is a desirable attribute, I hope we can similarly agree that being “dumb” should be case for elimination from consideration. [“Dumb” is a hard word to define here (and has an insulting context). But I’m not sure what other word better fits here as the opposite of “smart.”]

One way to demonstrate that you are not “dumb” is to show you are not ignorant of and do not reject basic tenets of science. We wouldn’t want a president making decisions about global policy if he thought the world was flat. We wouldn’t want a president in charge of the space program who though the sun revolved around the earth. We wouldn’t want a president in charge of the economy who planned to spend huge sums of money on finding a way to turn lead into gold. We wouldn’t want a president overseeing our national health care policy who rejected the idea that bacteria is a major cause of disease.

In this same list of basic tenets is evolution. As Dobzhansky famously stated: “Nothing in Biology Makes Sense Except in the Light of Evolution.” To biologists (and virtually all other reputable scientists), support for “creationism” or “intelligent design” has no valid basis. It makes no more sense than supporting the notion that the earth is flat or asserting that gravity is a questionable concept. We should certainly not be teaching it in science classes in schools. Just because an idea exists, and some people believe it, is not a sufficient reason to include the idea in a science curriculum.

[Note: I’ve written several prior columns here on the evolution “controversy.” This is not the place for me to do another. If you’re interested in this matter, I would recommend Jerry A. Coyne’s Why Evolution is True. I would also direct you to the 2005 Kitzmiller vs. Dover Area School District decision, in which a Republican-appointed judge gave a definitive ruling rejecting intelligent design as a thinly veiled attempt to get creationism back in schools, that creationism was religion and not science, and that as such creationism in schools should be rejected. Finally, I strongly recommend you check out “Understanding Evolution: 17 Misconceptions and Their Responses.”]

This gets me, finally, to the subject of politics — and especially to the current crop of Republicans seeking their party’s nomination for President. As covered in a recent article in the San Francisco Chronicle, the candidates’ positions on this issue, while not exactly surprising, are appalling.
Every one of them, except for John Huntsman, gave at least minimal support to a belief in creationism and in teaching “intelligent design” in schools. Here are three examples:

• Rick Perry has described himself as “a firm believer in intelligent design as a matter of faith and intellect.”

• Ron Paul said he does not accept the theory of evolution.

• Rick Santorum calls himself a “fierce believer” in creationism.

There are only two explanations for such “dumb” statements. The first is that the candidates are being hypocritical, that they don’t really believe what they are saying. Rather, they are saying it only because they fear that saying anything else will so antagonize the conservative base of their party (most of whom cling to the “creationism” fantasy) that they lose any chance to get the nomination.

The second is that they truly believe what they are saying.

In either case, it should be sufficient to eliminate such candidates from consideration. In the first case, not only are they liars, but they are deliberately misleading to their own supporters. In the second case, they have shown they are unable to surmount the intelligence bar that I argued should be a minimum requirement for the job.

I don’t expect the candidates or the Republican party in general, to follow my recommendations. I just ask that you keep all this in mind when you go to the polls.

“Liberal Fantasy” Accusation Misses the Point

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Fareed Zakaria wants liberals not to be upset with Barack Obama. In his latest column, he accuses those on the left of clinging to “a liberal fantasy that if only the President would give a stirring speech, he would sweep the country along with the sheer power of his poetry.” In this regard, he especially cites Drew Weston, whose article “What Happened to Obama” appeared recently in the New Yor Times. Mr. Weston indeed said: “Americans needed their president to tell them a story that made sense of what they had just been through, what caused it, and how it was going to end.” Zakaria makes the straw-man argument that such a speech, even if Obama were to give it, would never have the desired effect.

Story Telling

I agree with Zakaria’s distilled assertion that one speech will not have any magical effect. However, I believe Zakaria is wrong in his assessment of what Weston and liberals in general are saying. If you read Weston’s entire article, you’d see that he was not assigning any magical power to a single speech. Rather, he was asserting the immense power of a well-told and repeated story, a story that helps make the complexity of today’s events understandable and relevant.

