Category Archives: Politics

Value(s) by Mark Carney: Chapter 8 Creating a Simpler, Safer, Fairer Financial System: Key Takeaways / Analysis / Citations

Chapter 8 Creating a Simpler, Safer, Fairer Financial System

Key Takeaway

The Problem with Humans versus Objects – Determinism:

Carney makes the classic case that value measurement losses sight of intrinsic or objective reality and then there is a burst of the bubble and wealthy people lose their shirts. This touches on the central thesis of Random Walk Down Wall Street. Many economists have this instinct to try to explain reality by convincing themselves and then others that people are perfectly rational actors. Carney points out that this rational actors theory is wacky: adding that economists envy physicists and engineers, economists love neat equations and want a deterministic model of reality but that’s just too bad, economist! Determinism, meaning that any input will have a predetermined outcome in the model, doesn’t work when the subject of your experiment has agency/choice. Try telling a toddler that they are rational! Lol.

Sir Isaac Newton said it best: “I can calculate the motions of celestial bodies, but not the madness of people. ” Now, fun fact, Newton wrote that having lost a huge investment by speculating in the famous South Sea Company which basically involved misleading investors into thinking that the British empire had opened up South America to trade when in reality, they were actually capped at 1 ship per port per year in South America….But of course, human being aren’t going to let facts get in the way of investment momentum that drives prices up! Get on the train, folks! And again, because humans are awesome, we will #$ck with you’re predictions whether you like it or not.

Case in point, not everything that is going up is a bubble. Value that is disconnected from fundamentals of accounting are more likely to be a bubble says Carney but there are no guarantees. The investment could be a castle in the sky or just a really good investment…

2008 – 2016 UK:

The lost decade in the UK where there was political fragmentation of the economy is from 2008 to 2016, according to Carney. The real household income did not grow in the UK for that decade (technically 8 years…but whatever). There was a decline of trust in experts. Finance lost its integrity, prudence and became more protectionist. It came crashing down on the poorest in the financial crisis as discussed in the previous chapter. The G20 had to make radical adjustments and reforms. Value was disconnected on the way up and re-calibrated on the way down. 

No, I’m not gonna put Thug Life shades (sunglasses) on Queen Elizabeth II. I have some modicum of decency left in me. I thought about though…

When Queen Elizabeth II asked:

“Why did no one notice the credit crisis?” The answer: signed by 33 distinguished economists said ‘it was the failure of the collective imagination of many bright people in the UK and internationally to understand the risk of the system as a whole.’

So another factor is certainly, the lack of systems thinking! What I do may not have a positive / negative impact on me, but it could have a positive / negative impact on others. 

The decline in the trust for experts comes from experts being: 

  1. too academic and therefore disconnected to practical reality… 
  2. simply creating bearers for others to understand their view point and choosing to capture value instead of communicating valuably. 
  3. Unable to see the credit crisis coming…
  4. Lack of systems thinking / solidarity / or, in other words, the reliance on the invisible hand / free market as infinitely wise. 

The fault lines were:

  1. too much debt;
  2. excessive reliance on markets for liquidity;
  3. Complexity in derivative markets;
  4. Huge regulatory risk,
  5. Misaligned banks and imitators. 

Getting Global Support for Reforms: G20 finance ministers backstopped the entire system. 

G8 treasury leaders. They didn’t think that the system would self equilibrate as a solution. As such, they created a new plan with the FSB (financial stability board). It is the United Nations for finance. Mario Draghi had an immediate impact on the financial system as the chair. The FSB developed over 100 reforms. And Mark Carney succeeded Draghi as chair of the G20.

Chairing the G20 Finance Stability Board comes with several important lessons:

  1. You must have a clear vision; you need political backing. FSB has the power to recommend reforms, however the national legislatures must put these reforms in place…
  2. You must get the best people you can around the table. Bureaucracy is not helpful here. The group is composed of central bankers, regulators, finance ministers….
  3. You must build consensus that entrenches ownership. Dany Rodrik sees an intractable problem here: a trilema of economics, democracy and sovereignty…We have a seeding or pooling influence. No country is obligated to implement these reforms however it is in everyone, globally that these reforms be implemented at the national level. Commercial banks were happy that “heads they win tails we lose” with the bail out but there were positive reforms made via FSB. 

Mark Carney’s Three Lies of Finance:

Financial crises happen frequently, if you hear someone say any of these lies, then take note: 

  1. “This time, it’s different”
  2. “Markets always clear”
  3. “Markets are always moral”
  1. “This time, it’s different”: what’s happening today is fundamentally different from all prior human history….Nope, don’t believe this lie. Usually, a new innovation is compelling because of its initial success, complexity and opacity. Solving the stagflation of the 1979s and 80s with new monetary stability that were democratic, effective, evident remits, strong governance….The Great Moderation from the 1990s to 2008s also paralleled, technological growth, non-financial consumption, such that it was easy to become complacent. And people assumed housing prices can only go up. This optimism is known at the business cycle. Carney refers to this as the Minsky moment: where lending is abruptly pulled back when financial experts realize there is a correct brewing and thus causes the economic downturn to more severe. In 2008, “Minsky went mainstream.” (186, Value(s)). 
  1. “Markets always clear”: at the right price, excess supply and demand will clear (ie. the supply will meet demand). Labour markets are efficient and clear? Sorry, nope they are rigid and sticky. If money is efficient, then they will reach equilibrium? Sorry, nope markets are incredibly ineffective in reality. Markets do not always clear because life is not a textbook. You can’t describe the real world because people are too complex for any mental or predictive model. Synthetic credit risk; the risk was spread all up. Panic ensues with risk being pooled. The real world is far more complex, we cannot anticipate all of human activity at any given time. Calculating every scenario is impossible, Newtonian physics doesn’t quite work in every scenario and physics doesn’t even involve tricky human beings.
    1. Keynes in General Theory shows that when having his students rank the prettiness of faces in exchange for a prize, it’s more important to calculate what the average opinion believes the average opinion is. Keynes noted that this is what happens in markets where everyone else was thinking, the derivative of the derivative of what other people will do matters more (subjective utility). Keynesian saw the instability is on spontaneous preferences, the full consequences are only based on animal spirits. The belief that markets are always right was what enabled the last bubble and the next bubble. Markets are populated by people however, fickle people.
    2. Cass Sunstein argues that 1) preferences in public differ to what is in our heads, 2) social obligations impact our acceptance of new things. For example, if 1000 people protest something, then we will be more amenable to that something as well. Read: Robert Schiller’s Narrative Economics. Critical mass opinion happens in finance as well. The Minsky cycle works on average and average opinion. How do markets become more differentiated? There is a spontaneous urge to make a decision rather than a complex weighted calculation of the mathematical benefits x the probabilities of a given consequence of the decision…
  1. “Markets are moral”: FICC (fixed income, currencies and commodities markets) have a lot of fraud in them even though they determine the cost of resources, food, housing, government debt prices etc. The commodity squeezes in rye in 1868, cocoa in 2010, and ‘wash trades’ in Manhattan Electrical Supply on 1930 and the Tera Exchange in 2014 show a recurring phenomenon. There have been a lot of squeezes. Planted rumours to drive up a cost happens frequently wherever traders are bored or desperate. Tweaking LIBOR and FX involved manipulating these foreign exchange benchmarks rates for the interest across firms at the expense of retail and corporate clients in the billions. Technology evolves and laws are passed. Engineers of the subprime crisis were clubby and colluded online, globe bank misconduct costs were $320 Billion for $5Trillion of assets. People were colluding online and few were held to account. And there was no rush to take the blame. Trust in the UK went from 90% (1980) of UK citizens thinking banks were well run versus 20% (in 2008). Financial firms help the real economy. The FICC markets, markets are ever more important to people. FICC markets can go wrong with poor regulation. Carney argues you need Hard infrastructure (regulations, foreign exchange benchmark objectivity) and Soft infrastructure like corporate culture, informal codes and policy handbooks. Light banks. Central banks participate in fire insurance. Mistrust between companies and hesitate to invest in firms. FICC infrastructure is key, soft codes of infrastructure, weak banks. Relies on informality. 

Carney argues that the solutions are the following: 

  1. Trust: G20’s Financial Stability Board helps by acknowledging that the market is amoral and will not always clear  by instilling greater trust, less complexity.
  2. Smarter: Ensure traders remain pro-market (shouldn’t be a problem) but support smarter regulation. 
  3. Avoid Lies: Ensure financial professionals avoid the attractiveness of the 3 lies. 
  4. Realistic: Recognize that regulation will not bust the cycles since innovation is always happening but ensure that  regulators be understanding. Implement policy that make real markets more robust with market infrastructure that creates the best markets for innovation.
  5. Transparency: In 2008, Over the Counter derivative trades were largely unregulated, bilaterally settled (closed door) and unreported, but now 90% of new single currency interest rate derivatives are centrally cleared in the US i.e there is transparency. 
  6. Systems Thinking: Ensure financial professionals recognize the importance of protecting the system as a whole.

Risks in Emerging Markets are a danger for another financial crisis where the lie that markets always clear continues. China’s economic success contains a lot of shadow banking (SIVs, mortgage brokers, finance companies, hedge funds and private asset pools), there are lots of repo financing, major borrowers and banks with significant opacity. There is now a worrying amount of debt in China that could leave Ray Dalio reevaluating his career choices once again. There could be a major margin call / run on Chinese assets, with first mover. There will be mismatches of markets. There could be a rush to get out of the Chinese market: this is the risk of being trapped when the assumption that markets will always clear (buyers and sellers will find each other) is exposed as wrong. Cyber to crypto crises could also trigger another financial crisis.

Risks in Illiquid Assets treated as if They Are Liquid:

New risk is the global assets under management of $50 trillion in 2010 to $90 trillion in 2021. But $30 trillion is promised to be liquid when it is illiquid assets. Carney’s addressed this problem of not having consistency between liquidity of funds’ asset versus their redemption terms while he was governor of the Bank of England with the help of the FCA (Financial Conduct Authority):

1) liquidity of funds’ assets should be valued as either a) the price discount needed to do a quick sale of a vertical slice of those assets OR b) a time period needed to sell the asset without a price discount. 

2) Investors who redeem get a price for their investment that mirrors the discount required to sell a proportion of a funds’ within the special redemption notice period;

3) the “redemption notice period mirror the time needed to sell the required proportion of a funds’ assets without discounts beyond those caputed in the price received by redeeming investors.” (196, Value(s)). 

During the 2008 crisis: 

  1. Liquidity disappeared with cash-powered banks refusing to lend;
  2. There was a ‘run on repo’ which increased the haircuts on collateral to de-risk counterparties which were shadow banks that then collapsed;
  3. In Europe, the debt crisis compounded these problems driving up nationalist sentiments…

There is now the liquidity coverage ratio and net stable funding ratios…but there are weaknesses with US repo market troubles in 2019- 2020. The Fed’s open market operates calmed down…Carney doesn’t know where the next bubble will burst but he has a few ideas.

Bagegot’s principal of being the lender of last resort thus preventing short-term liquidity shortages from causing wide spread insolvency.

Bank of England presentation by Mark Carney…

Central banks have challenges:

  • Figuring out if the firm is solvent when the market is against that firm’s assets and the market can be wrong longer than that firm can stay liquid;
  • What constitutes good collateral, can always lend government bonds and in the 2008 crisis, it didn’t appear to have an impact on the functioning of the system, banks horde
  • The penalty rate means the firms come late because it convey weakness.

