Dynasty

Bush, Clinton, Bush . . . Clinton. Am I the only one who sees this possibility as dreadful, irrespective of the qualities of the four politicians in question? In my view, the fact that there is even a serious chance that 2008 may bring us yet another dynastic restoration in the presidential office is reflective, in and of itself, of the current dysfunctionality of American democracy.

In truth, I know I'm not the only person troubled by this. After all, political historian Kevin Phillips wrote a whole book back in 2004 about the dangers of dynastic power for our democracy, focusing on the Bush family (American Dynasty: Aristocracy, Fortune and the Politics of Deceit in the House of Bush). This past June, Phillips, in a Washington Post review of two books about Hillary Clinton, asked the obvious question about her candidacy:

In light of the endless deceits, interest-group baggage, messianic overtones and shameless money politics of the two Bush dynasts (presidents number 41 and 43), do American voters want to empower yet another dubious dynasty (Clinton presidents number 42 and 44)?

The mainstream media, which long ago declared Hillary Clinton the Democratic "front-runner" - - actually "presumptive nominee" seems more accurate - - based on nothing but name recognition and how much money she was expected to be able to raise, have, of late, expressed muted concern about this dynastic issue, if only at the margins. For example, Nancy Benac, in a September AP story, wonders, "Does a nation of 303 million people really have only two families qualified to run the show?" And an Agence France-Presse article earlier this month ("US Ponders Bush-Clinton-Bush-Clinton White House") makes the obvious connection between dynastic politics and the decisive influence of big money in the political sphere.

For a succinct statement of the irony of this outbreak of dynastic succession in the United States, we can turn again to Phillips, this time in a 2004 BuzzFlash.com interview:

[D]ynasties are something that the United States came into being fighting against. We have George III in 1775 and 1776. I don't see any reason why, in the last 25 years, we should have George I and George II, and think about Jeb I [three years later, this seems highly unlikely, thank god] and so forth. It's pernicious, almost, by definition of what America's all about.

Unfortunately, pernicious it may be, but dynastic privilege is clearly on the rise throughout American society, and not just in the political realm. Take the entertainment industry: given the prominence of actors from Michael Douglas (son of Kirk), to Gwyneth Paltrow (daughter of Blythe Danner), Nicholas Cage (nephew of Francis Ford Coppola), and Ben Stiller (son of Jerry Stiller and Anne Meara) - - the list here is endless, frankly - - and directors like Sofia Coppola (daughter of Francis) and Nick Cassavetes (son of John), can anyone doubt that one of the most important success factors for those seeking a career in Hollywood is family ties? Although less pronounced, the same can be said for recording artists - - examples include Natalie Cole (daughter of Nat "King" Cole), Jakob Dylan (son of Bob) and Julian and Sean Lennon (sons of John). Ditto for television journalism, which has come to exhibit the nepotism characteristic of other "celebrity" spheres - - Chris Wallace (son of Mike), and Andrea Koppel (daughter of Ted), are two examples.

We see dynastic privilege at work in the spheres of politics and entertainment because, given their nature, these are especially visible to the general populace. Less visible, but, if anything, more rampant and pernicious, is the nepotism that is constantly at work in academia (where the children of wealthy alumni are given admissions preference at elite universities), and the world of business and finance, particularly at elite levels. To take just a single example, the children of Sanford Weill, Wall Street deal-maker and one of the world's richest individuals, both held top positions in his Citigroup empire - - son Marc was chief investment officer until he was forced out due to personal problems in 2000; daughter Jessica was mutual fund marketing chief for Smith Barney (owned by Citigroup's predecessor Travelers), before striking out on her own in 1999. It is unlikely in the extreme that either of these individuals would have gotten these positions on their own merits.

The fitness of these people for the work they do is not the relevant issue. Presumably, any number of people would have the necessary talent to occupy these roles. The question is, who is afforded the opportunity to hold these privileged positions and why?