By story, I (and Weston) do not mean something made-up, like a fairy tale. Rather, I mean a framework that can be used to hold together a group of often complex facts and help people make sense of them. For example, one basic story, often told by Republicans, is that raising taxes is a bad idea. It hurts the economy by taking away money from consumers and businesses, leaving them less to invest and spend. And it gives it to the government, who will either waste it or use it on things that you oppose, with the net effect of needlessly increasing the national debt. If you can convince someone that this story is true, it will color almost every other political opinion that they hold. It will almost certainly mean that they will oppose President Obama and all of his economic initiatives — or any initiative that involves raising taxes. It will mean they will be against universal health care. And so on.

To convince people to accept this story, Republicans tell it over and over again, in their talking points, in interviews, in articles, on the campaign trail and wherever else they can. As Weston points out, and as has been well documented by numerous others (especially George Lakoff), a resonating story is more powerful than an armful of facts. People start with a belief in a story. If your facts contradict the story they believe, people will reject the facts. Lies that fit within the framework of the story are accepted as true. To get people to break out of this box, you must first convince them to accept a different — or at least a modified — story.

This is what Weston was hoping Obama would do. It is much more than simply giving a stirring speech. Mr. Zakaria may think that this is of little consequence. But he is wrong.

Centrist vs. Extreme Positions

Later in the Time magazine version of his column, Zakaria warns his readers “not to fall prey to ideology from the right or left and to celebrate the democratic process that balances the two extremes.” I believe Mr. Zakaria is wrong here as well.

I agree there is value in being able to assess both sides of an issue, to seeing the grays and not assuming that everything is either black or white. If this means I am a centrist, I am guilty as charged. However, I also believe it is a mistake to assume that extreme positions are always wrong — that a centrist position is the one that, in the end, is the best course to take. In the end, a centrist position may be the only possible course of action. Extreme positions rarely become public policy because they are, by definition, a minority position. You have to accept compromises along the way. But that doesn’t mean you should start by pushing for a centrist position.

In fact, centrist positions are often on the wrong side of history. There was a time when it was a centrist belief that a “woman’s place is in the home.” There was a time when (at least in the South), the center firmly held that blacks belonged in the back of the bus. There was a time when the center held that gays should not be allowed in the military (some may argue that this is still a centrist belief). Heck, there was a time that most of the people living on this planet thought that the earth was flat at that the sun revolved around it.

It takes courage, sometimes risking one’s own life, to stand by and defend the “extreme” beliefs that run counter to centrist positions. In the examples I cited, “extreme” positions were eventually adopted by the mainstream. Indeed, they are today’s centrist maxims. But back when they were considered extreme, I contend that the centrist position would not be the wisest course of action. On that basis, no one would have ever fought for the extreme beliefs — women would still not have the right to vote and blacks would still be sitting at the back of buses.

There are ideas today that are considered extreme. Single payer health care on the left. A balanced budget ammendment on the right. Some of these ideas may be exactly on target. That is, if the country adopted them, the country would be better off, by almost any measure. But we’ll never know if we stick to the idea that only weak compromises that barely move the needle from the center are the ideal we should strive to achieve, As Paul Krugman eloquently stated (in an article appropriately titled The Centrist Cop-Out): “Many pundits view taking a position in the middle of the political spectrum as a virtue in itself. I don’t. Wisdom doesn’t necessarily reside in the middle of the road, and I want leaders who do the right thing, not the centrist thing.”

Pragmatism?

In defending Obama, Zakaria points out the “pragmatism” of many of the president’s positions, noting for example that “he has advocated a balanced approach to deficit reduction that combines tax increases with spending cuts.” That is all well and good. But the problem is not in the president’s position, or his accepting some centrist compromise. The problem is that, when the bill was finally passed, there were no tax increases. There were only spending cuts. It looked very little like a compromise and very much like exactly what the Republicans had demanded. From the very beginning, the Republicans had set the terms of the debate (almost taking any revenue increases off the table) and left the Democrats in an all-too-familiar defensive crouch.