Central banks have now moved to doing transparent auctions of liquidity to many counter-parties which includes banks, broker-dealers, an central counterparties in the derivatives market. Bank of England has a contingent term repo facility….

An Anti-Fragile System – This Time is Different – What Was Done to Banks:

  • Public trust was harmed most by the mantra of too-big-to-fail banks. 
  • Banks didn’t pass lending out enough which amplified inequality. 
  • Privatization of profits while socializing the losses harmed trust.
  • Public paid $15 trillion in bailouts, government guarantees against bank debts and special central bank liquidity projects….. 

G20 FSB brought in standards to create an anti-fragile system:

  • Banks are less complex. 
  • Banks have a ‘living will’ and are reorganized so they have a firewall between the banking that continues to serve families and business even if their investment banking division is imploding. 
  • Trading is less between banks thus shifting to lending to customers.
  • Public funding has dropped by 90% post-crisis with market discipline…
  • Senior leadership can be expected to bare the cost of failure.
  • Can’t legislate virtue but can legislate incentives around how senior leaders train staff.
  • Improving cyber penetration attack resilience. 
  • Looking for risks across the economy, thinking system level about where the next crisis is least likely to be and make sure that is focused. 
  • Macroprudential policy: addressing systematic risks….cyclical risk when the financial system loosens up, debt grows and complacency sets in, the Minsky effect is severe…
  • Macroprudential policy: addressing systematic risks…structural risks when there is a wbe of exposures to derivatives risk, which means the need to have liquidity buffers, restrictions on mortgage lending, shutting down the shadow banking approach.

Bank of England serves the purposes “To promote the people of the United Kingdom”

Restoring Morality to Markets:

Oscillating regulation, light touch versus total regulation. 

  • Aligning compensation with values;
  • Increasing senior management accountability;
  • Renewing the vocation of finance.

Longer-Term Horizons Focus the Mind: Bonuses in the UK are now managed with compensation by delayed by 7 years. If there is misconduct then bonuses can be clawed back, according to Carney. Business mission statements tend.

FICC Markets now have new guidelines:

  1. have clear, proportionate and consistently applied standards of market practice;
  2. are transparent enough to allow users to verify that those standards are consistently applied;
  3. provide open access (either directly or through an open competitive and well-regulated system of intermediation);
  1. Allow market participants to compete on the basis of merit; and
  2. Provide confidence that participants will behave with integrity.

Effective markets are those which also:

  1. Allow en users to undertake investment, funding, risk transfer and other transactions in a predictable way;
  2. Are underpinned by robust trading and post-trade infrastructure enabling participants to source available liquidity;
  3. Enable market participants to form, discover and trade at competitive prices; and
  4. Ensure proper allocation of capital and risk.

Drawing on the Magna Carta:

Having the right principles is essential. Keep pace with the innovation. Senior Managers Regime (SMR) individual accountability. Values need to be exercised like a muscle. SMR makes sure senior leadership is accountable even if many of them were involves in the 2008 financial crisis. Employees must be connected to their communities. 

Introduction: Humanity Distilled Chapter 1 Objective Value
 Chapter 2 Subjective Value Chapter 3 Money & Gold
 Chapter 4 Magna Carta  Chapter 5 Future of Money
 Chapter 6 Market Society Chapter 7 Financial Crisis
 Chapter 8 Safer FinanceChapter 9 Covid Crisis
 Chapter 10 Covid Recovery Chapter 11 Climate Crisis
 Chapter 12 Climate Horizon Chapter 13 Your Values
 Chapter 14 Values in Companies Chapter 15 ESG
  

Analysis of Part 1 and Chapter 8

  • Mark Carney can look to Mario Draghi for inspiration since, Draghi is now the Prime Minister of Italy (as of 2021). Central Bankers can cross into the political sphere. Currently Draghi is trying to get bank mergers to happen in order to clean themselves up. So like Carney, using the power of politics to effect change is sometimes valuable where as a central banker, you cannot effect change. Analogies, and history does not have predictive power, Italy is very different from Canada, however it is instructive that getting into a position of power may not be a high hurdle for Carney. Finance catteacts people with no socience training, because they are looking for absolutes. These folks lean deterministic. 
  • A bit odd that the Senior Managers Regime (SMR) doesn’t really connect because the people who self-select to work in banking are frequently math. The problem is that the people with the experience made decisions in the financial crisis that seem to benefit themselves disproportionately company to the general public. It is similar to having doctors make decisions for hospitals, there is a conflict of interest in being in control and regulating oneself. 
  • Perhaps the bad behaviour is in Crypto…
  • Great economic shocks cause institutions to recalibrate and reform. It isn’t the individual actors that drive such change but rather macro externalities where no one internally can be blamed that cause reform. 

Citations Worth Noting for Part 1: Chapter 8:

  • Carmen M. Reinhart and Kenneth S. Rogoff, This Time is Different: Either Centuries of Financial Folly (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2009)
  • Raghuram Rajan, Fault Lines: How Hidden Fractures Still Threaten the World Economy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2010). 
  • Hyman P. Minsky, ‘The Financial Instability Hypothesis’, Levy Economics Institute Working Paper No. 74 (May 1992). 
  • https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PIRHM_Dz_fQ Adair Turner
  • Kenneth J. Arrow and Gerard Debreu, ‘Existence of an equilibrium for a competitive economy’, Econometrica 22(3) (1954). 
  • Gilian Tet, Fool’s Gold (London: Little, Brown, 2009) which shows that derivatives were distributed throughout 100s of balance sheets through the pooling and distribution of that risk. Similar in essence to a decentralized ledger.
  • John Maynard Keynes, The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 1936).
  • Wlater Bagehot, Lombard Street: A Description of the Money Market (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011). 
  • Financial Stability Board, ‘Strengthening Governance Frameworks to Mitigate Misconduct Risk: A Toolkit for Firms and Supervisors’ (April 2018).

Ken Burns on Documentary Film Making

Learn By Doing! Get Out There!

First of all, we tell stories to keep the wolves from the door, mortality, according to Ken Burns. Life is short. There is no solution to learning other than to go and do, which is the best way to learn. There are no rules about films. Ken Burns has been doing it for 46 years, and he does not believe in formulas in documentary films, there is no formula. The only formula is Doing + Learning = Growing.

The Renaissance of Documentary from the 1980s to Present

There are so many documentaries that have emerged in the last few decade that has put the genre on the map. And notice that there is no orthodoxy. Errol Morris, Michael Moore, Al Gore and Werner Hertzog all doing their own things in this genre. Again, no formula. Ken Burns does not do his own narration and / or ask questions on camera.

The Brooklyn Bridge

He felt that biography of Washington Roebling for the Brooklyn Bridge was important. It was emotional. You have to have faith in yourself. That project was Ken Burn’s first in 1981. He had a shoestring budget to make it happen. And a Ken Burns documentary takes especially long, hence he left New York to finish the film and moved to New Hampshire where the cost of living was much more reasonable.

Know Your Creative Goals

  1. Is this what you want to do?
  2. No one is going to give me the budget, you have to beg, borrow and steal!

Transcend: film-making is industrial anxiety, there are 100s of things that can go wrong. You need to welcome the unanticipated problems. You need to have patience.

Be a Jack of All Trades

  • Writer, sound designer, fundraiser, marketing, and you will give your spiritual life to be a good film maker. Don’t let it be one single skill that you possess: be well-rounded, inquisitive.
  • Documentary filmmaking is highly collaborative. You need a good cinematographer and a good writer. A film project cannot be a one person program. You have to make your own career path, what are you willing to do for your art go commercial or go public funding, it will still be your art.

Research Everything, Even While You Build the Story

Your model / filter of past is going to be challenged. The opposite view is possible. The Vietnam War ($30M budget) humiliated Ken Burns with new facts. Conventional wisdom is harmful to truth. You have to tell the true story of the Vietnam War which is more nuanced then Ken Burns realized in the outset…same with his audience. That particularly documentary being probably the most important since the Civil War.

The Drama of the Truth

How far can you go with art before you mess with the truth? What have I done in the service of cinema in order to tell the truth? Inclusion and exclusion are both part of the story. There has to be a human act of faith in selecting what is included.

There is no such thing as objectivity. There are a completely different realities and you then have to average things out, according to Burns. Human experience is human experiences (plural) and as you gather them you can more clearly understand that moment. You need to take a certain license, however. The truth is you have may be challenged by a lack of evidence whether it be photographic or otherwise.

The TED Radio Hour: Manipulation

Manipulation is Part of Art

Contradiction is very common in reality. Be manipulative in your story telling. You shouldn’t see manipulation as evil. You need to be manipulative. How do you get along? Manipulation gets the shooting done. If you aren’t manipulative then you are deceiving yourself first and everyone else second.

The Civil War Script

Proposal script for the Civil War had certain sections pre-written before production. You need to write a treatment of your story. You then need to lay out the parameters.

Money is the most governing thing: money is very important.

  1. government,
  2. individual funders,
  3. corporate funding.

You could also develop a bankable story. You need to make the audience no longer understand. Ken Burns’ team writes a lot of proposals.

You have to be realistic budget: how much does it cost for the sound people, editing, you have to pay yourself. Push through: the made a good food, Ken Burns is fundraising and being told 1500 times and 15 times told yes. So Ken Burns is a sales guy in effect.

Structuring the Document Narrative

  • You want to know how it can be told. We are under the powers of story telling.
  • Archival information is critical to historical documentary: you need to follow leads.
  • You shouldn’t look at the great men of history; look at the bottom up and the top down. You should look for the home movies, for example in Vietnam. For example, in The Vietnam War documentary a solider sends home videos back home from the front and the towns people.

Shaping Nonfiction Characters

Liberate the characters of the heroes and villains model. Abe Lincoln, he attacked the US constitution. The Civil War is morally complex.

Layered Characters Drive Narrative

It’s most effective if your audience thinks the character should make other decisions than the ones they make.

Many light bulbs drawn on colorful sticky notes.

Visualize Your Story Boards

He had the episode of using the post it; then they do these different modes in the story.

Balance Larger Themes with Individuals

  • Good writing is easier building blocks for a better story, you have to have good writing to back the rest of the experience.
  • Narration is based on 3rd person in Ken Burns films. Ken Burns did not invent narration in documentary film. Do not be afraid of narratives. The word and imagine together are more powerful than the sum of their parts.

The 3rd Person Narrative

  • Words are not set in stone. There will be many drafts. and then you do a blind session. Does the structure makes sense. Then you do a blind assemblies of the voice over and then the visuals.
  • Using caveats which is “may have been” qualifications. Slavery was abhorrent, but the statistics are abstract. 4 out 100 lived passed the age of 60. Born in a shed, most children died before age 12, if they did survive they would work in the fields.

Ken Burns Loves Still Photos

Trust the audience to be more engaged. I will invest those limitations. Ken Burns is an effect is not about giving people a slideshow. The psychological response to a picture.

Imaginative Symbolism

  • Word and Image is (1 + 1 = 3): Mirror illustration, have the words and the picture talk to each other. We look for the obvious but try to find the dissonant and different because you will find new meaning in it
  • Jack Johnson Unforgivable Blackness. These past moments rhyme perfectly, for Ken Burns, with what is going on right now in the US.
  • Selective Interview Subjects: Burns interviewed 1,000 interviewees and got only 100 interviews. Some people don’t want to have stumbling, some people clam up.
  • Be Honest and Persistent: being completely transparent.

