Alex Massie

Alex Massie

Thursday

Alex Massie

Do the Republicans have a plan?

From our UK edition

Good question! One of the odder aspects of American politics - at least for foreigners used to the rough and tumble of the House of Commons - is the elevation of bispartisanship to the status of some kind of political sacrament. A cynic would say that the principle motivation for this is to ensure that blame is shared between the parties, not hogged by whomever happens to be in the majority at any given moment. I always have the feeling, mind you, that respectable opinion in DC finds partisanship both excessive and, worse, rather vulgar.

Alex Massie

Our Age of Abundance

From our UK edition

Despite the tenor of the times, it is still the case that almost all of us have never had it so good. As Brad DeLong writes at The Week: The current recession may turn into a small depression, and may push global living standards down by five percent for one or two or (we hope not) five years, but that does not erase the gulf between those of us in the globe's middle and upper classes and all human existence prior to the Industrial Revolution. We have reached the frontier of mass material comfort—where we have enough food that we are not painfully hungry, enough clothing that we are not shiveringly cold, enough shelter that we are not distressingly wet, even enough entertainment that we are not bored.

Wednesday

Alex Massie

Chutzpah of the Day

From our UK edition

Gerry Adams, writing in the Guardian: The recent assault on Gaza is a brutal reminder of the destructive power of war and of the human cost of failure. It is time all of this was brought to an end. Well he would know, wouldn't he?

Alex Massie

What English backlash?

From our UK edition

My sense is that, like their Scottish counterparts, English nationalists are disproportionately vocal online. Certainly, anything one says about Scotland and the future of the United Kingdom seems to draw them out. But for all that we keep being prmised an English nationalist backlash against Scotland (and Wales!), stubbornly it never quite seems to come. At least that seems to be the case if the results from the latest British Social Attitudes Report are in any way accurate. True 32% of people in England feel Scotland receives an unduly generous share of public spending (up from 22% in 2003) and 61% think Scottish MPs should not vote on English-only legislation.

Alex Massie

Dating a Banker Anonymous. Yes, really.

From our UK edition

For all that it's often criticised in the blogosphere, there's an awful lot of good stuff in the New York Times. And some of it is very well written. This, for instance, is a splendidly judged intro and set-up: The economic crisis came home to 27-year-old Megan Petrus early last year when her boyfriend of eight months, a derivatives trader for a major bank, proved to be more concerned about helping a laid-off colleague than comforting Ms. Petrus after her father had a heart attack. For Christine Cameron, the recession became real when the financial analyst she had been dating for about a year would get drunk and disappear while they were out together, then accuse her the next day of being the one who had absconded.

Alex Massie

The Unconventional Problem of Conventional Wisdom

From our UK edition

An oldie but a goodie: Frank Foer's defence of Conventional Wisdom dates from 2001 but it still a jolly read: Since 1980 the New York Times editorial page has published at least 38 columns condemning world hunger, 241 against South African apartheid, and 465 containing the phrase "conventional wisdom"--and never once did the Times mean it in a nice way... The New Republic has been even more hostile--savaging " conventional wisdom" in 352 articles since 1983 (and TNR comes out only once a week). The consensus against CW has grown so powerful that even CW's most distinguished purveyors now denounce their craft. In what can only be described as an advertisement against himself, The Washington Post's David Broder has implored readers to be "wary of conventional wisdom.

Alex Massie

Ulster Lessons

From our UK edition

I've a piece up at the New Republic today, looking at how George Mitchell's experience in Northern Ireland may inform his approach to his role as Barack Obama's middle eastern envoy. Readers of long-standing will know that I take a rather more jaundiced view of the "peace process" than most and that, accordingly, am less enthused (but still hopeful!) by Mitchell's appointment than most commentators. Nonetheless, Mitchell appreciated that it would be difficult, if not impossible, to forge a peace agreement absent the cooperation of the men of violence. In his view, "To be sure, their participation will likely slow things down and, for a time, block progress. But their endorsement can give the process and its outcome far greater legitimacy and support.