What all of this reflects, it seems to me, is the coalescence of oligarchical power and control in the United States. In the mid-1970s, wealth inequality in the US, which had been generally declining since the onset of the Great Depression, began an inexorable rise. The following chart, taken from a Wikipedia article on the "gini coefficient," a key measure of income and wealth inequality, shows the postwar trends (for income distribution, in this case), for several countries, including the US:

[Click on chart for full-size version]

The cause of this steady growth in inequality is obvious: the period since the late-1970s - - the era of neoliberalism - - has seen a relentless attack by elites on the living standards of the mass of the US populace, through massive tax cuts that have primarily benefited the ultra-wealthy, deregulation of business, multilateral "free trade" agreements, offshoring of production to low-wage countries, undermining and destruction of labor organizations, etc. That this tremendous increase in the share of societal wealth controlled by a tiny minority should correspond to the mushrooming of dynastic privilege throughout US society is unsurprising.

When the issue of the potential for a multi-decade dynastic lock on the US presidency is considered by the mainstream media, it is generally attributed to the importance of "branding" in contemporary political campaigns (as pretty much everywhere else in American society these days), and, ultimately, to the power of money in determining which candidates are deemed "viable." In this view, wealthy donors are more likely to contribute to the campaign of the offspring (or spouse) of a former president, because this candidate has immediate national name recognition and media attention, and, thus, a better chance to win. This seems akin to the movie business, where investors, focused on ROI, generally favor sequels to blockbuster films over new material.

Although not incorrect, this view seems superficial. To understand the importance of branding, we must ask ourselves what a presidential brand might actually mean to these well-heeled donors who, it is taken as a given, have the primary power to select candidates for public office under our system. It seems to me, in this context, the dynastic brand is about safety and continuity. It goes like this: The first Bush and Clinton proved trustworthy in giving elites the key things they wanted (tax cuts, regulatory "relief," free-trade agreements, dismantling of the "welfare state," etc.), so it would be assumed that the second Bush and Clinton would faithfully serve elite interests, as well. Much of these latter dynasts' early "campaigning," then, would consist of offering private assurances of the validity of this assumption.

Interestingly, in the specific cases of George W. Bush and Hillary Clinton, there seems to be another factor at work, one that may or may not be generalizable: A key attraction of both of these politicians to their patrons consists of their potential ability to overcome political contradictions. In the case of Bush II, he was able to unite the primarily working and middle-class fundamentalist Christian base of the Republican Party, with the wealthy elite "country club" elements who have traditionally controlled the party, despite the fact that the latter effectively dictate a policy agenda that undermines the living standards of the former. In the case of Clinton II, the fact that she is a woman, and thus, potentially the first woman president, is no doubt viewed by elites as helpful in putting a progressive gloss on a fundamentally conservative candidacy, and, on that basis, forestalling the defection from the Democrats of millions of voters fed up by the party's craven support for militarism abroad and erosion of democratic rights and the living standards of average Americans at home.

Peak Exports: The Real Reason Behind War in the Middle East?

I have long suggested in discussions on the war in Iraq (and the coming war on Iran) that the conventional wisdom (expressed by commentators across the ideological spectrum) that sees the Iraq War as having become a disaster for its neocon champions is seriously flawed. This is especially the case if it is taken to mean (as many believe) that the war is recognized as a disaster in the eyes of Bush regime insiders themselves.

The notion of the war as a catastrophic blow to the neocon project rests on the belief that what the US ultimately wanted in Iraq was something that at least bears some resemblance to what the invasion's architects said they wanted: a stable, secure, and at least somewhat prosperous country, firmly subordinated under the US-led regional military "security" umbrella, open to US multinational corporate "investment" (and that of other Western countries of our - - not their - - choosing) for resource extraction and other purposes. This supposed ultimate goal is generally taken at face value, not only in right-wing and mainstream circles (where it is called an effort to create a "democratic" Iraq), but on the left, as well.