Conducting an Interview

  • Stay Open to Possibilities: you don’t know what is going to
  • Conducting an Interview: be very nervous in the interview, be humble. If it doesn’t work, then take the blame and or say we moved in another direction. Ken Burns asks the subject to insert the question into their answer so that editing-wise his voice never has to appear in any of the films. You want to break down the wall and get them to drop their barriers.
  • Honour your interview subject: you should conduct an interview like you planned to meet him.
  • Stories Greater Than Facts: The facts aren’t as important as the story about the curiosities. About the stories in the war.
  • Ken Burns, does not treat his interviewees as transactional. Use your own imagination to effect emotional connection to the audience.
  • Ken Burns uses live cinematography that are still shots. The magic hour is the sun setting light.
  • Steal Shots: Sometimes you have to steal the shot if you can’t get access to the a certain area.
  • Lighting an Interview: make sure that you have eye line, don’t include anything other than the subject. Focus in on the face of the person.
  • Shoot Interviews with A Light Crew…just easier.
  • Music is the Quickest to Feeling Art: music should not be an afterthought. Start to use particular themes in the key moments of the film. Get most favoured nation deals for the music. Ashokan Funeral was actually write in the 1980s but the instruments were of that area.
  • Editing Process: Trust your editors….Ken Burns actually doesn’t edit his own films these days.
  • Blind Assembly: worked on the narration, then you just hear a radio play. So you can then start to add the picture.
  • Messy Full Research Document: The first assembly, it should be very messy. There should be a daunting task to make the film to make it an actual film. Take it piece by piece.
  • Authenticity: You need to make sure that you convince the audience that this is another new thing, not a summary of someone else’s story.
  • Private Viewing: You need to follow up with the historical advisors. And then have a lot of bodies there to review the film before launch. Take very particular negative feedback and fix it, don’t give them scripts for the film or they will read that rather than watch the film.

Editing: A Process

  • It is the principles: You want to be able to edit your answer on how was your day. Tell a story. Not all 1,440 minutes of it.
  • Tempo In Art: You need to triage the quality of the film, it’s not about imposing yourself. Documentary film making is absolutely a tempo on the screen on musical notation, a film must be rhythmic.
  • The Vietnam War Introductory: The blind assembly is key, you have the dramatic structure. Scratch narration (use your own voice) until you have the best voice in town Peter Coyote..
  • It’s the personal story and intimacy of the character that people remember.
  • The Recording and Using Voice Over: the most important narrator has to be confident. Peter Coyote has to inhabit the non-journalist voice. You do not want to have the dramatic voice be done by a celebrity unless the content is able to flip the audience over so that they are in the scene, and can’t recognize the voiceover as a result. You want the front row lens in.
  • Rank the Quality of Performance in Real-Time: Give the narrator the script and then circle the narration runs that you liked in rank order.
  • Never Record the Voice Over to the Pictures: record to the words.
  • Sound Design: there is a lot of video footage without sound so Ken Burns has to create that. There are 175 recorded sounds in the Tet Offensive sequence of The Vietnam War.
  • The Artist’s Responsibility: it is the artists responsibility to lead the audience to hell but also to led them out.
  • Allow Moral Dissonance to Occur: interesting people populated most people. You should not self-select away. It’s not one thing or the other. There are strong divisions in the United States because it is such a vast country.
  • Decide Your Outlet: Distribution is needed. You want the most number of the people. Ken Burns learned that you give the film to PBS and it gets scale.

Evangelize the Film / Aspiration to Action

  • Allow the audience to assign their own meaning. You want the audience to have a conversation with you and they are continuing a conversation that they are having that conversation with you.
  • You need to go out there, nothing happens unless you start. You need to make the phone call to make sure you find that support. You need to jump over the chasm from aspiration to action. Don’t let your mind crush the idea, do something to get started.

MacKenzie King – Canada’s Pragmatist In Chief

The following is based on old notes + Allan Levine’s William Lyon MacKenzie King: A Life Guided by the Hand of Destiny + MacKenzie King’s own diaries.

An Academic Up to A Point

William Lyon MacKenzie, Mayor of York (later renamed Toronto), who led the failed Upper Canada Rebellion against the Family Compact, had a grandson with ambitions….William Lyon MacKenzie King (WLMK). And WLMK has since been ranked amongst the best Prime Ministers in Canada…longest serving. Why? He was calculating, bland and lacked a sense of humour but he was the inoffensive guy that the political system was designed to produce; before the technocratic Prime Minister’s Office could become an extension of the Prime Minister…MacKenzie Kng was an operator, a pragmatist in chief.

Educational Background: King did undergrad at University of Toronto then he did a masters in economics at the University of Chicago and then did PhD work at Harvard. He had a grudge with the UofT because he applied for a masters and they turned him down multiple times partly because of his anti-establishment student politics which upset the school’s dean. He moved to Ottawa in the late 1890s. which was still a lumber baron town and considered the ‘gloomy Pittsburgh of the north’ (usually associated with Hamilton).

The great fire of Hull in 1900, April 26th destroyed much of Hull, Quebec and more than 15,000 people lost their homes in Hull. The capital of Canada was a work in progress. Small. Canada itself was just getting started. It’s quite difficult to even fathom this past, a country so sparsely populated and under-developed. The standard of living of a Canadian today is insanely wealthy relative 100 years ago.

Small Country, Growing Population and Government Services

The competition for jobs in Ottawa was not that extreme and bilingualism was not a requirement and so MacKenzie King was able to move up quickly. As the lumber baron’s lost their economic power, many families turned to other means of support in the Ottawa valley. Government in the National Capital Region naturally grew through patronage, connections and while there weren’t unlimited jobs there were some….

From Journalist to Bureaucrat | A Taste of Perception As Reality

MacKenzie King’s career began as a journalist for the Labour Gazette which was a forum for labour issues which involved collecting certificates and firmly securing the support of the labour movement within the Liberal Party fold. In Ottawa, those in power rewarded their loyal supporters and intentionally ignored their opponents. Animosity between the two sides was bitter and deep, any story of statistics that even hinted the conservatives had done something positive was to be ignored. In one case, a judge had delivered a pro-labour decision but was a Tory supporter so Mueller (the editor of the Labour Gazette) found that unacceptable and Mackenzie King (who had covered the story) was forced to remove the reference. The fact was, for King in his diary, perception had become reality; partisanship was the mechanism for shoring up support, any sign of weakness or softness towards the other side was a basis for supporting that other side, for maybe giving ones vote to the other side or working with the other side. The competition is fierce for the budget of Canada. Weakness was not tolerated then and sadly (at a cost of having creative problem solvers involved) partisanship is still a going concern in partisan politics. A small change in intensity can be the difference between a majority government and opposition.

Becoming a Labour / Management Conciliator (Mediator)

Mackenzie King was swiftly promoted to the deputy minister for labour relations with a salary of $3,200. His meteoric rise was notable in the press of the time for example the Ottawa Journal mentioned him. In fact during a labour dispute in Valley Field, Quebec, Mackenzie King was sent by Wilfrid Laurier to defuse the situation. He manage to get concessions from both sides but as he was leaving, he also hung out with Liberal candidates and could be seen to publicly support Liberals stating that he hoped the Tory would lose in the 1900 election (after 18 years in power)… In the House of Commons, later Frederick Monk rose to accuse King of being a liberal political agent. Advocating on behalf of Liberal candidates is a no-no as a civil servant. Monk was vilified for attacking a civil servant but King learned a valuable lesson about even innocent public displays of partisanship being a harmful thing. The controversy likely brought King more attention, although Ottawa was a small town. Mackenzie King was a polite well liked fellow already.

King bought property on Lake Kingsmere for $200. That’s about $3,500 in 2021 money….Canada was a dirt poor country with a meager population of under 5 1/2 million in 1900.

King’s best friend in Ottawa, Bert Harper fell through river ice and died. King was consumed with grief in his diary for the soul of a man that King loved. Doesn’t necessarily mean there is anything beyond platonic love for a friend here. Mackenzie King’s diary is full of effusive language about loved ones, pets and girlfriends. King had a statue erected of Harper, in the image of Sir Galahad, which still stands at Parliament.

Focused on Work rather than Family

King had a platonic relationship with a married women Marjorie Hedridge. And it appears that it probably blossomed into an actual love affair at some point in the fall of 1902. However, there’s no actual evidence that there was a romantic relationship. Of course a lack of evidence does not mean it didn’t happen.

Eventually, by 1914 his relationship with Marjorie had shifted since his preoccupations with government were central. And she died by 1924 and he didn’t have much remorse for her which was a surprise to himself in his diary. Mackenzie King built the Kingsmere estate during this time.

Embed Your Work in Law and Academia

  • Labour relations were very poor in the early 20th century and union movements began to crop up as a response to management’s cold-bloodedness. 
  • King was responsible in part for the Industry Disputes Investigation Act passed in March 1907 which bans strikes, applies fines for strikers of $10 per day in public utilities and railways if there is an active government appointed investigation into those labour disputes. It was later put into question. Reality of life was more complicated than Kings idealistic theories. He believed that the greed of business owners and the radicalism of union leaders would naturallyrise up into conflicts. The better way was find common ground. 
  • In 1904, he had to convince the United Mine Workers of America, which had a local chapter in British Columbia, to give up their demand for eight hour days which was contrary to provincial labour laws and accept the pay of one dollar day and their own transportation to the mine located in Nanaimo. Mackenzie King had a knack for getting things done and so Wilfrid Laurier decided to invite him on the political side. He got King a by-election easy Liberal seat in 1908 and then made him Minister of Labour.
  • MacKenzie King was advising Laurier’s team on the 1907 Japanese riots. Mackenzie King’s diary suggests he did have a Anglo-Saxon pride about him…In fact, MacKenzie King wrote a report on the riots which was submitted to Harvard as a PhD thesis on “Oriental Immigration to Canada.” By the standards of today, King was deeply prejudiced, as was the average Canadian then.
  • In the early 20th century, newspapers were powerhouses of influence if you had support from one of the major newspapers you were ‘being made’ in effect. You’d get your honeymoon and then your teardown if you went against the muckrakers’ interests. The Globe and Empire / Mail, the Toronto Star, the Winnipeg Free Press…. these were the big papers in English Canada at the time.

End of an Era – 1911 Election

The 1911 election was Laurier’s swan song. The election was centred around concerns about liberalizing trade with United States as it was perceived by many to be a back door towards American conquest of Canada: protectionism being a critical component of Canada‘s existence. Tories had a war chest that they had built up. Mackenzie King lost his own seat and the corresponding Minister of Labour role. There was also an anti-Quebecer sentiment against Laurier and it was a good break from office for King….

Leaders Don’t Always Get their Heir Apparent

Laurier was not supportive of Mackenzie King (aged 36) being made leader of the party as Laurier considered resignation in the early-1910s. And King opted not to become leader of the Ontario Liberal party as he was offered $3,000 per year but instead he pivoted his political skills into get a job with John D Rockefeller from 1914 to 1918 (avoiding military service). King would work on supporting Rockefeller’s union negotiations in Colorado for example. Mackenzie King used his union conciliatory role to support John D Rockefeller‘s goal and had the opportunity to stay on and join the board of the Rockefeller organization but he opted not to. Instead he wrote Industry and Humanity which appears to be a kind of mystic public intellectual book rather than a hard science or political science analysis of union negotiations. It had some strong ideas around “management and unions being allies rather than foes”. The book is a bit goofy, unclear and eccentric, having read some excepts, but shows the general principles that he would embed into the Liberal Party…

Opposing Conscription in 1917 – The Three Major Considerations in Canadian Politics…..

