I am a theoretical physicist and currently Director of 
September 04, 2008
The Palin choice-2: The experience question
(For previous posts in this series, see here.)
While the choice of Sarah Palin as John McCain's running mate is a poor one, I don't think the problem is Palin the person or her knowledge and experience. For all I know about her, Palin may well make an excellent vice-president (and president, if necessary).
I have never understood why people and the media are so obsessed with the experience argument. If there is any job for which relevant experience is unobtainable, it is the presidency of a country simply because the job is unique. What you are called upon to do in that job is unlike any other job you will ever have. The only kind of experience that is directly relevant, but which you can never get, is first being the president of some other country.
Furthermore, as president, you don't actually run the government or even the White House in any practical sense. Other people do all that and you have at your beck and call all the people you want for advice and actual implementation. The concrete skills that you need are not for being president but for running for the office. That requires the ability to raise a lot of money, run a good campaign, deal with the media, and speak well in public. Having prior experience in those areas definitely comes in useful during elections.
Palin already has run for governor and won, so she has some experience in this area, even though Alaska is not a big state in terms of population, ranking #47 among states. But she is being selected for vice-president and will join an already existing campaign the running of which is out of her hands, so that should not be a major problem.
What I find very odd is that some of her supporters are chortling that her lack of experience and knowledge on national and international issues cannot be used against her because Obama is also allegedly inexperienced. This argument does not make any sense. It was the McCain camp that was banking heavily on using the inexperience argument against Obama. By choosing Palin, McCain has effectively taken that argument off the table. Obama wins because he now does not have to even defend himself on the inexperience charge. All he has to do is watch while the McCain camp make fools of themselves arguing that she is more experienced than him. It is strange for McCain supporters to claim a victory for unilaterally disarming themselves. (See this cartoon.)
While I don't think experience should be a big factor in judging whether someone could be a good president, this does not mean that certain qualities are not preferred and even essential. There are things that I think a good president should have but those qualities can be developed over most kinds of life experiences. The important question is to what extent has her past life and work reveals that she has those qualities.
The qualities that a good president needs (which are independent of any polices or ideology) are many: have a commitment to uphold the constitution in spirit and letter, should have a commitment to the national and global interest over petty parochialism, be able to use evidence and reason in arriving at thoughtful decisions, be a good judge of people and situations, have a curious mind and be a quick learner, be humble enough to be able to ask for and take advice, be aware of the impact that one's words carry and thus be prudent in what one says, be aware of the power that one has and be cautious in exercising it, and be able to take the long view and think strategically while being flexible enough to make tactical changes when the contingencies of events demand them
Photo courtesy of http://mudflats.wordpress.com |
Whether she has had obtained enough experience, as the mayor of a tiny remote town of Wasilla (which, as humorist Dave Barry points out, has roughly the same number of houses as John McCain) and less than two years as governor of a state with a total population that is comparable to the city of Cleveland, to be able to step in and be president is somewhat irrelevant, except insofar as what her actions in the past reveal about the important qualities that are relevant to being president.
There is an interesting blog by someone living close to Wasilla that talks about life in that part of the word. This blog has suddenly shot up in popularity, becoming the go-to place to find out about Palin and her life. In one post the blogger describes the shock at hearing the news of Palin's selection and in another he describes the increasingly messy investigation into the abuse of power allegations against Palin.
In my opinion, there are hundreds of thousands, and perhaps millions, of people around the country who have many if not most those qualities and would make wonderful presidents. That is why the discussion as to whether someone is the 'best' person for the presidency or vice presidency is absurd. There is never a 'best' person. There are only better or worse people in terms of meeting those standards. President Bush has clearly demonstrated that he does not have most of the required qualities but Palin might. The problem is that we simply do not know.
The questions about whether she has the desired qualities may be answered as her life comes under scrutiny, but as yet the answers are unknown. McCain's statement that she is clearly the best person for the job is laughable on its face, and a sign of desperation. The interesting question I want to examine is how McCain came to pick her and what the selection says about him with respect to his own possession of the above qualities, and how this might affect the campaign.
In subsequent posts, I will break down this question into the various considerations that McCain and his team may have taken into account and see how she stacks up.
POST SCRIPT: Sarah who?
Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert are taken by surprise.
September 03, 2008
The Palin choice-1: Why?