The standard left analysis is implied by my statement of this premise above: What the US wanted was not to bring "democracy" to Iraq (unless that term is taken as a euphemism for "openness to corporate penetration"), but, rather, what is very nearly its opposite: to place Iraq under classic neocolonial control. Such control most certainly implies a fundamental cession of Iraqi sovereignty: it would lose the authority to inhibit multinational corporate penetration of its economy, and it would cede any pretense of independent military power that could in any way challenge the hegemony in the Middle East of the US or of its local surrogate, Israel. Indeed, this latter element involves a concrete loss of sovereignty, in that Iraq's territory, itself, would be open, as necessary, for the installation of US military bases, to function as a staging-ground for further military aggression in the region.

Nonetheless (and this is the critical point), what this left view does not imply is the total destruction of Iraqi society and infrastructure. In fact, this model seems to envision what I suggested above: the creation of a reasonably stable and (given its immense resource wealth) prosperous country, albeit, with much greater inequality of wealth than under the Baathist regime, and with a significant share of that wealth flowing into the coffers of Western, not indigenous, elites. In this view, then, the fact that Iraq has been laid waste by the US invasion must mean that the US project has been a colossal failure from the perspective of its architects.

Well, what if, as I've long suspected, this is not the case? What it the real goal of US war planners (one that, for obvious reasons, they could never broach publicly) was to decimate Iraq, to turn it into a shambles? Were this the case, it would necessitate a thoroughgoing reexamination of the meaning of the invasion, as well as a significantly revised analysis of our current historical conjuncture, nearly five years on.

When I suggest to people that, from Bush's perspective, the war in Iraq may be fundamentally a success, the response is usually incredulity, followed by an argument that runs something like this: "Why on earth would the neocons have wanted to create this quagmire? Sure, they had no interest in bringing real democracy to Iraq, but how does it serve their interests to have sown chaos there? If they were trying to get their hands on the oil, it seems that instability would be counterproductive, since US multinationals will be required to invest tens of millions of dollars in infrastructure costs in order to get the oil out profitably. Who's going to invest in Iraq when you have insurgents regularly blowing up pipelines and murdering contractors?"

Until recently, I didn't have a compelling counter-argument to this. I would generally cite broader geopolitical imperatives that seemed to be trumping neocolonial ones; in particular, the determination of US policymakers that under no circumstances would any other country (except, of course, Israel) be permitted to even aspire to a regional leadership role in the Middle East that might in any way, now or in the future, challenge US hegemony there. I surmised that Iraq had been seen as so potentially dangerous to US long-term interests (given its resource wealth, educated populace, strategic location, etc.), that only by utterly shattering the country could this threat be deemed neutralized. Not implausible, perhaps, but not entirely compelling either.

This is where the concept of "peak exports" comes in. I won't provide a general discussion of the meaning and import of the peak oil theory here (any reader unfamiliar with this theory - - essential, in my view, for understanding the current state of the world - - should click on the "Resource Depletion" links on this blog, or pick up a copy of Richard Heinberg's The Party's Over). The peak exports theory deals with what's likely to happen to petroleum production once we pass the global peak (as I'll detail in a future post, several recent studies convince me we have already done so - - at least with respect to conventional oil). Hubbert theory posits a gradual downslope of post-peak production, roughly matching the trajectory of the upslope - - that is to say, a classic bell-shaped curve. Were post-peak production to follow this path, we might expect an annual decline rate of perhaps 2 to 5 percent.

Make no mistake, a decline rate in this range is hardly good news - - it would have grave, even catastrophic consequences for industrial societies. The notion of peak exports, however, moves us from the catastrophic to the apocalyptic. Jeffrey Brown, a Texas petroleum geologist and a frequent contributor to The Oil Drum (under the name westexas), as well as to the GraphOilogy blog, recognized that when one considers the implications of peak oil, one has to be careful to avoid conflating production with exports. To do so is to ignore the impact on exports of rising consumption within exporting countries, themselves. This rise in internal consumption coupled with a decline in production results in the tendency of exporting countries to cannibalize exports to feed internal demand, which leads to a much sharper export decline rate than the standard Hubbert production curve would indicate.