There is an old Ottawa joke What are the three major policy considerations in Canada?” “First, there’s Quebec, Second, what does Quebec want and also, did I mention Quebec?” While still working for Rockefeller, King continued to support Laurier and supported the anti-conscription position that the Liberal party had split-up over, which in the short-run was harmful and led to a Union party victory in 1917, but would later catapult King into leadership and solidify support in Quebec which is central in Canadian politics historically and to this day.

Prior to Laurier’s death in February 1919, he had already made it clear (in King’s diary at least) that MacKenzie King was the preferred choice to lead the Liberal party:

King had befriended many key allies in the Liberal caucus and met up with Lady Laurier who confirmed her view that King was her husband’s preferred successor (not that there were really any good alternatives).

1919 Leadership Convention – Coalition Building Once Again

He basically embraced Laurier’s legacy of freedom and liberty, embraced labour interests (the party left), supported welfare reform and provided a fiery attack on Toryism, meanwhile Fielding was originally anti-confederation in the 1890s as premier of Nova Scotia, had got Montreal elites on his side, as well as provincial liberal satellites but was 70 years old at the time. Mackenzie King was not a charismatic leader but he was a tactician, bringing the pro-Conscriptions back into the fold + the progressive agrarian vote. He’s also just a really lucky guy, since winning that 1919 leadership might have been the optimal window he would have for getting the top job ie. leaders of the centrist political party typically absorb the vast majority of Canadian public preferences across language and regional divides, and Fielding would have a had at least one or two terms with MacKenzie King potentially being embroiled in some scandal in that intervening period….the unknowable counterfactual…still instructive.

Tactician of Timing, Hugging the Middle, Balancing Interests, Owning His Own Story

  • We quickly begin to realize, after he becomes the leader of the Liberal Party in 1919, that bland is grand. MacKenzie King’s true skill was to identify and know when to address a problem before it gets too large and when to let a problem fester. Everything needs to land on good timing, MacKenzie King was excellent at this…Or is that historical revisionism? Not sure. He also meticulously tracked all his experiences in a diary, the details of which was a useful reference point for his political strategy….and for historians to make fun of his peculiar lifestyle. He was obsessed with number patterns to say nothing of the seances, which is mentioned lower down this post..
  • Extending his skill-set in conciliation, MacKenzie King facilitated bargaining agreements between different factions of the Liberal party in a political application of liberal corporatism (i.e managing interest groups in a negotiated distribution of political resources, rather than attempting to represent the vast ‘hard to know’ society at large). Typically, in elections King would try to make appeals to coalition groups as a good guess of the ‘mood of the country’ and then govern with corporatism. For example, he was excellent at working with Ernest Lapointe to ensure no policy would rattle the French Canadian electorate (using anecdotal deductive feedback, media feedback and eventually polling data) of course these were still good guesses. Then in legislation, King was keen to appease the Quebec leadership who wanted their parliamentarians to also be able to hold board seats while remaining MPs, for example.
  • The Conservatives were dreadful at bridging white Anglo-Saxons with French Canadians. The only true coalition was in the 1980s under Mulroney….hence the Liberal party dominances in the 20th century.
  • King was keen to co-opt people with extreme views into the Liberal fold and the fold of government. ‘Why wallow in opposition when you can make a difference? ‘ King wrote in his diary on October 15th, 1935.
  • Mackenzie King was very vague in his word choices and not very interested in being committed without an exit option. He was hyper-pragmatic and optics oriented (never smiling in public during the war years of ’39 – ’45). Leaving doubt as to his positions was ideal in order to allow for triangulation (ie. capturing the support of a wider group of people rather than having a specific policy that people can either support or reject outright). This triangulation was especially helpful if he needed to win support from progressives or other fringe parties in a minority parliament. He was excellent at avoiding commitments and getting himself entangled in obligations that he couldn’t fulfill.
  • His speeches had the distinction of being unclear but seemingly sensible. His statements that seemed like direct answers were frequently un-interpretable. He looked at things from a flexible pragmatic lens in his decision making and looked at things from a technical standpoint about what could be achieved from the public optics perspective.
  • As PM, he exercises more power *proportionally* than a US president. He has full latitude to shape the agenda in the House of Commons. In Canada, the legislative branch is more of twig under the foot of a benevolent (and sometimes foolish) dictatorial prime minister. The right temperament is that of King relative to a Bennett or Meighen. And as such, by the time Canada becomes larger and thus more complex to administer, the need for a technical Prime Ministers Office emerged.  
  • King was a technical maneuver-er. When the crisis at Chanak broke, indicating that Canada might be required to raise troops for the British Empire, King said such a decision would require parliamentary approval…and since parliament wasn’t in session, that would be tough….adding that the matter wasn’t important enough to get parliament together.
  • As mentioned above, MacKenzie King was accused even by his own caucus of not being capable of making a direct statement and delaying decisions: an evasive tactician. As a Prime Minister, you don’t have to make appeals to those below you in the pecking order. He went uncontested in cabinet often. Unlike in the legislative process of the US government which has three strong branches of government, Canada has the Prime Minister (now augmented with the PMO), the legislative branch (more of a twig) which is largely beholden to the Prime Minister and the judicial branch was less activist relative to the US, for example. 
  • Unfortunately, the detail that you would expect from biographers is really not there, we don’t have anyone like a Robert Caro in Canada to give the level of detail and insight that a study of King deserves. Also everyone involved has passed away. All we have is an unreliable narrator in the form of MacKenzie King’s diaries which are a kind of Wacky Willie’s World talking to his dead parents on the regular, feeling his mother’s presence every evening and generally putting things in a positive light for himself as a diary should.

His first term? Well, MacKenzie King implemented the Chinese Immigration Ban of 1923 which sadly reflects a strategic block of voting interests in BC at the time.

In the 1925 campaign, MacKenzie King was not the ideal radio star. But because the medium was relatively new many were enthusiastic supporters even saying that he had a “pleasant voice”. Listening to old reels of King’s presentation he actually has a high-pitched whiny type voice and very little in the way of charisma. He exudes the characteristics of a skillful, quiet bureaucrat, tactician. 

Mackenzie King in his diary claims that his dead father was in the crowd at one of his rallies and was inspired such that he would surely win the 1925 election. He also had dream sequences involving his brother Max that he believed meant certain victory.

The Rational Bully versus the Senior Dignitary

With the outcome of the 1925 election in which the Tories had more seats than the Liberals, Mackenzie King went to Lord Byng to see if he could form a government with fewer seats but with a viable coalition with the ‘Progs’. This was not such a stretch since King seems to have considered the French Canadian Liberals to be a coalition with English Canadian Liberals throughout his first term, stating for example the “Bank of Montreal…nearly put 1 million dollars to elect 10 Fr.CanLiberals, to hold the balance of power, and get rid of Meighen.

The person who can ‘command a majority’ should be the PM was King’s thinking. King had even lost his own seat in North York in the election and all of his major cabinet ministers also lost their seats. Lord Byng had mentioned in 1924 that he was not a constitutional expert and would be giving Mackenzie King full latitude in any decisions as a docile Governor General. However in this post-1925 election meeting, Lord Byng’s affectations had changed.

Sitting in front of the fireplace at the Government House, he gave Mackenzie King three options:

  • 1) Dissolution and another election immediately which the public would not appreciate,
  • 2) Mackenzie King resigns and Meighen (with the largest block could become PM) or 
  • 3) Mackenzie King continues as Prime Minister with a coalition. 

Lord Byng suggested that having to kow-tow towards the Progressives and JS Woodsworth would be seen by the public as holding on to power for power’s sake. Mackenzie King was quietly outraged that Lord Byng might actually voice his opinion on the situation when it wasn’t constitutionally warranted based on King’s constitutional experts: ‘he had no opinion.’ The seat count was such that Meighen would not be able to form a stable government, either. Meighen had been rejected generally, as far as King was concerned. And MacKenzie King seems particularly concerned that Meighen would have access to the ‘election machinery’ as Prime Minister, which implies some level of fraud in vote counting? Or simply the incumbents advantage?

MacKenzie King went back to Kingsmere after the first meeting with Lord Byng and drafted a letter of resignation but instead insisted on staying on and didn’t complete that letter. He returned to Lord Byng’s house the next morning and said that Byng was either to “Accept” or “Reject” the decision of the Prime Minister. The governor general had “no right to express his opinion” about who should be given the right to form the next government. 

Lord Byng accepted the situation with the proviso that Meighen would be allowed to form a government before King could snap another election…..King said sure, later to reneg on that commitment, a bait & switch that kept King in his job.

Hindsight Meighen was a Goof or Unlucky?

Meanwhile Meighen had said publicly that the general will should be put to the people he didn’t necessarily want a ‘referendum’ but his statement was considered “heresy” for him to ask for a general election on the basis of what had transpired. 

MacKenzie King’s steely strength and confidence during this first part of the constitutional crisis, known as the King-Byng Affair. And it could be attributed to his séances with his Brother, Dad, Sister and Mother whom he spoke with on the regular beyond the grave…strengthening his drive to hold on to power.

So, MacKenzie King was able to stay on without having a parliamentary seat. He was mistreated by Lord Byng at a hockey game in Toronto where Byng publicly snubbed King but the balance of power remained with the progressives. Mackenzie King believed that Meighen and the Tories would not be able to hold on to government with the number of seats they had. Their ideological rift with the progressives would not allow Meighen to govern for long. King knew that JS Woodsworth did not want to work with the Tories and he used that to his advantage. 

MacKenzie King was able to get a seat in Prince Albert, Saskatchewan as it was the easiest seat to win in Canada for a Liberal…at the time.

King-Byng Affair – June 26 to 29, 1926

In June of 1926, MacKenzie King was not able to pass a tough bill and went to Lord Byng to request a general election. His Cabinet colleagues agreed with his analysis below:

At the Government House, MacKenzie snacked on bread and butter and sipped tea while explaining to Lord Byng what he wanted to do:

  1. An amendment to a bill (relating to the Customs Department scandal) had been defeated on a majority of two against the bill. With an adjournment in which the government was sustained by a vote of one, it was not sustainable if a single government parliamentarian was not present for every vote.
  2. King’s solution was a dissolution, as “the only means of satisfactorily solving the situation.
  3. Adding that Meighen “could be sent for” but was unlikely to be able to gain the confidence of the House.
  4. That King did not think Lord Byng could “afford to refuse me dissolution and grant dissolution to anyone else; that should he refuse, this circumstance would become a factor in a general election and might do himself personally,…irreparable harm, that it would be a kind procedure that would be unconstitutional and would not be approved in any part of the Empire.”
  5. That before, you (Lord Byng) say anything, consider what I (MacKenzie King) have just said.