Like almost everyone, I was stunned by John McCain's choice of Sarah Palin as his running mate. And like them, I am wondering which of the two extreme views of her nomination is true: that she is a bold choice that will give McCain victory in November or that she is terrible pick that will end up being a millstone around his neck and send him spiraling down to a defeat of historic proportions.
There has, of course, been enormous attention to this story. While I don't usually pay too much attention to the personalities of politics, preferring to focus on a few issues that are important to me, the exceptional nature of the choice has sucked me into the discussion along with everyone else, mainly to try and figure out what this pick reveals about McCain.
Since I knew I would traveling over the Labor Day weekend and would not have my laptop or internet access, I wrote most of my coming posts last Friday, the day on which her selection was announced, and Saturday morning. While driving during the long weekend, I only heard news headlines about the progress of hurricane Gustav and nothing about Palin, so I have had to time to mull over my initial reactions to McCain's decision. And my initial reaction that this was a bad choice has solidified.
(As is my usual style, whenever I feel that I need multiple posts to cover a topic, in order to create a coherent narrative, I first write out a skeletal outline of the entire series, which is then fleshed out, updated, polished, and edited before each daily posting. I now wonder if Palin might withdraw from the race even before my series ends next week, so I am preempting the completion of my series on the politics of food until the Palin series is over. That is how bad I think this development is for the Republican ticket.)
There are definitely many positives to her choice. But the problem is that each of those positives, aimed at achieving a particular result, are more than cancelled out by huge negatives that will prevent that result being achieved. The calculations involved are fairly obvious. So the question of interest is how McCain and his team did the same sums that I did and came out with a much different answer. What did they think was so positive about her that would compensate for these negatives?
Palin's name was not unknown to me. I had heard of her before this and had also heard the chatter that she was on his short list of candidates. But I had not given much credence to those reports because I first learned of her some time ago in the context of articles on the investigations into charges of corruption and abuse of power in Alaskan politics, highlighting senator Ted Stevens but also others including her. I knew that she and her husband were in the midst of a situation in which she was alleged as governor of the state to have exerted undue influence to get her brother-in-law (who was mired in a messy custody battle with her sister) fired from his job as a state trooper, going to the extent even of firing her Public Safety Commissioner because he did not carry out her wishes. Josh Marshall has an excellent synopsis of what has become called, inevitably, 'troopergate'.
There are reports that she is to be deposed in that court case soon and that she has claimed executive privilege to not release certain records to investigators and may face subpoenas as a result. She has hired a private lawyer to look after her interests, a sign that she may fear prosecution for actions that fall outside her official prerogatives.
Because of all this, I did not take her chances seriously. And this was even before I returned home on Tuesday morning, checked the news, and discovered that the whole thing had blown up into a full-throated soap opera. I thought that she was put on the list of candidates for the same reason that many such names are usually leaked, to satisfy narrow constituencies that their interests are being considered. I figured that McCain would be foolish to pick someone slap in the middle of being investigated for abuse of power. Why take on that aggravation when there are so many other people who won't come with all that baggage?
Someone once said that the most common last words expressed by reckless men before they do something stupid is: "Hey guys, watch this!" The McCain decision strikes me as exactly one of those ideas, something that looks bold and daring and exciting in the heat of a brainstorming session where a few people are trying to "think outside box" and make a stunning impression, but where all the negatives only show up in the cold light of day. It is then that you realize that there is a very thin line separating 'thinking outside the box' from 'being out of your mind'.
I think that this decision is going to haunt McCain. His and her ardent supporters are trying to put on a good face and saying that this move is a 'game changer'. I think they are right but not in a good way for him. It risks changing a narrow race into a blowout victory for Obama.
Next: The experience question
POST SCRIPT: Political humor
Sarah Palin has her own blog!
September 02, 2008
Understanding polls
Before he moved over to his new home at Mother Jones, Kevin Drum revisited a topic at his old Washington Monthly blog that I too have raised before, to criticize reporters who say that there is "statistical dead heat" whenever the polls show the difference between voters preferences for two candidates fall within the margin of error.
In other words, if the polls show 46% for Obama and 43% for McCain with a 3% margin of error, then the race is reported as a "statistical tie" or some such thing, giving the impression that it is a toss-up as to who is ahead. This is simply not true.