Tuesday

Alex Massie

The Terminator Tweets!

From our UK edition

If you go here you can follow Arnold Schwarzenegger's Twitter feed. Granted, it's mostly just eco-friendly Californian politics at the moment, but once you sign up to the Governor's feed he'll be gracious enough to return the favour and begin following you too. This must be worth precisely nothing but it's still oddly cool. Or something. My Twitter feed is here, if you feel you need to know that.

Alex Massie

The Freedom of the High Seas

From our UK edition

I'm a sucker for Seasteading. That is, I can't resist articles about what's called "homesteading on the high seas" - tiny floating communities based in international waters and thus, happily free from government interference. This is not just a kind of hippyish utopia, there are serious public policy issues at play too! Wired has a fun piece - "Live Free or Drown" - on Patri Friedman's (grandson of Milton) vision for the future: Anyone can build a game-changing social-network platform or a virtual community or a set of open APIs. But the people here want to start a nonmetaphorical revolution by creating their own independent nations. In the middle of the ocean. On prefab floating platforms....

Alex Massie

Reforming the Lords?

From our UK edition

The downside to this latest outbreak of "Labour Sleaze" is that we're going to hear an awful lot of talk about "reforming" the House of Lords. (Will anyone be brave enough to suggest bringing back the hereditary peers?) but the very last thing anyone should want is for there to yet another round of elections. More to the point, it's the professionalisation of politics that is part of the problem here. The Lords, ideally, should be a largely amateur, part-time institution in which members can bring the benefit of independence, perspective and experience to suggest, gently, that government plans are, shall we say, ill-advised.

Monday

Alex Massie

So. Farewell then, Bill Kristol

From our UK edition

Tough news for neoconservatism. From today there'll be no more Bill Kristol columns in the New York Times. One could react to this news in a number of ways. Here, for instance, is Peter Wehner's view, courtesy of the good folk at National Review Online: Kristol agreed to a one year commitment at the Times, and while there he offered views and facts to its readers that they otherwise didn’t get—and repeatedly made arguments that must have made Pinch Sulzberger’s skin crawl. That is a tribute to both the rightness of Kristol’s views and his unwillingness to temper them for the sake of the Times...Bill Kristol will survive and prosper. I’m not so sure the same can be said about the New York Times.

Alex Massie

The Lorettonian Curse

From our UK edition

Now that I think about it, Simon Heffer's broadside against Caledonia-dire-and-rotten, missed one obvious target. Sure, Alastair Darling is a much-ridiculed, much-villified Chancellor of the Exchequer but so too was the last-but-one Scottish Chancellor. Remember Norman Lamont? He may have represented an English constituency but that only emphasised how far he'd travelled from his Shetland roots. Just as Darling is presiding - if that's the applicable term - over the current financial apocalypse, so "Peerie Norrie" was the bluffer in charge during the last economic debacle: Black Wednesday. I think it unfair, however, to blame Scotland writ large for this sorry duo. Not when there's a smaller, handier target.

Alex Massie

Have Scots Ruined Britain?

From our UK edition

Under the headline "Scots have brought Britain to its knees" Simon "John Wilkes" Heffer began his Telegraph column on Saturday like this: As Scots the world over prepare to celebrate tomorrow their third best poet (after Henrysoun and Dunbar, of course) by eating sheep's intestines filled with what always seems to be gravel, it is appropriate that there should be stunning new evidence of the vast contribution their little nation continues to make to Britain. As recession is declared official, the pound sinks, the stock market totters, banks wobble and misery abounds, let's salute the Scotsmen who did it.