Lord Byng’s response was :

  1. King had had his chance and that the machinery of government should be given to the other side for a chance at government.
  2. Byng added last time, MacKenzie King had said “It was for parliament to decide” Byng repeated the phrase several times and said that the parliament had decided against King.
  3. King’s argument that he could carry on was in direct contradiction to his prior statement and that he thought the country was against King and that he, King, was holding on unduly…

Byng’s role as governor general was to do whatever Mackenzie King advised of him, as far as King was concerned, but Lord Byng wanted to give Meighen a chance, despite that. Over a weekend of successive meetings from June 26 to June 29, Mackenzie King pushed his case, he even threatened to get the British to intervene, ironic given MacKenzie King autonomy drive for Canada in relation to Britain. In one of the arguments Lord being said “you love power” MaKenzie King explained that “there was no man for whom I had greater love, affection and regard, and that it was to save him from a very serious error, as well as to maintain a great constitutional principle, that I was advising him to take this course.” And that giving Meighen the chance to govern would cause serious injury to British / Canadian relations. Lord Byng nauseated said “I am an old man with very few years left and you’re a young man with many years ahead of you. Could you give me a little bit of a break here?“

In one of the biggest miscalculations in Tory political history, Arthur Meighen foolishly accepted the chance to form a government from Byng and he did a poor job of it as Mackenzie King expected. Meighen had been for conscription and high tariffs which were diametrically opposed by most French Canadians (+ the Montreal elite). He was not able to hold onto power for more than 80 days but then had to call an election for September 1926. On the campaign trail, Meighen was against old age pension at $240 and publicly ridiculed a senior citizen who suggested that he should have such a pension according to John Diefenbaker, who was at that rally, Meighen certainly won the debate but lost the crowd. Meighen was a hyper principled ideological guy and that hurt his chances. 

1926 Election – 80 Days in the Wilderness / Opposition

MacKenzie King ran on an anti-Crown ticket capitalizing on his fight with Lord Byng. He defeated John Diefenbaker in Prince Albert and the Liberals won a 116 seat majority. And he knew he was going to win because his mother had told him in a séance.

He was happy to see Meighen go as he believed he “lowers the whole tone & standards of public life

From that incident, Lord Byng and his wife viewed Mackenzie King as a “liar and a traitor.” For basically making her husband look like an idiot.

MacKenzie King continued to believe that his family members were guiding his hand and supporting him in every way. He was back in power after a stressful year of uncertainty that he navigated with the confidence of someone who thought spirits were protecting him.

MacKenzie King wanted autonomy from Britain, he didn’t want to be held accountable for British treaties. He established an embassy in places like Washington sending Vincent Massey as their first representative. MacKenzie King’s issue was the connection to Britain not that it should be severed but that Canada should be given far more flexibility and not be prevented from its own foreign policy.

Surround Yourself With People Who Can Compensate For Your Faults

MacKenzie King did not speak French at all. Shocking but true. Ernest Lapointe (de facto co-Prime Minister) became a critical support for Mackenzie King from 1921 on and through this period, the federal government had a lot of war debt and had nationalized the railways and therefore was not able to help out the provinces. As the financial crisis in 1929 materialized, Mackenzie King anticipated difficulties ahead for his re-election in 1931 which would be the latest he could pull the trigger on having an election (typically, you would do that if you knew you were a lame-duck Prime Minister; better to snap when convenient to you).

On economic policy, Mackenzie King was effectively an advocate of a variant of the laissez-faire capitalism. He believed that private enterprise was the root of all activity, did not accept that government should function across all areas of life. And as such he did not also believe that the federal government should intervene in provincial funding and budgeting. In a famous speech in the house of commons Mackenzie King (having already had three glasses of wine from a luncheon with Premier Hepburn of Ontario) made shocking statements in the House of Commons: 

  •  1) unemployment is the responsibility of provinces and municipalities; (true)
  •  2) the unemployment emergency is not real, not evident; (wrong)
  • 3) as the Prime Minister, he would never give any money to Tory governments not even a five cent piece; (rhetorical)
  • 4) maybe he would give some money to some progressive premieres: (flippant)
  • 5) at the federal level we have other priorities.

The House of Commons erupted in anger over this statement. And he later, in his diary, regretted this greatly and realized that he was not prepared for this new challenge. This statement would come to haunt him as he handed over the reigns to RB Bennett and made a joke about it with himself…after the election:

He dissolved the parliament in July 28th, 1930 because he believed that there was a downward trend economically although he wasn’t sure he believed that there would be an economic crisis off of the back of the US financial crisis ‘29….

The Liberal Party infrastructure was quite weak from 1926 to 1930, it had atrophied over the years. And the conservative campaign was aggressively mobilized and technologically savvy. And their leader was not Meighen, it was RB Bennett who “promised to use tariffs to blast away a hole into the markets of the world.” And crowds cheered him on. Mackenzie King, in his diary, believed that RB Bennett didn’t make much sense as his style wasn’t very appealing and King felt confident that he would defeat him.

Old Age Pension in 1928 was the signature legislation of the mid-to-late 1920s.

In terms of tariffs, in Western Canada, the Montreal high tariffs were beneficial to Montreal meanwhile Western producers would have to compete in the global market. So on the one hand, furniture had to come from Canadian manufacturers in central Canada even though there were producers in places like Minnesota and Washington state that could just as easily sell their products up north if there weren’t tariffs. The price of nationalism was that it served the interests of the existing population centres at the cost of new population centres.

The night before the 1930 election, MacKenzie King was somewhat confident in his diary entry:

1930 Election – Lucky Streak Continues

Election was held. MacKenzie King lost to the Tories 135 seats with 47.79% of the vote in the Liberals 89 seats with 45.5% of the vote. Mackenzie King was shocked but he also knew that RB Bennett would struggle to solve for unemployment:

In analyzing the defeat, King was surprised by the results in Quebec where the Tories had picked up 24 seats, an example of the swings that characterize a disaffected Quebec electorate. At any rate, this outcome, in hindsight, turned out to be a lucky reprieve for Mackenzie King.

In response to the failure of that federal election, Mackenzie King created the National Liberal Federation noting that “socialism is not the answer but I can see how it attracts the well-intentioned person.“

There was a residual scandal, the Beauharnois scandal in which there were issues that he had to answer for but Mackenzie King was able to weather 1930 to 1935, as the leader of the opposition.

Being the leader of the Opposition is not a fun job because you basically have to oppose everything and complain a lot. RB Bennett got the credit for the Statute of Westminster, 1931 which was annoying to Mackenzie King since he had done the leg work with the Balfour Declaration. Bennett imposed tariffs which undid a lot of the trade liberalization that the Liberals had initiated over the last decade, except for anything effecting the Montreal elite and contra-the West. The newspapers were turning on Mackenzie King, one article said he had become ‘withdrawn and intellectual of life of a recluse. He is out of touch with the trends and with the people. He is living in a groove as deep and narrow as a political grave.’ – Winnipeg Free Press, 1931

As the depression persisted, RB Bennett was a one-man government with no delegation skills. His popularity plummeted and he fired Harry Stevens who was big on price gouging. Stevens formed the Reconstruction Party which split the vote between conservatives in the 1935 election. RB Bennett’s fireside chats echoed what FDR was doing. Mackenzie King felt that there were many platitudes in Bennett’s speeches and the culmination of Bennet’s failure was in the Regina riots which was an anti-relief camp riot.

Séances…What to say about the Séances…

As PM, he lived in Laurier House, which was gifted to him by Lady Laurier a few years after her husband’s death. It was in that house that he communed with the dead.

  • MacKenzie King lived in his own head as we all do. Except, he believed that he could access the afterlife. While he regretted not having a wife and children who might have normalized his eccentricities, he instead turned to spiritualists and mysticism to connect with those he loved who were already long gone: ie Wilfrid Laurier, Shakespeare, Jesus, his Dad, his Mom, his Dogs, his Sister, his Brother….He did this self-soothing by relying on séances for his connections to loved ones long gone. He believed in it, and that’s all that really mattered. It worked for him. He was surrounded by his loved ones and they didn’t ask him for much since they were spirits: it’s a win-win.
  • He had three dogs named Pat, who’s ghosts roamed Laurier house.
  • He saw messages in shaving cream from the after life.
  • He worked with mediums, often women, who told him what he wanted to hear.
  • Just as having waking dreams where you see ghosts, it doesn’t make you crazy, he experienced hallucinations that he believed were real (a significant difference from most of us, but it helped him deal with the pressures of his job).
  • At one point, he actively bragged to the Governor General about talking to FDR “last night”…months after FDR had died. He wasn’t all that shy about his séance ways but it was after he passed away that it become public knowledge.
  • And there is something creepy about talking to your mom so frequently. Take any random diary after her death, and MacKenzie King will talk about feeling her presence. His mother pushed him into politics and he felt indebted to her.

Government In Waiting

MacKenzie King was getting tired as he was now entering his 60s. Maybe it was time to pack things in? Fact is, Mackenzie King attracted a skilled cabinet and the Liberals appeared to be the government in waiting as RB Bennett continued to perform poorly throughout his term. MacKenzie King did not have a leadership challenge because it wasn’t as if the expectation was that the Tories were going to have multiple terms early on. They had inherited the worst depression in modern history and a federal government with limited revenue and a philosophy that was laissez-faire, Bennett wasn’t the right guy for that time. Unlucky.

1935 – Return of the King

The 1935 election saw McKenzie King return to power. In their post-election meeting RB Bennett said Bennett knew he was going to lose a longtime ago.

Mackenzie King had strong opinions about Edward the 8th and Wallis Simpson but kept those to himself and maintained a very diplomatic position. He never answered questions. When it came to provincial governments lacking capital, Mackenzie King was not Keynesian in his strategy as that hadn’t taken root.

His relationship with FDR was a positive one where he attempted to negotiate a better relationship. Unlike Mackenzie King, FDR was surrounded by people who had axes to grind in their own ulterior motives. And so FDR befriended Mackenzie King as an outsider.

Back in Canada, Mackenzie King had three premiers to contend with:

Alberhart of Alberta: who was a social credit premier who advocated for a new form of capitalism which did not align with federal fiscal policy. As a result, Alberhart‘s policies were not able to come to full fruition but likely lacked rigour.

Duplessis of Quebec: the Union National under Duplessis had imposed a padlock law in which businesses could be shut if they had communists within their ranks. Unlike Alberta, where Mackenzie King was happy to shut down Alberta‘s unique monetary-esq policy approach, he was not willing to threaten national unity with Duplessis. 

Hepburn of Ontario: was also a major threat to Mackenzie King as a possible alternative liberal leader. Hepburn opposed the GM strike in Oshawa and had a theory that Mackenzie King was undermining him when it came to the Niagara River hydroelectric dam and felt that Mackenzie King and FDR were thwarting him and his agenda. 

Duplesis and Hepburn created an ‘unholy alliance’ with the explicit aim of ‘getting rid of Mackenzie King.’ 

Bland Works – An Example

Here’s an example of MacKenzie King speaking off the back of a train. Riveting stuff. As a technocrat bland really works for MacKenzie King.

Vision of a Mediator Between Great Powers

Mackenzie King showed interest in Hitler’s leadership. But he was not interested in putting Canada in an ‘untenable position’ in which he would have to side with the British Empire against the German dictator and strong man. Running roughshod over parliamentary deadlock and concession/compromise was part of the appeal fof King. King aslo felt he could be mediator, just like his prior work with labour/management disputes and government. In 1937, on a chance meeting in London, Mackenzie King met von Rippentrop and was invited to Berlin on the basis of his ‘agreeable’ views. MacKenzie King emphasized that he was born in Berlin, Ontario and he positioned himself as a potential uniter between the United Kingdom, United States and Germany as a kind of Canadian emissary.

On June 29 of 1937 after meeting Goering at the Berlin zoo (delivering some Canadian wildlife), MacKenzie King suggested to Goering that “if at any time we feel this freedom to be imperilled by any aggression towards Britain our people will almost certainly respond immediately to protect our common freedom.” When Goering figured King was somewhat agreeable, he set him up for a meeting with…believe it or not…Adolf Hitler.

