Why I’m coming out – against gay marriage
A New York progressive braves the opprobrium of his peers by questioning same-sex marriage.
Read my spiked article in full here.
Obama vs Romney: who do you hate least?
Both Obama and Romney are now tossed between public enthusiasm and public disdain, showing just how volatile this campaign has become.
Read my spiked article in full here.
This week’s articles of note
"America's crisis of character," Wall Street Journal, by Peggy Noonan
"A nation of spoiled brats," Foreign Policy. David Rothkopf interviews Edward Luce, author of Time to Start Thinking: America in the Age of Descent
"Joel Kotkin: The great California exodus," Wall Street Journal. Allysia Finley interviews Kotkin
"Obama's race to save the Rust Belt," Salon, by Andrew Leonard
"The Trayvon Martin case and the growing racial divide," PJ Media, by Victor Davis Hanson
"Has physics made philosophy and religion obsolete?" The Atlantic. Ross Andersen interviews Lawrence Krauss
"Death by treacle," The American Scholar, by Pamela Haag [on sentiment in public life]
Obama is down in the polls, and only has himself to blame
It's easy to be confused about this year's presidential election.
Throughout the latter part of 2011, President Obama was faring badly in opinion polls. Unemployment remained stubbornly high and a majority did not approve of his job performance. The talk was that almost any Republican could beat Obama. But then, as we headed into a new year, Obama's fortunes appeared to change. Unemployment moved in a favorable direction (if only incrementally so), and the president's approval rating improved to over 50 percent. Most of all, Obama benefited in comparison to the spectacle of the Republican primary season, where no candidate appeared remotely capable. Talk shifted to Obama walking the election.
And yet, here we are in late April, and Obama is no longer flying high. A New York Times/CBS News poll published last week found that Obama and Mitt Romney are tied at 46 percent each. Six in ten say the economy is on the wrong track. How did that happen? Some point to the fact that the economy appears to have stalled again. Some note that, now that Romney has seen off other Republican challengers, he is no longer under fire from his own side and has begun to consolidate support. And some put it down to the simple fact that it is early, with the election still more than six months away.
But the volatility is remarkable, and revealing. It shows, as I noted before, that Obama's support was in fact softer than it appeared when he was up in the polls. The volatility is due to the lack of strong attachments: the largest segment of voters is not affiliated to any party. They are, in many cases, alienated from both parties. In such circumstances, people say they will vote for the candidate they hate least. With the Republican primary circus over, attention has shifted back to Obama, and many do not like what they see. When you consider how awful a candidate Romney has been these past six months, for Obama to find himself in a tie with him should be a total embarrassment.
Supporters of Obama tend to blame the economic environment. Unemployment has started to rise again, and so they say, of course the president will suffer. Furthermore, they say, those nasty Republicans have blocked his moves the past few years, and, as Paul Krugman noted in his New York Times op-ed yesterday, they are unfairly blaming Obama for the crisis that began under President George W. Bush.
But that outlook just portrays Obama as a hapless victim of circumstances. Continue reading→
This week’s articles of note
"The book that drove them crazy: Allan Bloom's Closing of the American Mind 25 years later," Weekly Standard, by Andrew Ferguson
"Battleground America: one nation, under the gun," The New Yorker, by Jill Lepore
"Hilary Rosen was right: Ann Romney is out of touch with most women," Time, by Judith Warner
"Why there are more swing voters than you think," New Republic, by Ruy Teixeira
"What export-oriented America means," The American Interest, by Tyler Cowen
"Is Facebook making us lonely?" The Atlantic, by Stephen Marche
Is America committing “superpower suicide”?
Yes, claims that America is rotting like the Roman Empire are over the top, but two new books swing too far in the other direction.
Read my review of The World America Made by Robert Kagan, and Strategic Vision by Zbigniew Brzezinski, in spiked here.
This week’s articles of note
"Liberal illiberalism," PJ Media, by Victor Davis Hanson
"Please stop apologizing," New York Times, by Bill Maher
"Obama heading for defeat in Keystone fight," Washington Examiner, by Byron York
"Chinese capitalism is just another knock-off," Reuters, by Ian Bremmer
"The anti-Walmart: the secret sauce of Wegmans is people," The Atlantic, by David Rohde
"Suzanne Collins' 'The Hunger Games' illustrates the horrors of big government," Forbes, by John Tamny
Goading Goldman Sachs: a new sport
Half self-promotion, half banker-bashing, there was nothing brave about Greg Smith's resignation letter.
Read my spiked article in full here.
Breaking news: Goldman Sachs is no longer a charity
Last week the New York Times published an op-ed piece by Greg Smith, a 33-year-old midlevel banker with Goldman Sachs in London, in which he explains why he is resigning from the Wall Street firm. In his view, the culture in Goldman Sachs is “toxic and destructive”, and the firm no longer acts in the best interests of its clients. “It makes me ill how callously people talk about ripping their clients off,” he writes.
The article set off a viral reaction. Liberals saw Smith’s cri de coeur as proof from an insider that a bank they blamed for the financial meltdown was unrepentant, still pursuing greed and excess. Matt Taibbi – the Rolling Stone writer who coined the phrase “vampire squid” to describe Goldman, thus reviving an old anti-Semitic trope – called Smith's piece “historic” and “brave and thoughtful”. New York Times financial columnist Gretchen Morgenson wrote that Smith’s article provides “yet another reminder of why it is crucial that we remake our financial markets so that they are safe for investors and taxpayers”.
In fact, Smith’s article tells us nothing of substance about the financial world or the economy, and does not lend weight to any argument regarding public policy.
In his departing outburst, Smith comes across as breathtakingly naïve. Describing his early days at Goldman, he makes it sound like he had joined Save the Children: “It wasn’t just about making money,” he writes. “It had something to do with pride and belief in the organization.” Then just imagine his surprise and dismay when he discovers only 12 years later that those half a million dollar pay checks he had been receiving were not for putting smiles on kids’ faces, and that in fact Goldman Sachs was in the business of – gasp – making money.
Smith makes a big deal about Goldman employees talking in internal meetings about “ripping the eyeballs out” of clients, and calling them “muppets”. Here he sounds like a Victorian lady prone to fainting upon hearing swear words. Perjorative names thrown about in an internal meeting – a meeting of investment bankers no less - well I never! Come on, Greg, is “muppet” really the worst name your ex-colleagues used? All I know is that on this side of the Atlantic, his reference to “muppets” led to a universal “huh?”, since we Americans still only use the term to refer to the cuddly TV puppets. And given that one enterprising researcher discovered that the company owned by Jim Henson’s family is indeed a client of Goldman, maybe it was all one big misunderstanding. Continue reading→
This week’s articles of note
“The lost party,” New York Magazine, by John Heilemann [on the Republican primary contest]
“The emperor of vanished kingdoms,” Wall Street Journal, by Raymond Zhang [Interview with Norman Davies, historian of Europe]
“Party crasher: Ron Paul’s unique brand of libertarianism,” The New Yorker, by Kelefa Sanneh
“True innovation,” The ...