Drum has consulted with two professors pf mathematics and statistics at California State University, Chico and they have provided the formulas that enabled him to prepare a handy little chart to tell you the actual chance that some one is ahead, even though the preferences fall within the margin of error.
| Percentage Lead | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Margin of Error | 1% | 2% | 3% | 4% | 5% | 6% |
| 2% | 69% | 84% | 93% | 98% | 99% | 100% |
| 3% | 63% | 74% | 84% | 90% | 95% | 98% |
| 4% | 60% | 69% | 77% | 84% | 89% | 93% |
| 5% | 58% | 65% | 72% | 78% | 84% | 88% |
So if a candidate has a 3% lead with a 3% margin of error, far from being a dead heat, it is highly likely (84% chance) that the candidate is actually ahead. Even if the candidate has only a slim 1% lead and the margin of error is a whopping 5%, it is still not a 'dead heat'. The candidate still has a 58% chance of winning.
Like Drum, I do not have much hope that reporters will ever change their misleading reporting because they have a vested interest in continuing to talk this way. Races that are close generate more interest and thus more viewers and readers, so reporters will always try to make them seem closer than they are.
Talking of polls, there seems to have been an explosion in the number of polling organizations out there, and their results differ. This can cause some confusion in the public mind. When one polls gives one result one day and the next day the media report another poll with quite different results, this might give people the impression that the race is highly volatile or that some polling organizations are biased in favor of one or another candidate.
But that need not be true. There is something called the 'house effect' that can skew the results in particular ways without any intention of misleading. Charles Franklin over at Pollster.com explains what is going on:
Who does the poll affects the results. Some. These are called "house effects" because they are systematic effects due to survey "house" or polling organization. It is perhaps easy to think of these effects as "bias" but that is misleading. The differences are due to a variety of factors that represent reasonable differences in practice from one organization to another.
For example, how you phrase a question can affect the results, and an organization usually asks the question the same way in all their surveys. This creates a house effect. Another source is how the organization treats "don't know" or "undecided" responses. Some push hard for a position even if the respondent is reluctant to give one. Other pollsters take "undecided" at face value and don't push. The latter get higher rates of undecided, but more important they get lower levels of support for both candidates as a result of not pushing for how respondents lean. And organizations differ in whether they typically interview adults, registered voters or likely voters. The differences across those three groups produce differences in results. Which is right? It depends on what you are trying to estimate - opinion of the population, of people who can easily vote if the choose to do so or of the probable electorate. Not to mention the vagaries of identifying who is really likely to vote. Finally, survey mode may matter. Is the survey conducted by random digit dialing (RDD) with live interviewers, by RDD with recorded interviews ("interactive voice response" or IVR), or by internet using panels of volunteers who are statistically adjusted in some way to make inferences about the population.
Given all these and many other possible sources of house effects, it is perhaps surprising the net effects are as small as they are. They are often statistically significant, but rarely are they notably large.
One way to avoid mistaking inter-poll variability for voter volatility is to track the results of just one poll. In other words, only compare the results of one poll with the earlier results of the same poll conducted using the same methods and questions.
Another way is to do what the outfit Real Clear Politics does. It tries to take some of the inter-poll variability out by giving the averages of the major polls as a function of time.
To paraphrase Jon Stewart, elections are god's way of teaching Americans statistics.
POST SCRIPT: Mike Huckabee on Colbert Report
It was refreshing to listen to Mike Huckabee being interviewed on the Colbert Report about his reaction (after just the first two days) to the Democratic Convention. Huckabee was one of the most interesting primary candidates on the Republican side but the attacks on him from the Republican Party establishment were quite vicious.
Although I disagree with many of his views, there was something engaging and honest about him that I found likeable. He also has a sense of humor. All these positive characteristics are reflected in the interview. His closing comments on Obama and the role of race in America seemed genuine and heartfelt.
September 01, 2008
Taking advantage of people's poverty
(Due to today being a Labor Day holiday and being ontravel, I am reposting an old item, edited slightly because I can never stop tinkering with what I have written. New posts will begin again tomorrow.)
I read in the paper recently of an incident where the wealthy son of industrialist and his friends were about to enter a Los Angeles restaurant. Outside the restaurant was a homeless person and the youth offered the homeless person $100 to pour a can of soda over himself. The homeless man did so and the crowd of rich people laughed uproariously at this, paid him, and went on their way.
This story infuriated me, as I am sure it will to most people who hear it. It seemed that these people were humiliating the man, taking advantage of his poverty for their warped sense of what is amusing.