How much sharper? Brown and a colleague (Khebab at TOD and GraphOilogy) created a theoretical model for a hypothetical exporter Export Land. Here's a description of the model available here, at GraphOilogy:

In previous articles posted on The Oil Drum we outlined a simplistic export model for a hypothetical country with Ultimate Recoverable Reserves (URR) of about 38 billion barrels (Gb), labeled the Export Land Model (ELM). The model showed the effect on net exports of a country that hit peak production and started declining at 5% per year. The exporting country consumes 50% of its production, and that consumption is increasing by 2.5% per year. The 5% decline rate is loosely based on the post-peak Texas decline rate of about 4% per year. The ELM is shown graphically below, Figure One.

Figure 1

While this is a simplistic model, it has some important lessons for us.

First, assuming ultimate recoverable reserves of 38 Gb, and assuming that Export Land peaked when it was about 55% depleted, Export Land would have about 17 Gb of remaining recoverable reserves, after peaking. The model shows that only about 1.7 Gb, or 10%, of remaining post-peak recoverable reserves would be exported.

Second, the overall exponential net export decline rate, about 29% per year over the eight year net export decline period, is much more rapid than the production decline rate of 5% per year, because net exports in a given year are the net difference between two exponential functions: exponentially declining production and (generally) exponentially increasing consumption.

Third, the net export decline rate in a given year accelerates with time, from an initial year over year change in net exports of -12.5% to a final year over year change in net exports of -47.6% (last year of net exports) [emphasis added].

Brown then compares his model to the real-world cases of the UK and Indonesia, and he discovers that, in both cases, these countries' post-peak export decline rates exceeded the 28.8 percent rate posited for his hypothetical Export Land based on his model (they were 55.7 and 28.9 percent, respectively). He acknowledges that the decline rate for world exports is unlikely to be as high as even that of the model; however, Brown expects the export decline rate to be considerably higher than that of the production decline, and he expects this rate to accelerate over time.

It's not just Brown who is concerned with this issue; discussion of peak exports is suddenly everywhere. For example, it was a major topic of conversation at the recent ASPO USA conference in Houston, as noted by Tom Whipple in his article reviewing the meeting:

The most ominous development for countries such as the U.S., which must import most of its oil, is the emerging concept of “peak exports” which was discussed by several speakers. Peak exports simply means that oil-producing countries are using more and more oil at home – leaving less to sell abroad. Moreover, sentiment is starting to develop in many nations that they must save some oil for future generations, not just sell it to the foreign devils as quickly as possible.
This clearly means that major oil importers will face a shortfall in their ability to obtain oil many months or years sooner than they had been anticipating. The fall in the amount of oil available for purchase is likely to drop much more quickly than declines in production. When world oil exports fall, if they have not started doing so already, effects are likely to sharp and painful.

And here's a quote from an interview [scroll down for the interview transcript, which is in English] that David Strahan conducted at the ASPO-USA conference with Robert Hirsch (he of the now-famous Hirsch Report on peak oil, "Peaking of World Oil Production: Impacts, Mitigation and Risk Management," [.pdf] prepared for the Department of Energy in 2005):

One of the things that it seems to me is that peak oil to many people is not yet real. When it becomes real, I think that a number of oil exporters will stop and think about what they are doing with their resource for the longer term. When peak oil is realised, oil price will increase dramatically so there [sic] will have another major windfall, financial windfall. Some of those folks, I think, are very likely to say that they will cut back on their exports in order to husband the resource for a longer period of time for their own country. In fact Mr. Putin in Russia already has said as much.

Other people in the Middle East have made noises that they may do something like that also. It becomes a matter of an individual country deciding what is best for itself versus what is best for the world and individual countries really ought to look out for their own well being which could mean that indeed a number of them decide to hold back on exports for their own purposes and that would mean that peaking would occur earlier than might otherwise be the case, and be much more abrupt. So the decline rates in a situation like that would be I think much larger than one would calculate if one thinks only about the geology.