Mackenzie King and Hitler had a 30 minute meeting that went on for over an hour and 15 minutes. Mackenzie King wrote 7,400 words, a moment by moment account of his meeting with Hitler. He felt that:

  • Hitler ‘was a visionary’ and ‘dangerous’ but Mackenzie King was impressed that Hitler was “self educated” and even said Hitler was “sweet” . (Diary, June 29, 1937)
  • That he was a recluse like MacKenzie King… (Diary, June 29, 1937)
  • That King could understand why Hitler was so popular as “he was empathetic…” (Diary, June 29, 1937)
  • Hitler appeared to be “a man of deep sincerity and a genuine patriot.” (Diary, June 29, 1937)
  • He wrote, “My sizing up of the man as I sat and talked with him was that he is really one who truly loves his fellow-men, and his country, and would make any sacrifice for their good.” (Diary, June 29, 1937)
  • King saw a lot of himself in Hitler, “As I talked with him, I could not but think of Joan of Arc. He is distinctly a mystic …. He is a teetotaller and also a vegetarian; is unmarried, abstemist in all his habits and ways.” (Diary, June 29, 1937)

MacKenzie King could not tell that Hitler was an idiotic evil villain despite prior behaviour like the Nuremberg laws etc because (not certain) King wanted to avoid war and thought he could persuade world peace, politics being the art of the possible, most potent when unexpected (maybe this Hitler will involve King in a world peace treaty? In the next few years…’38 or ’39). In their conversation, Hitler explained that unifying German speaking people was a priority (ie. invading Austria and Czechoslovakia). Mackenzie King probably, it’s not clear, underappreciated the lebensraum concept of more space for Germans.

They talked about Hitler’s theories relating to the Treaty of Versailles as unjust, the need to re-armor Germany and the horrible consequences of war….Hitler said that “I get my support from the people and the people do not want war”. The general concern was that Germany was re-arming not just for deterrence….

King left Hindenburg Palace with a signed and framed photograph of Hitler….He left Berlin saying he didn’t care for the militarism….Later when Chamberlain completed his “peace in our time” deal/gamble in the Munich Agreement, Mackenzie King described it as” a great day of rejoicing.” As a Prime Minister who didn’t like confrontation, it makes sense that MacKenzie King wanted to appease or mediate between Britain and Germany, not only for macro-level reasons but also to avoid another conscription crisis that could split the Liberal English and French factions….although perhaps that’s a stretch, he wasn’t expecting war.

In mid-1939, Mackenzie King was invited by Hitler to come to Berlin to possibly establish a peace treaty. The Canadian government was not able to book that event until November 20, 1939. But that meeting might have not been serious, anyway. Mackenzie King sent a cable to Poland, Italy and Germany asking if they would cease hostilities only Poland and Italy acknowledged the cable had arrived. This implied that Canada would be implicated in legal interventions therein and that the Nazis were up to something.

On September 1, 1939, Germany invaded Poland. MacKenzie King listened to mediums and went into a seance where it was claimed Hitler was to be ‘shot by a Pole’ that day and / or that Hitler was going to die within the year. In parliament, Mackenzie King made the declaration that war against Germany was certain on September 10 stating that ‘Canada was coveted by the Germans’ and that they were sure to come after us as well ‘inaction was support for Hitler’ and he got a standing ovation with only a few MPs including Woodsworth rejecting and / or resigning on the basis of the decision.

MacKenzie King returned to the bunk….Shockingly Collections Canada deleted more legible summaries of MacKenzie King’s diatiers, but it’s on the WayBack Machine: King and Germany

War-Time Prime Minister Gets Some Benefit of the Doubt

Mackenzie King implemented the War Measures Act which allowed the detention of illegal aliens or people deemed enemies of the country and or suppression of the press. Mackenzie King believed that Chamberlain’s Munich Pact was the trigger for declaring war on Germany and he was glad that it had been created (a rationalization) to establish when the line was to be crossed. In the newspapers, there were several calls for McKenzie King to resign and be replaced with MacNaughton or another military specialist. 

Duplessis saw the war as an opportunity to strengthen Quebec bargaining power in confederation or leave it and called an election. He sought to take advantage of the situation on an anti-conscription position sensing that this was yet another war in which conscription would be foisted on the Quebec people. The public basically believing that history repeats itself as well. So Mackenzie King and Lapointe campaigned against Duplessis and they succeed in defeating Duplessis in 1939.

Hepburn complained that Mackenzie King was not prepared enough for the war and hadn’t done a good job of preparing the soldiers. They didn’t have shoes or underwear and were poorly trained. However Mackenzie King was able to form a new majority government with 179 seats and he fought to Canadianize the Air Force, the British didn’t understand Canada’s inferiority complex but Mackenzie King refused to join Churchill’s War Cabinet and refused to go and work in London during the war. Here’s an example of MacKenzie King championing Canada:

When Mackenzie King was excluded from the Atlantic charter, he needed Winston Churchill and FDR to assuage his ego. At this time, Lapointe was stressed out, opposed various Quebec activities and he died in 1941 to be replaced by a new Quebec lieutenant, future Prime Minister Louis St Laurent. 

Okay, sometimes history repeats itself, sort of: Conscription 2.0

  • King was concerned that he might need to raise more troops then volunteers….and there was a bit of concern about there being conscription of home services (forced military service) but not for overseas services. This created ‘Zombies’ ie men who were not volunteers but were employed in the war effort. These Zombies were considered cowards by the vast majority of soldiers who were volunteers. The Zombies were constantly pressured to “go active” (ie change their status to volunteers).
  • This situation triggered a plebiscite regarding conscription on April 27th, 1942 which would relieve Godbout and MacKenzie King from their prior campaign commitments that there would be no conscription of Canadian citizens to fight overseas in battle.
  • King was rightly concerned that Gallop polls showed the English were for enabling conscription and the French were against conscription thus heightening the national unity question.
  • The Ligue pour la Défense du Canada united a young Pierre Trudeau with Laurendeau, Henri Bourassa and Jean Drapeau in voting “non”. And there may have also been support for the Vichy split up of France as the new normal. There were also arguments relating to anti-Semitism, regarding who was behind drawing Quebec into war. There were also arguments that suggested that if you don’t want to go then don’t go, vote no! Elsewhere, there was also opposition within the German and Ukrainian community in Saskatchewan and Alberta, so as usual (with a binary choice) it’s hard to draw causality from one or any of these arguments, it was a pile up of arguments on either side.
  • MacKenzie King uttered the famous phase: “Not necessarily conscription, but conscription if necessary” a classic of remaining aloof. For King, there was this odd situation that he wasn’t even sure that they needed conscription since there so many volunteers….and never really used the Zombies to back up the volunteers even though he won the plebiscite since it would fracture national unity anyway and fractured his cabinet AND there were 1.1M people in the Canadian military, half of which were volunteers so there should have been no shortage.
  • Some cabinet ministers threatened to resign if they didn’t send the Zombies overseas….so they eventually, in November 1944, forced 16K Zombies overseas but only a couple thousand ever fought….
  • The plebiscite on conscription was not necessary in the end…

Exclusion of Jewish Refugees

Regarding MacKenzie King’s morally repugnant anti-Semitism, he expressed in his journal a desire to avoid undesirables purchasing property near his home Kingsmere. He wrote for example, “there are good and bad Jews…and it is wrong to condemn a whole race or nation” meanwhile, he had a collection of anti-Semitic books relating to séances delivered to him from one of his medium friends. From 1920 to 1950 quotas, professional job discrimination at universities were common. Signs that would say “no Jews or dogs allowed” which is the kind of prejudice that Canadians today have atoned for. Judaism was associated with banking in the financial sector which was deemed amoral and had caused the financial crisis. Anglo-Saxons were race proud as well. And there was a great deal of anti-Semitism in Quebec as Judaism was perceived as not conducive to assimilation into French values which is a highly subjective claim.

Historically, this injustice all came to a head when the SS St. Louis arrived on Canadian shores, MacKenzie King had them turned away. Of their 907 passengers, 254 died in the holocaust…. 

  • Canada allowed 5,000 Jewish refugees; 
  • The US allowed 200,000 refugees; 
  • The United Kingdom allowed 70,000 refugees;
  • China allowed 25,000 refugees 

So, Canada in particular Quebec were clearly the most anti-Semitic of these countries in terms of its policy. Later in 1944, Duplessis claimed that King and then premier Godbout made a deal with the Jewish conspiracy group to settle 100K Jewish refugees in exchange for campaign financing. (Knowles, Valerie Strangers at Our Gates: Canadian Immigration and Immigration Policy, 1540–2006, Toronto: Dundun Press, 2007 page 149.)

As was the typical case, Mackenzie King and Lapointe were the key decision-makers in the government throughout the 21 years of his leadership. Quebec was the main star in the Canadian orbit and impacted immigration policy.

In BC, Japanese internment camps involved the impounding of over 1,200 boats and the internment of 22,000 Japanese Canadians. It is morally disturbing what happened. “It’s the Japanese themselves that need protection” was the logic King applied; arguing that the Caucasians would likely attack on Japanese Canadians. There was hysteria about a conceivable Japanese invasion of BC by mid-1942 which was coupled by cultural and racial prejudice in the form of the Asian Exclusion League, the 1907 riots, all pointing to a complex reality of fear of the other and inescapable lack of means by which we can identify the underlying loyalties of any other fellow human being. Another factor was MacKenzie King, who expressed happiness that the Hiroshima bomb was dropped on Japanese and not Europeans. He viewed Germans and Italians as security threats within Canada and was supportive of deportation or voluntary repatriation in either case.

The famous Quebec summit was a way to bring these three major influential powers in line. Churchill, FDR and Mackenzie King got together “we three have more experience in years of government than anyone in our three countries.” MacKenzie King felt good about that summit after having being excluded from the Atlantic charter.

MacKenzie King at FDR’s funeral

There was the Gouzenko defection that McKenzie King came and cleaned up but he stayed in power for an additional two years because he wanted to beat MacDonald‘s record of 6,937 days in power as Prime Minister.

The Great Pragmatist in Chief

There is but one rule in politics you can be principled and committed as you like but without power what is the point? How did William Lyon MacKenzie King do it? His timing was good. He kept Quebec happy, he was blessed with some really incompetent conservatives who alienated Quebec and he was lucky that there were no Quebec nationalist political parties in the 1920s to 40s. He was incredibly bland in his speeches, he rarely said anything newsworthy ever but he understood human nature and knew how to operate the machinery of government. He was very embarrassing on critical social matters but Canada then is not Canada now. And we are better for it, we will need to consider how to avoid morally repugnant choices in the future and in the present day.

MacKenzie King died in 1950.

Allan Levine’s biography leaves out a lot of material:

  1. Prostitution was never mentioned which is odd since that is the most frequently mentioned sensationalism of the WLMK story thanks to A Very Double Life by Stacey CP, the historian who interpreted diary passages to be about prostitutes. MacKenzie King was big on religiously saving prostitutes and there were references to him helping them and vice versa ….
  2. No biography is available that details how MacKenzie King operated his cabinet, whips, how policy was formulated. How did he work with the civil service, ultimately he was a mandarin and understood what they did for a living and didn’t want to do that for another decade, but how did he manage them? Did they get the better of him? There is no Robert Caro type journalist…the diaries are a good start, but it’s a shame we can’t corroborate those stories since all the principal actors are long gone…
  3. Where’s the indigenous and residential schools in the biographies of MacKenzie King? It’s simply not addressed.
  4. Collections Canada from 2002 were lost or discontinued in a site migration or otherwise but it contains a few solid summaries of MacKenzie King’s Diarie (saved by WayBackMachine). The Diaries, themselves are an extensive, day by day diary from the 1890s to the 1950s which is too long to review in their entirety so focusing on specific events makes more sense.