But at some level, I feel that I am not being consistent. In earlier postings I have said that we should not concern ourselves and interfere with what consenting adults do. And in this case we have what seems, at least on the surface, to be a purely consensual transaction between two adults. The homeless man was not forced to pour the soda over himself. He did so because he wanted to obtain $100. So on one level, one can view this incident as saying that he was paid for a job. And as things go, there are a lot more disgusting things that one can be asked to do than pour a soft drink over oneself. In fact, as a society, we pay lots of people do things for us that we would shrink from doing ourselves. We pay them to go into sewers, to execute people, clean public toilets, etc. and we do not feel repelled by this. So why did I find this particular story so repellent?
Perhaps it was because we consider the homeless man is in too weak a position to freely give consent. After all, $100 was a lot of money to him. To offer very poor people what is to them a lot of money in return for doing acts that we would not do seems to offend our sense of fairness. But it is not only poor people who can be tempted in this way.
Many years ago, I saw the film The Magic Christian starring Peter Sellers and Ringo Starr, with the former as a millionaire who enjoyed seeing what he could get people to do out of greed. The point the film was making was that people at any level of society would do almost anything, even wading through a disgusting mixture of urine and excrement, provided the price was right.
At that time I thought that the film was an overly cynical representation of human motivation but now I am not so sure. Some of the reality shows on TV seem to indicate that money and fame (however fleeting) are enough for many people to overcome their normal sense of propriety and self-respect. It is a disturbing thing to ask oneself the question as to what one might be willing to do if the price were high enough.
This is why I feel that it is so important that everyone be paid a living wage and have the minimum living requirements of food, clothing, and shelter, so that they are not forced to trade their dignity in exchange for these basic necessities of life. If they do have the basic necessities and are yet willing to do things in exchange for further riches, then that is up to them.
But clearly the homeless man was not in that position and perhaps the reason we are so repelled by this story is that there was no redeeming purpose at all for the action, unlike the situation where people do jobs that society requires but which we might find personally distasteful. Here the whole point seemed to be to flaunt rich people's power over the poor and to gain enjoyment from the humiliation of another human being.
But what constitutes humiliation is also tricky. What for one person is a humiliating act is for another person a chance to proudly flaunt their lack of concern for society's expectations and mores. If the homeless man thought there was a market for his actions and decided to be entrepreneurial and launch a career by offering to pour soda over himself to anyone who would pay, would the action now become respectable, just another job that many of us personally would not do but is otherwise acceptable?
After all, some comedians are willing to have pies thrown in their face as part of their act. And reality shows like Fear Factor show that people are willing to do the grossest things just to be on TV. The only difference between these things and the homeless man story seems to be that the homeless man was destitute and the event was spontaneous, not planned and scripted.
It seems like all these questions come back, in some essential way, to the issues of justice as fairness as the only sound basis for constructing society. Under those conditions, the only power that one person has over another is that freely yielded.
But the soda-pouring episode still angers me.
POST SCRIPT: The world's cheapest car
The Tata company of India introduces their $2,500 Nano. Its engineers show off the car and explain how they managed to obtain a nice looking and seemingly safe car for such a low price.
August 29, 2008
Hope and cynicism and Barack Obama
As readers of this blog know, I tend to follow politics fairly closely. I have done so for as long as I can remember. In Sri Lanka, politics was our national pastime and you could always strike up a good political discussion almost anywhere, and it was easy to become a political junkie.
As I have got older, my feelings about politics have become more ambivalent, a mixture of hope and cynicism. My hope has arisen from my increased awareness that most people seek justice and fairness at a very fundamental level and so I have always been in favor of efforts to increase participation. The more that ordinary people get involved in politics, the broader the participation, the more likely we are to have good results in the long run.
This does not mean that in the short run people will not make terrible decisions. We are, after all, the products of our history and upbringing and carry with us all kinds of relics of racism, sexism, homophobia, xenophobia, and other prejudices that will influence people in negative ways. Those factors can subvert the underlying drive for fairness.
While my sense of hope springs from a belief in the essential desire for fairness that people have, my cynicism comes from awareness that the structures of politics are designed to shut ordinary people out from any meaningful decision-making, reserving it for an elite and wealthy group that will serve its own interests, while preserving merely the façade of democracy. The way that is being done in the US is by making the election process so complicated and expensive, and the decision-making processes so obscure and arcane, that only those who have deep financial resources can hope to devote the time and energy to influence policies. These elite groups want to make change hard to achieve unless it serves their own interests, and they have largely succeeded.