The significance of this is breathtaking. Quite simply, it suggests that, if market forces are allowed to work unhindered, oil importers (of which the US is, of course, the world's largest), could face the prospect of their fossil energy supply literally going off a cliff following the worldwide production peak. Without doubt, the result for these societies would be rapid, total collapse.

In this light, I believe that I finally understand the logic behind the destruction of Iraq. Given the reality of peak exports, even neocolonial business-as-usual becomes a woefully insufficient outcome. What is needed is the near-total destruction of internal demand for fossil fuels within exporting countries, such that, eventually (even if pacification takes years), we can take all of it for our use. If this is the goal, the best way to accomplish it would be to thoroughly destroy the exporting country's modern infrastructure and to kill or drive off as large a share of the population as possible. Sadly, this appears to be just what is occurring in Iraq.

It's interesting to note that Iran claims that it wants to build up a nuclear power infrastructure so that it can meet internal energy demand in a manner that will have as minimal an impact as possible on fossil fuel exports. [See, "Why Iran might need nuclear power after all"] Whatever one thinks of nuclear power as an energy source, the fact is that, from Iran's perspective, a search for non-fossil energy sources for internal needs makes eminent economic sense. The US, however, appears to have a different, and far more sinister plan for how to deal with the increase in Iranian domestic energy consumption.

If all of this is correct, then it is not hyperbole to suggest that the recent actions of the US in the Middle East constitute crimes against humanity of the highest order.

Al Gore, Media Pariah

After Al Gore was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize earlier this month, Paul Krugman ran a column in the New York Times about what he called “Gore Derangement Syndrome.” By this, Krugman meant the irrational hatred of Gore on the part of right-wing media organs like the Wall Street Journal editorial page and the National Review. Krugman identified three key motivating factors for this hatred: 1) the right-wing’s guilty knowledge that Gore actually won the 2000 election (although Krugman doesn’t put it quite this starkly); 2) the fact that, since that time, Gore has consistently been right when he has taken positions against the right-wing consensus (with respect to climate change and Iraq, for example); and, 3) the right’s supposed frustration over the failure of their attempt to discredit and marginalize Gore (exemplified, for Krugman, by the Nobel Prize award).

Krugman’s analysis is valid as far as it goes, but it doesn’t go nearly far enough. Pointing a finger exclusively at the right saves Krugman from having to confront the implications of the much more troubling reality: mainstream media are just as guilty of having engaged in a relentless campaign to demean Al Gore.

This very point is made in a piece by Robert Perry, of Consortiumnews.com, responding to Krugman, entitled "Why Big Media Slimes Al Gore". Perry's essay represents the latest installment in his ongoing effort to explain the mainstream media's consistent denigration of Gore. He rightly traces this phenomenon back to the 2000 election campaign and to the post-election debacle, during which the MSM exhibited blatant anti-Gore (and pro-Bush) bias.

Perry then moves on to the press coverage of the results of the post-election re-examination of Florida ballots, which were announced in November 2001. As Perry notes, this review demonstrated conclusively that, if all of the votes had been counted in Florida, Al Gore would have won the state - - irrespective of what approach was taken for undervotes, overvotes, chads and the like. Despite this, all key MSM outlets headlined their coverage with precisely the opposite message (for example, the Washington Post's November 12, 2001 headline read: "Florida Recounts Would Have Favored Bush.") [Although Perry doesn't address the particulars in this essay, the MSM were able to (lamely) justify this interpretation based on the fact that the partial recount asked for by Gore, had it been carried to its limited conclusion, might have resulted in a tiny Bush "victory." Of course, they failed to note that Gore had asked for the partial recount, rather than a full one, only because he had already been thrown on the defensive by the media's scornful dismissal of his post-election efforts to have the votes counted as the divisive delaying tactics of a sore loser.]