Takeaways and Insights from Barack Obama’s A Promised Land

Representative Democracy is Emotional / Inspiration to the Public and then Rational / Legal to the Legislator

When Harold Washington became the first African American mayor of Chicago, it wasn’t so much what the guy did (legislatively), it was how he made you feel, according to Obama. Because having Washington as mayor of Chicago suggested that someone who looked like Obama could make a difference. Symbolism matters. For Obama, results aren’t necessarily as important as the symbolism which is foreshadowing for the Obama presidency….Legislatively, as we know, Obama struggled as president. You can blame others all you like, the fact is, he wasn’t able to get as much done over an 8 year presidency as he marketed in order to get there. The trifecta of special interests, money and deadlock were increasingly powerful at the federal level. But….the symbolism of having the first African-American president is impossible to calculate and also awesome….

A Good Philosophical Question for Every Citizen

Obama would ask, as a community organizer, ‘how are things right now and how do you want them to be?’ The gap between the way the world is and the world you as an individual want is an important consequentialist question. Systematic (financial, institutional, social) racism [plus individual acts of racism] has led to discrimination on many aspects of life including getting textbooks, the time value of money, SAT prep and being passed over for bank loans. Solutions need to come from aspirations, values (what do you deductively believe is needed). Unfortunately, what we think is needed isn’t always what we actually need….

Rising Up Takes Grit

Obama worked on project vote ‘92. And in his run for state senator in Illinois, thanks to his volunteer work on that project, he had built credibility and would continue teaching while a senator. Obama’s 1997 campaign gathered four times the number of signatures to register because they figured that the Party would invalidate a huge number of signatures. He won because he was better organized.

Horse Trading in Illinois State Senate (1997 – 2004)

  • Being a state senator was like being “a mushroom….covered in s#@$ in a dark room….” Illinois politics was basically a backroom-dealers forum, where as long as you didn’t hit on any hot button issues that would get attention in the press, 90% of the public didn’t care. It was the worst aspects of representative democracy; simply not about representing actual voters but rather the competing legislative factions (i.e the disgusting sausage factory). As such, the debates on the floor were ignored. For Obama, the thought was that if you took a chance on an innovative policy idea, it could cost yourself the seat. The Democrats were also in the minority during 5 of his 7 years in that role.
  • The gerrymandering in Illinois (urban/rural/race) was such that if you wanted to get services for your constituents you truly had to convince senators in other districts to support your campaign. And that created a pork barrel / horse trading / crossing the aisle approach on votes that you are tacitly obligated to support in exchange for what your constituents care about.
  • Obama didn’t dig the legislative realities…and this would haunt him as president where he was relatively ineffective in pushing through policy that his rhetoric demanded.
  • At the first available opportunity, Obama wanted out. He had commuted to Springfield and played poker one too many times.
  • His first offramp was to run against Bobby Rush for Illinois’s 1st congressional district for the US House of Representatives in 2000. However, Congressman Bobby Rush had an 80% approval rating. Then Bobby Rush’s son was shot and killed which further bolstered his support. Obama lost by 30% on a ticket of bridging divisions.

Losing Two Races In A Row = Your Political Career is Likely Over

Trying again, Obama told Michelle that “if we loss this [2004 US Senate race] then we will be out of politics for good.” Of course, politics is random and chaotic. And he figured that if he cleared the democratic field, he “would be able to run to end zone untouched.” Obama sought support from the most powerful in Illinois politics within the black community. “Wouldn’t it be great if I was elected to the US Senate then we would have a black person at the federal level” was Obama’s pitch. David Axelrod was also brought on the campaign. When David Axelrod agreed to work with Obama, he insisted that Obama raise 5 million dollars…or drop out. Hence, fundraising became a major pre-occupation….and likely involved selling his candidacy in the ridiculous double game that is fundraising. Attracting donor that then think you are in their back pocket, while turning around and doing what you want, donors be damned in some or many cases.

Your Spouse May Be Rational and Therefore Not Believe in You Fully

When Obama was a state senator, Michelle’s point was “just promise me I don’t have to move to Springfield.” Now, Obama’s strategy, if they won (and needed a second home in Washington), would be to write a second book, as the only black senator, he would get a lot of attention nationally and be able to sell his book and live off the proceeds. Michelle said that was “magic bean talk” considering his Dreams of My Father book (1997) was not lucrative. It seemed like climbing up the bean stock and slaying the giant and then bringing back the golden eggs. She doubted him. She even said that he would not get her vote. She was wrong.

Politics as Poetry 1, Winning with Inspirational Words / Bold Leadership Positions

Obama needed to raise money, increase visibility in the media and issue sound bites that resonate. He got support from unions etc and gave a speech about the Iraq war that made waves for its obvious prescience. I am not against war. But Iraq is not Al Qaeda. Obama got attention online for opposing the War in Iraq. It was a really good speech as he argued what many in Canada, for example, recognized, that the US had not finished the war in Afghanistan etc. By 2004 Obama had the momentum. On March 6th, 2004 Obama won the nomination which was as good as winning that actual US Senate seat. He won with all kinds of demographic groups and worked with Robert Gibbs. All the while, Obama was thinking about his manuscript called The Audacity of Hope.

Politics as Poetry 2, The 15 Minute Speech That Changed American Politics

There’s not a liberal America and a conservative America – there’s the United States of America.” – DNC keynote speech 2004

  • A lot of good politics is poetry and Obama’s speech at the Democratic convention in 2004 was an exceptional case in that column. If you watch JFK, it’s clear Obama was more charismatic than JFK. If you watch Bill Clinton, it’s clear Obama was more poetic than Bill Clinton. It’s not just what you say, it’s what they hear.
  • Obama was the James Bond of public speaking. He was slick whenever he had prepared remarks.
  • The buzz was palpable: black, handsome, well-educated, charismatic, Obama was untarnished and exciting. The idea of a Hollywood-like Black president was a delicious storyline, it was pure America. Emotionally, he resonated with a wide base even if it was paper thin or kind of superficial.
  • His senate race was made easier as a result of the DNC speech as well. The crowd sizes for Obama were massive. The Republican candidate chased Obama around with a video camera hoping to catch him in a gaffe, that’s how desperate they were and then that opponent dropped out when they couldn’t find anything. The Republicans carted out Alan Keyes as a backup but he was a cynical play in a Blue state.
  • Obama won while Kerry lost in 2004. Obama got an apartment in Washington. Michelle how did you pull this off? “Magic beans baby magic beans.” Obama wanted to be a workhorse. Obama was able to attract talent at 43 years old.

Jobs That are Good Training Grounds but You’re Not Going to Have Much to Show for It

1) Community Organizer,
2) Illinois State Senator in Illinois,
3) and yes, even US Senator…

Congress (Senate and the House) was a grand debate forum but it was all managed by the Republican majority which roll called the Democrats in a, what-felt-like, permanent majority. How long would it take for things to be possible in Congress? In A Promised Land, Barack Obama points out that Illinois state senate was a waste of time, Washington government was also a messy situation where the longer you spent there the more tarnished you became. It’s a common complaint that the only people who stick around during the long wilderness of opposition are unfortunately a bit nutty at times. Obama is not a Legislation guy, maybe he read and didn’t like Lyndon Johnson’s approach or maybe he figured he could wing it. This ‘just do it’ approach would be a problem when it came to the horse trading, persuading the other side and in getting legislation passed in the US legislative branch.

The Power of Identity Politics Is Awesome, If You’ve Got It Flaunt It

There is a strand of political thought that says a white male cannot really represent the perspective of a different identifiable kind of fellow human being and or that a group of men will develop group think in the legislative process and overlook the perspective of fellow human beings. It’s a well regarded argument… So much so that Obama was being catapulted into the lime light on the back of his 2004 DNC speech + all his other accolades.

When there is pressure to run for president, you should heed the call. For Obama, the groupthink in the US senate was going to chip away at his brand and half of Democrats supported the war in Iraq or other bad Republican policy in exchange for various horse trades. Obama didn’t believe in destiny. But he also didn’t want to play the legislative game. Meanwhile, he was getting a disproportionate amount of national support. A lot of attention was directed at him. They wanted him to run in 2008 because he was rock solid, had the pedigree, presentation skills and was well liked. Ted Kennedy brought him into his office and said ‘as a matter fact, you’re not gonna be able to win without taking a chance and doing it.’…‘You’re going to regret not doing this if you don’t and it’s the time that chooses you not the other way around.’….’There is already a lot of energy around your campaign suggesting that this was very doable.’ – Ted Kennedy. Identity politics was truly Obama’s secret sauce alongside his politics as poetry skill-set…Again, this would be a problem when it came to legislating as president since Obama didn’t like how the sausage is made.

Who Wants to Hitch Themselves to Your Wagon? That’s the Best Test

In party politics, you build a campaign and attract talent. Chris Dodd and Hilary Clinton etc all planned to run. At this point in 2006, Obama had to run! He admits that his megalomania was driving the idea that he should run in 2008. Obama worked in his campaign manifesto, triangulations that were aspiration and vague and poetic, all of which was exemplified in the Audacity of Hope: a major publication success. “I am thinking about the midterm 2006, running for something else.” Obama mused…. Gibbs said “Fuck That!” He was not irrelevant, Gibbs realized that he could win and become president. Go big or go home.

The Laser Focused Blank Slate over the Tarnished Persona – Should Obama Have Waited?

“Change will not come if we wait from some other person or if we wait for some other time. We are the ones we’ve been waiting for. We are the change we seek.” – Campaign Speech 2008

  • Time = baggage.
  • Media = perfectionists.
  • Partisans = dumpster divers / demonization
  • Politicians = adversarial / power-hungry / insular / sheltered
  • Leadership = communicating with charisma, inspiration and hope
  • Obama played partisan games as well, demonizing Republicans etc. But the above factors put Obama in the 1st row of candidates in the Democratic 2008 primaries even though he literally had done nothing of significance legislatively on the state and US senatorial level. It’s like deciding you should become the CEO of a company after managing one of its retail stores….
  • But this has happened before…note also that each of these men started very young on their path….
  • JFK (Junior senator was president at 43)…
  • Barack Obama (Junior US senator was president at 47…)
  • More experience but young:
  • Teddy Roosevelt (Governor of NY, technocrat was president at 42)…
  • Bill Clinton (Governor of AK was president at 46…)
  • Ulysses Grant (Military leader was president at 46…)

Note that JFK and Obama were both ineffective at passing legislation for the most part, as you can see below + according to Robert Caro. Of course, data doesn’t tell the story. Generally good at handling global events, but neither those two inexperienced senators were able to really do what Lyndon Johnson or Franklin D Roosevelt were able to do legislatively.

Sacrificing Your Family for The Big Picture

  • David Plouffe (campaign manager) said Obama needed to use the internet to fundraise for individual donors + then he needed early primary momentum to overcome the Clinton juggernaut. Obama did not see Michelle or the kids much for 2 whole years. He needed to be pathological / laser focused. The chance to compete at this level, there were a lot of Democrats running for president; he asked himself, why do I need to get into the White House. Why me! Spark for a new generation! Change politics as usual!

Don’t Be Too Academic, Although It Is A Better Starting Point than the Inverse

The belief that he should not lose his nerve was critical. In 2007, Obama announced in Springfield. And he was hoping to catch lightning in a bottle. Obama wasn’t really all that good, he worried. Then he made a major gaffe by saying that the lives of American soldiers had been wasted in Iraq. Obama had 4 arguments for every issue.