But despite the odds, significant changes do occur and have occurred. We have seen the end of slavery, increasing rights for women, and major civil rights victories. We have seen the elimination of child labor, the right to unionize, the introduction of the 40-hour week, and more protections for the health and safety of workers. All these were important.
There are three major areas where I think we are on the verge of major changes for the better, although there are still obstacles facing us. These changes will come about irrespective of who gets elected to what position, though those elections can affect the speed of developments.
One is the fight for universal, single-payer health care. (For my previous posts on this, see here.) This will definitely come about fairly soon, though I do not know exactly when. The present system is too unfair, wasteful, corrupt, inefficient, exasperating, and infuriating to not collapse under its own contradictions. What both candidates are currently proposing are like plugging holes in a dike, short-term fixes to preserve the unseemly profits of the health insurance companies, pharmaceutical industry, and some health professionals. It will not last.
The second is equal rights for gays. This, I believe, will come very soon. The now routine and bland acceptance of gay people in most communities, the lack of controversy about gay marriage in Massachusetts, and the likely defeat of the anti-gay marriage referendum in California, are all signals that we are seeing the final gasp of homophobia.
The third is greater concern for the global environment and health. Those who think that we can treat our environment and ecosystem cavalierly are increasingly being seen as religious or free-market extremists.
Why do I think these things will happen, even though they are all currently opposed by entrenched influential and powerful groups? Because those issues are on the right side of history and such issues always win in the end.
As readers know, I do not expect much from Barack Obama as president. I expect him to be a cautious and centrist leader, careful not to rock the boat, someone who will follow the largely pro-war, pro-business agenda adopted by the current one-party/two-factions system. This is not necessarily a reflection on his personal beliefs. People from under-represented groups (such as women or minorities) who are the first to achieve prominent positions always carry the extra burden of having to prove their competence. Failure will not be interpreted as an individual thing (as is the case with that of a member from the majority group) but as their entire group members being incapable of the task. In order to not ruin things for those who follow them, such people become conventional, ultra-cautious, and risk-averse.
But at the same time, I expect Obama to be thoughtful and informed and intelligent in his decision-making, and much better than John McCain, who strikes me as a reckless and hot-headed warmonger in the Bush mold, completely under the baleful influence of the neoconservatives. Somehow I cannot see Obama doing anything rash or stupid or dangerous, the way McCain might. In fact, it will be a real relief to have a president who will act with the dignity that the office deserves.
The absurd charge that the Republicans are trying to make that Obama is 'elitist' is really a charge that he is too cerebral, and that what we need is someone who talks tough and makes decisions based on his 'gut', like the present incumbent, the worst president ever. We need to educate the public that it is not a weakness to take the advice of Carl Sagan who said, "I try not to think with my gut. Really, it's okay to reserve judgment until the evidence is in."
Although I rarely watch highly scripted political events, I made it a point to watch Barack Obama's acceptance speech. It was a powerful one, extremely well delivered. I could appreciate the excellent craftsmanship that went into it and his rhetorical skill even as I disagreed with some points, especially concerning foreign policy.
There is no denying that in seeing a black person accepting the presidential nomination of a major party, something very significant was happening, a pivotal moment, and one that I am glad to have witnessed personally.
It aroused in me strong emotions similar to the ones I felt when Nelson Mandela was released from his South African prison in 1990, a sense that I was witnessing an important and uplifting moment in history. At that time, I had my daughters (then just 6 and 3 years old) sit on the sofa and watch with me, telling them I wanted them to be able to say later that they saw it, even though they did not understand the significance then.
All the major positive changes I described above had to be fought for and obtained against strong vested interests. But once achieved, such changes are irreversible. And Obama's nomination and, I hope, victory in November will be another major irreversible step in America putting behind its ugly racial history.
Come November I will be voting for Barack Obama but not because he is black. I will be voting for him because he is by far the better candidate of the two major parties.
But I will be taking extra pride in that vote because I will feel that I am contributing to a positive and irreversible change in history.
POST SCRIPT: Race in American politics
There is no doubt in my mind that this presidential campaign is going to be ugly with race forming an unpleasant subtext. Yesterday Terry Gross of Fresh Air had an excellent and thoughtful discussion with political scientist and author Mark Q. Sawyer who runs the Center for the Study of Race, Ethnicity and Politics at UCLA, on the role of race in American politics with reference to Barack Obama's candidacy and what a tightrope he has to walk.
It is well worth listening to.