In Perry's view, media obfuscation of the true result of the ballot review was due to 9/11 - - to a felt need to rally the country around George W. Bush in the aftermath of the attacks. But for 9/11, Perry implies, the November 2001 headlines would have proclaimed the truth: "Gore Won Florida, Should be President." As for the MSM's post-9/11 fawning coverage of Bush, and its continuous belittlement of Gore, whether over his having dared to criticize Bush's "war on terror", or his having had the bad grace to be awarded the Nobel Prize, or his having dared to grow a beard without permission, Perry ascribes this to "senior news executives [who] apparently still feel that it is more important to ingratiate themselves with President Bush and his powerful admirers than it is to show some fairness to the man who was the choice of a plurality of American voters in 2000."

Just as with Krugman, who he rightly criticizes for doing so, Perry, too, pulls his punches. As Perry himself acknowledges, the media stance vis a vis Gore was firmly in place in 2000. It has been entirely consistent ever since. Later events such as 9/11 have not had a significant impact on this, as he claims. This anti-Gore bias remains firmly entrenched today, Nobel Prize be damned.

During the 2000 campaign, it was painfully obvious that, regardless of which candidate particular press organs may have "endorsed," as an institution, the MSM favored Bush. Gore was subjected to a relentless campaign of lies and innuendo, intended (somewhat perversely) to define him as a serial liar. This campaign had all the appearances of a meticulously designed disinformation campaign (and, in this, it can be seen as a foreshadowing of the fraudulent Iraqi weapons of mass destruction media campaign, as well as the current campaign to demonize Iran). Moreover, it was led, not by Fox News, but by those supposed paragons of the "liberal media," the Washington Post and the New York Times. One need look no further than an April 2000 article by Robert Perry himself, this time in the Washington Monthly, for an excellent overview of this campaign, and its key operatives, Ceci Connolly of the Post and Katharine Seelye of the Times. Another excellent source is The Daily Howler. This piece, from February of this year, provides a good overview. Or browse through that blog's year 2000 archives for post after post on media distortions and outright lies regarding everything from Gore's supposed retention of Naomi Wolf as an "alpha-male advisor", to Gore's supposed claim that he invented the internet, that he "discovered" Love Canal, etc., etc. In truth, it seems clear that Al Gore was denied the White House (that is to say, the election was close enough for Bush to steal it), because of this relentless campaign carried out by the mainstream media.

Why did this happen? It seems to reflect, in particular, the following factors: 1) the huge multinational corporations that own the (increasingly concentrated) MSM, and the ultra-wealthy layers that control these corporations, almost unanimously wanted Bush, not Gore, in the White House; and 2) journalists, themselves, over the last several decades, have become highly compensated figures, celebrities even, increasingly distant in their insular interests and concerns from the mass of the populace. Journalists have also been the object of a relentless winnowing process, whereby those who are too incisive and probing in the "wrong" directions are shunted aside, while those who aren't - - and who can thus be "trusted" - - are promoted and paid substantial sums. These layers, too, largely favored Bush. Those few who favored Gore bent over backwards to appear "balanced," lest they reveal the dreaded "liberal bias" that might threaten their privileged position.

All of this was especially obvious after election day in 2000, as the winner of the election - - Gore - - was subjected to a non-stop barrage of criticism, invective and ridicule. There was virtually no support for Gore from any quarter of the MSM during this period and in the aftermath of the Supreme Court intervention - - not even "liberals" would dare stand up for democratic rights, let alone for Gore. Representative of this is a particularly reprehensible November 18, 2000 piece by Frank Rich, which includes this gem: "Mr. Gore's public protestation that what he is 'focused on' is 'not the contest, but our democracy' offers yet further confirmation of his unctuous disingenuousness."

The blatantly false media coverage of the Florida recount was not due to 9-11 - - this was, at best, an excuse that could be muttered in an attempt at explanation (or, perhaps, justification). From the morning after the Supreme Court's decision was handed down, it was clear that the media were never going to deal honestly with what had occurred. The loser in the Presidential race had just been installed by judicial fiat of a right-wing Supreme Court majority, based on a despicable "opinion" that, to any honest person with legal training, obviously lacked any legal merit; in short, the country had just experienced a soft coup d'etat. But for the media, it was "get over it" time. The New York Times' morning-after editorial is representative: "It is incumbent on citizens and elected officials alike to respect the authority of the [Supreme Court] ruling and the legitimacy of the new presidency whether or not they agree with the court's legal reasoning."