Alex Massie

Cannabis Confusion

From our UK edition

There's something cheering about today's announcement that the government has decided to ignore its own experts and reclassify Cannabis as a Class B, rather than a Class C drug. Not the decision itself which is entirely regrettable, but rather what it tells us about this government. Not for the first time Labour wants to be seen to be "tough"; not for the first time it's pandering to the baser elements of a reactionary, hysterical press. So there's some comfort, I suppose, in the fact that even this government doesn't have the courage of its convictions (if such a term can usefully be applied to Jacqui Smith et al) since possession of cannabis will not, it seems, be treated as harshly as possession of other Class B substances.

Sunday

Alex Massie

In Defence of Lobbying

From our UK edition

If it's easy to pick on politicians, it's easier still to pick on lobbyists. This is true on either side of the Atlantic. As Peter says, today's allegations in the Sunday Times that Labour peers are trading cash for legislative amendments are unlikely to increase the esteem in which parliament is held. While members of the House of Lords are first in the firing line, I suspect we'll also probably hear calls for a further clampdown on lobbying. All, of course, in the name of removing temptation from what Guido Fawkes calls our "parliament of whores". In the United States, Barack Obama spent most of last year railing against the perceived corruption of the political process by "lobbyists" and "special interests" and pledged to have nothing to do with such rogues in his administration.

Alex Massie

Oh Caroline!

From our UK edition

A very entertaining piece on Caroline Kennedy's "run" for the vacant Senate seat in New York by Larissa MacFarquhar in this week's New Yorker. There are moments at which one feels rather sorry for Kennedy, but overall the piece is not, shall we say, flattering. And what to make of this splendidly amusing stuff from her courtiers? Now Caroline Kennedy has had her moment and flubbed it. Paterson has appointed Kirsten Gillibrand, a second-term congresswoman from Hudson, near Albany. “Paterson has no comprehension of upstate New York, absolutely none, and has chosen someone better at representing cows than people,” Lawrence O’Donnell says. “What you have is the daughter of a lobbyist, instead of the daughter of a former President or the son of a former governor.

Saturday

Alex Massie

Still the Dismal Science

From our UK edition

Preach it, Brother Wilkinson: When I see Delong more or less indiscriminately trashing everyone at Chicago, or Krugman trashing Barro, etc., what doesn’t arise in my mind is a sense that some of these guys really know what they’re talking about while some of them are idiots. What arises in my mind is the strong suspicion that economic theory, as it is practiced and taught at the world’s leading institutions, is so far from consensus on certain fundamental questions that it is basically useless for adjudicating many profoundly important debates about economic policy. One implication of this is that it is wrong to extend to economists who advise policymakers, or become policymakes themselves, the respect we rightly extend to the practicioners of mature sciences.

Alex Massie

The Era of Regulation Never Ended

From our UK edition

For reasons I don't entirely understand the impression that the present regrettable economic circumstances have been caused by a hands-off, laissez-faire approach to regulation seems to be widely held. This is curious since, as Nick Gillespie, editor of Reason.com, puts it in today's Wall Street Journal, we have not been living in an age of regulatory roll-back. On the contrary, there has been a marvellous, winning combination of more and useless regulation. If spending under Mr. Bush was a disaster, regulation was even worse. The number of pages in the Federal Registry is a rough proxy for the swollen expanse of the regulatory state. In 2001, some 64,438 pages of regulations were added to it. In 2007, more than 78,000 new pages were added.

Friday

Alex Massie

Blagojevich: Entertainer of the Year

From our UK edition

Can we agree that Rod Blagojevich is making a great run at the title Entertainer of the Year. Here's the disgraced governor of Illinois protesting his innocence (again!) today: I like old cowboy movies, and I want to explain how these rules work in a more understandable way. There was an old saying in the old West. There was a cowboy who was charged with stealing a horse in town. Some of the other cowboys, especially the guy whose horse was stolen, were very unhappy with that guy. One of the cowboys said, "Let's hang him." One of the other cowboys said, "Hold on, let's give him a fair trial. Then let's hang him." I'm not even getting a fair trial! More please! Additional details here and here.