Tis Official

I've finally decided who I'm going to vote for, and I'll tell you who and why in just a moment.

First off, I don't think Presidents have much control over the economy. The economy tends to be cyclical and there's simply not much any one man can do about it, so I don't really listen to their economic blather. "We need to make more opportunities and celebrate small businesses..." Yeah, yeah, yeah, now what do you really propose? The interlinked global economy has become so complex and has so many variable-gain feedback channels that I'm not sure anyone really understands it, let alone knows how to influence it positively. So honestly, the less the politicians (who are almost always lawyers anyway) say about the economy, the happier I am.

Secondly, it's been my observation that all of the viable candidates (and oh, how it must cheese the D-listers when I use that term) have adopted a policy of staying in Iraq. They differ only in details. So why pay attention to them? Besides, once we've made the decision to stay in Iraq, I'm of the opinion that the guys who should be in charge of the counter-insurgency effort in Iraq and Afghanistan are not the politicians with spray-varnished hair; it should be the majors and colonels in the US Marine Corps who have studied the problem. (Not that I'm insulting the US Army, but since the 1950s the US Army and US Marine Corps have had very different missions. The US Army was equipped and trained to fight the Red Army, a job that clearly required aggressiveness, firepower, and as much shock as could be brought to bear. The US Marines, on the other hand, were often asked to intervene in much less intense conflicts and had to develop proficiency in counter-insurgency and guerilla warfare.)

The politicians love to talk about things they can't really influence. They have no control over the economy, but they like to pretend they do. They've all abdicated responsibility for Iraq, so they stomp around the barnyard like roosters loudly spouting things that don't make any difference. They all have to weigh in on their Kulturkampf hot-button issues, even though it's not up to the President (any President) to enact legislation or deliver Supreme Court verdicts.

And they always go out of their way to remain suspiciously silent on some of the issues that they can (and should) influence. Such as:

1. The shameful neglect of the real central front in the war against terror, Afghanistan. How can we, years after the initial invasion, be reading newspaper accounts about how the Taliban is re-establishing itself?? Did we not defeat them utterly? Oh, no, wait a minute, we didn't defeat them utterly because politicos got in the way... Never mind.

2. The shameful lack of emphasis on moving away from the combustion of fossil fuels for energy. I personally am dubious that wind power can deliver energy in sufficiently large quantities to be worthwhile, but I could be wrong and I'm willing to give wind engineers a chance. But we're stuck with coal and gasoline as the preferred national choices, so no serious work gets done.

3. The shameful Corporate policy of exporting jobs overseas for the sake of "investors" who own pieces of paper that are about as meaningful as Magic: The Gathering playing cards. Or even better, for the sake of the CEOs that purport to run these companies. That is to say, the tax structure that makes that practice not only legal, but tax deductible (to borrow a memorable line from Deal of the Century). The MBAs think this is good clean economic fun, whereas I think it's unpatriotic and about as morally indefensible as war profiteering.


So imagine my shock when I saw this:

http://www.rediff.com/money/2007/aug/16bpo.htm

It's a pretty good article. I especially like the smug self-assurance of some the commentators at the bottom of the piece. But if Barack Obama has said enough things about curbing the exporting of jobs (I refuse to call it globalization) that he's come to the attention of the Indian expatriate press, he gets my vote. He can't fix Iraq, he can't manipulate the economy, and he won't do anything about energy policy, but at least I can support his policy on job exportation. And thus I'll support his candidacy.