Were Gore to run for President again (as some liberals, including Robert Perry, have urged him to do), he would face this same wall of media disdain. The reason is the same as in 2000: the powers-that-be don't want Al Gore to be President. Just as with elite “journalists”, a relentless winnowing process now applies with respect to national candidates: those who have shown that they can be trusted are showered with cash and afforded "gravitas" by the media. Those who haven't are derided, denied money, and shunted aside.

This is not, precisely, about favoring Republicans over Democrats.  The default MSM stance in this era is undoubtedly pro-Republican, since Republicans can nearly always be "trusted" in the ways that matter to elites. However, the contemporary role of the media is more about systemic stability than it is about partisanship. It may, in fact, be the case that this year, recognizing and adapting to the angry mood of the electorate, the MSM will tacitly favor (or at least, remain neutral with respect to) Hillary Clinton or even John Edwards or Barack Obama. These politicians have shown themselves to be fundamentally trustworthy - - on Iraq, on the coming attack on Iran and other future military adventures, on the maintenance of Bush's tax cuts and ultra-pro-business regulatory policies; in short, on all of the things that the people who rule this country in oligarchical fashion want, but that go against the interests of the large majority.

By these lights, Al Gore, during the last seven years, has only grown less trustworthy, and for precisely the reasons people like Perry (and Krugman) cite with admiration: his public opposition to the Iraq war before it began; his championing of environmental concerns (implicitly at the expense of endless economic growth and the corporate bottom line); his call for all elements in society to show responsibility.

In recent months, many have suggested that in 2008, if this country is to avert catastrophe, we need a new FDR as our leader. In my view, this attitude is naive for a number of reasons (perhaps I'll elaborate on these in a future post). However, taking this attitude at face value, one might ask: When people seek "a new FDR" what are they really looking for? It seems to me that it's more than "liberal policies" people are after. The key characteristic that Franklin Roosevelt exhibited was an essential fairness and sense of responsibility, of "commonwealth", that gave him the courage (and the willingness) to take on entrenched and extremely powerful interests in an effort to benefit the populace (and the nation) as a whole. He persuaded Americans that the federal government was working for the interests of "the people, not (just) the powerful" (to use - - with slight alteration - - Al Gore's 2000 campaign slogan, itself the object of countless media sneers, naturally). It is this characteristic of Roosevelt, I believe, that primarily accounts for the fact that, as is well known, FDR was uniquely beloved by the mass of the populace. What is perhaps less well remembered is the fact that for this same characteristic, FDR was almost universally hated by elites. Indeed, I would contend that the central political project of American elites ever since FDR has been the prevention of the emergence of another FDR.

Al Gore (especially the "new" Al Gore, chastened, no doubt, by his experience of having had the Presidency stolen from him in plain sight), shows some potential of being this "new FDR"; that is to say, someone who might see his role as President as consisting, fundamentally, of acting as an honest broker of competing societal interests (not to mention those of the natural world and of future generations), and who might elect to carry out this role (however imperfectly) based on some kind of standard of essential fairness. It is for this reason above all others that the MSM will work relentlessly, if need be (and, no doubt, successfully) to insure that Gore gets nowhere near the Presidency in 2008.

Which brings us back to Krugman, and the insufficiency of his analysis of Gore. Recall that his third explanation for "Gore Derangement Syndrome" is the fact that "in [Gore's] case the smear campaign has failed. He's taken everything they [here he means "the right" but we'll call it "elites"] could throw at him, and emerged more respected, and more credible, than ever." In other words, they hate him because he won and they lost. But is this really the case? When they hated FDR, their enmity was directed at President Roosevelt. Alas, they're never going to have to focus their hatred on President Gore.