The same is true for issues like health care. While the Republicans pound ceaselessly on the importance of repealing “Obamacare” — Democrats (including Obama) too often shy away from even mentioning the topic. Instead of strongly defending the law, and offering a coherent “story” explaining why Americans should support it, the Democrats’ logic appears to be: “Now that the bill has passed, talking about only risks alienating voters and gettting us nothing.” Unfortunately, that leaves Republicans as they only ones with a story to tell. In such an environment, where only one side is on the ofdensive, lies can easily become accepted as fact.

Bottom Line

This returns us to my original point. Zakaria is wrong about his supposed “liberal fantasy.” Telling a story, and convincing voters to believe in it, is critical to political success. Republicans are winning at this game because they are far superior to Democrats in getting their “story” out. The fantasy is believing that this story telling doesn’t matter.

All Politicians Are Hypocrites

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Yesterday, Republicans in the Senate used the ludicrous filibuster rule to successfully block and up-or-down vote on the nomination of Goodwin Liu to the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco. His qualifications were not in dispute. As noted in NPR’s coverage:

“He was given a top rating of unanimously well-qualified by the American Bar Association. He was a Rhodes Scholar and clerked for Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. He received numerous awards for academic and legal achievements.”

Rather, the Republicans cited two main objections. The lesser one was that he was too “liberal” The more critical objection was that he had “criticized” (Republicans would use the word “insulted”) the records of John Roberts and Samuel Alito, when they were nominees for the Supreme Court.

This was political payback, pure and simple. Even if everything the Republicans claimed was 100% true, there would still be no basis for rejecting Liu’s nomination, let alone preventing it from even coming to a vote. Offering a documented critique, however harsh, of a judicial nominee should not be grounds for rejection. Republican’s real concern was that, if Liu made it to the Appeals Court, he might well someday become the first Asian-American to ascend to the Supreme Court.

My larger point today, however, is the hypocrisy of it all.

As pointed out in a San Francisco Chronicle editorial, it was these very same Republicans (including John McCain and Lindsey Graham) who had argued, back when the Republicans had control of the Senate, that it was downright unconstitutional for senators to deprive a judicial nominee of an up-or-down vote — except in the most “extraordinary circumstances.”

But let’s be clear. The Democrats are not on the side of virtue here. They can be just as hypocritical. Back in 1987, as one example, Democrats prevented Robert Bork’s Supreme Court nomination from coming up for a vote, citing his “conservative writings” as their justification. At least among conservatives, Bork’s name has become a verb, used to describe any unfair attack on a person’s reputation and views (as in: “He was borked.”)

The underlying theme is this: Whatever view a politician vigorously supports when their party is in control of the legislature (or the presidency or whatever) they will just as vigorously oppose when they don’t have such control. Partisanship trumps rationality and consistency every time. It’s a point I’ve commented on before. But it bears repeating.

You can see examples of this almost every day. For example, I recently read about Republicans criticizing President Obama for making too much of a show of his success in getting Osama bin Laden. Can you imagine these same conservatives criticizing George W. Bush, if Bush had managed to accomplish what Obama did and had behaved in a similar (or even more extreme) manner? Of course not.

Politicians live and breathe hypocrisy. Trying to find one that does not reverse his/her beliefs whenever the political shoe shifts to the other foot would be like trying to find the proverbial needle in a haystack — except that the haystack is the size of the universe and the needle is smaller than an atomic particle.

The truly sad part is that the public generally accepts all this as “business as usual.” No matter how many times people like John Stewart point out these hypocrisies, almost no one ever gets held accountable. We laugh (or not) and we move on.

If there’s a difference between political parties here, it’s only that Republicans are better at accomplishing their hypocritical goals. If this were an Olympic sport, Republicans would win the gold medal while Democrats would have trouble even making the final group. But they’d both be trying just as hard.