About Hillary

On Hillary Clinton, Obama felt she was strong on policy, solid on experience however she had been overly scripted / calculating, she was very hard working but she couldn’t break free of the Clinton political divide.

Emotive Debate Techniques Rule the Modern Age

The best answers in the debates were to show that you would always be on their side. Emotional answers. Not these skirting the issue answers. You needed to show you cared! People are moved by emotions not facts. Obama was not well organized. Donors could count on us raising their taxes, Obama said. It was a movement with Obama as spokesman. This is not up to you. We are all in this.

Iowa Caucusing, A Major Campaign Strategy / Investment, Win Early

Caucusing is time consuming and means you have to make an evening out if it. Democratic caucuses needed to win people over. Covered 90 counties and target the democratic. Obama had to try to get the unorthodox ideas off the table, 1 idea was genius, a butter bust of Obama with a sign that read: vote for the guy with big ears! Anti-pant suits was not appropriate, Obama wanted a positive campaign. Not a nasty campaign. 87 days in Iowa. The 90 volunteers for each county was key, Obama’s team learned to listen to volunteers. Month by month they worked Iowa. Field organizers. How did job creation programs fail? How are things as they are and how ought they be?

Retail Politics, Obama had it better than Clinton

There was a lot of excitement in the air with the possibility that Obama could win. And a little woman, about 5’3″, 65 years old, in a big church hat, with big glasses, smiled right at Obama at a campaign event. And she said, ‘Fired up!’ They all said, ‘Fired up!’ We hear her shout, ‘Ready to go!’ And the people said, ‘Ready to go!’ That’s the kind of electricity Obama created with his candidacy: that je ne sais quoi. “Getting fired up and ready to go!” was the chant that Edith Childs shouted in her own public engagements and it stuck to Obama for the rest of the campaign.

Crafting Winning Views

Politicians don’t want to tell hard truths, Obama was willing to say things that Clinton couldn’t, like the Iraq war was a mistake. In reality, Clinton probably supported the Iraq war in exchange for getting other bills passed through horse trading. Obama was unconventional. On foreign policy, Obama said he would take the shot at Osama Bin Laden if Pakistan was harboring the terrorist. The primary voters supported his views while the Democratic party elite disagreed with Obama’s foreign policy approach.

Your opponent’s policies have failed and Washington is broken. Who can disagree?

Nasty Campaign Attacks, Usually Involve Warping Own Statements

  • Joe Biden didn’t think Obama had the maturity to lead. Hilary Clinton’s campaign guy said that Obama had dealt drugs in college. One of Obama’s staff (Samantha Power) called Clinton a ‘monster’ to reporters. Attacking her people, Clinton was unhappy and let him know at the tarmac. Obama didn’t get all the good breaks.
  • He made a “gaffe” about how Reagan had reframed the US which was taken out of context to seem to be an endorsement. Bill Clinton didn’t reframe American politics the way Reagan had.
  • On the debate stage, Clinton was asked ‘How do you feel about being unlikeable, Hillary?’ Obama said “you’re likeable enough” then the story exploded as a sexist move.
  • Clinton cried at an NH campaign event and some thought it was a good media position. Then she won the primary….journalists without data science training though there was a causal link (i.e. that Hillary’s tears = victory)…
  • Obama said that setbacks were expected.
  • The fact is, each candidate was trying to convince the voting public that they themselves were more worthy than you. Your opponent will try to count every action you had taken to say that you have worse judgement.
  • Obama won Iowa with a massive turn out on January 3rd, 2008. Oprah was supportive of the campaign. Michelle was a closer.
  • He brought his extended family on the campaign for a visit. The community of America, how it manifests in Obama’s own diverse white/black multi-ethnic extended family!
  • Obama didn’t want to take black voters for granted but he also didn’t want to alienate the Democratic party base. Too much talk of civil rights and police brutality would basically turn his candidacy into an ethnic voice rather than a pan-American candidate, according to Obama. He wanted to win. He wanted to use language that captures the group that he needed to win over which was the majority whites. Hence, Obama was all about universal programs over specific black policy. According to Obama, blacks had to get inside and not push too hard on policy and just support Obama and trust change could be possible.
  • Jeremiah Wright was Obama’s pastor in Chicago and he had said America was bad while Obama was a member of that church. The Rolling Stone article comes out; he called Obama. Jeremiah Wright was a wingnut but also a pillar of his community. Wright became a victim very fast. Theologian. Said that America is racially motivated, Obama felt that he went “full ghetto” with the public attention he received for being associated with Obama. So Obama had to throw Wright under the bus. Cut ties. Obama did so unreservedly.
  • Michelle also said something harmful, “it’s the first time I am really proud of my country…” This was deemed Anti-American, just trying to score cheap political points.
  • Obama got a secret service detail early because of the number of threats to his life early. He was trapped by the secret service, though, unable to enjoy the freedoms he used to have.

Winning = one opponent says you’re too X and other opponents say you’re too Y

Obama was either too white, too mainstream, too radical…There is good and bad cholesterol. And good crazy and a bad crazy. Take the steps to gain justice in our time, type rhetoric was the perfect fluff that got Obama elected, sufficiently vague to appeal to a wide range of people, triangulation but with passion and poetry that Clinton could not exude. To win you have to show compassion for the down trodden for those who fell between the crack, the drug addicted single mother.

Inequality compounds itself both in financial and real terms. Manufacturing towns lost their life blood. SAT prep courses, etc. Ownership economy (the Bush approach) wasn’t working. Obama won the democratic nomination but two years of running for president cost him his share of time with his kids.

Later as president, Obama writes that he was perceived as either too chummy with Wall Street or too hard on Wall Street depending on which group you talked to. Too weak on Medicare for All or too aggressive…so you know you’re winning when different opponents are seeing different problems with you (ie. you are the everyman change agent).

Politics is Poetry 3, Winning Speech Lines

“The choice in this election is not between regions or religions or genders. It’s not about rich versus poor; young versus old; and it is not about black versus white. It’s about the past versus the future.” – South Carolina victory speech

Andy Favreau met Obama in 2004, his speech writing has become legendary. …

“And because of what you said, because you decided that change must come to Washington, because you believed that this year must be different than all the rest, because you chose to listen not to your doubts or your fears, but to your greatest hopes and highest aspirations, tonight we mark the end of one historic journey with the beginning of another, a journey that will bring a new and better day to America. Because of you, tonight I can stand here and say that I will be the Democratic nominee for the President of the United States of America.” – June 3rd, 2008 Primary victory

“I want to be the last guy in the room when the decision is made.” – VP Joe Biden

The choice came down to Tim Kaine or Joe Biden. Kaine was civil rights lawyer…Obama felt that Joe Biden loved to talk long while lacking gaffe free days. Biden had said Obama was ‘articulate and bright’ which the press did not give him the benefit of the doubt on. Biden was a skilled debater. He had embarrassing defeats. His wife and baby daughter were killed. He took care of his sons. Obama wanted a partner. For relationships in congress; Joe Biden was a key.

Denver Convention 2008 – Acceptance Speech Masterclass

Michelle gave a great speech. Obama didn’t want to draw comparisons to 40 years prior when Martin Luther King Jr made his March on Washington. “Never thought we’d see the day” was the narrative of the DNC speech. Balance between policy goals and firing Republicans.

Election 2008, Catch Up + Identity Politics

  • John McCain didn’t talk about climate change and the economy was worsening. McCain needed to do something dramatic. McCain picked Sarah Palin! Got millions of dollars for playing the identity politics card.
  • She was a disrupter; pageant queen who took on the Republican establishment in Alaska, hunting in her spare time. She was perfect for authenticity, the elite were just wrong in her summation. The 44 minute Sarah Palin RNC speech was hugely popular, the new hockey mom.
  • “She had good instincts” according to Obama. However, she didn’t know anything about foreign policy. She didn’t know anything about the issues or basic functions of the government.
  • During the national campaign, Obama went on an international junket to show that he could be American president. Obama met with all the international leaders. Palestinians, Israel, Merkel, etc.
  • Pivoting from the primary to the general election. Using the primary folks infrastructure to succeed in the general.

Financial Reality of the Late Summer of 2008

Refinancing his house in 1993, just getting the credit card cleared, Obama had a $40k cheque for his book but not much else. You could use your house and flip it as long as you watched the balloon payment index. But then Chicago housing market softened and Obama learned a lesson therein. Then in 2007, the entire housing market and the subprime mortgages started to implode. Obama felt primed….

Obama’s View of the Finance Persona

  • This credit crisis was the financial sector’s comeuppance for being generally ‘smug and entitled’, conspicuous in their consumption and not interested in how their actions affected others i.e not being systematic thinkers. Seems like a broad generalization…Obama was all about subprime mortgages in 2007 according to himself. He was talking about subprime mortgages and talking about the bubble, in the early 2000s which is in line with general economist speculation at the time but seems a bit overstated. There is always a future down turn or bubble burst…
  • Obama basically predicted the future suspiciously accurately…
  • An example of (UPO) unproveable partisan opinion, the “Stimulus was pulled back too soon in 1936 so we needed a war.” Keynesian economics makes sense, infrastructure spending…
  • Note that Obama also doesn’t mention deficit or debt much in A Promised Land.
  • Anyway, on the side, it was much worse, McCain supported the deregulation of the economy generally. McCain owned 8 homes. There was a danger of depression levels of unemployment and McCain seemed out of step.

It’s Other People’s Fault if You Can’t Get Congress On Side

  • Lehman Brother’s collapsed on September 15th 2008 and it meant that McCain and Obama might need to do a joint agreement on the rescue package since there was a legislative deadlock as the congress waited for a new president….BUT action was required in late September, the financial crisis was heating up.
  • McCain suggested “how about we suspended the campaign for a few days?” Obama phoned McCain to coordinate a solution, but McCain said he’d think about it and then McCain unilaterally pledged to suspend his campaign; he decided to one up Obama. McCain publicly called for Obama to suspend his own campaign alongside McCain about 30 minutes after saying to Obama, that he [John McCain] would think about Obama’s offer. McCain wanted to hash out a $700B TARP deal with Obama. Bush, McCain and Obama. It was a political stunt.
  • Democratic + Republican + McCain + Obama and Bush’s people all met in the White House for a joint session in order to pass TARP. Democrats had Obama talk first. Boehner said he didn’t want to withdrawal but that TARP wouldn’t work. In Obama’s opinion, the Republicans weren’t familiar with their own legislation. Bush asked McCain to speak, and McCain refused saying “I’ll just wait for my turn.” The guy who pushed for campaigns to be paused had now taken a back seat on TARP.

Politics is Poetry Part 4

Obama won big. 365 in the electoral college.

“If there is anyone out there who still doubts that America is a place where all things are possible; who still wonders if the dream of our founders is alive in our time; who still questions the power of our democracy, tonight is your answer. It’s the answer told by lines that stretched around schools and churches in numbers this nation has never seen; by people who waited three hours and four hours, many for the very first time in their lives, because they believed that this time must be different; that their voices could be that difference. It’s the answer spoken by young and old, rich and poor, Democrat and Republican, black, white, Hispanic, Asian, Native American, gay, straight, disabled and not disabled ¬- Americans who sent a message to the world that we have never been just a collection of individuals or a collection of Red States and Blue States: we are, and always will be, the United States of America! It’s the answer that led those who have been told for so long by so many to be cynical, and fearful, and doubtful about what we can achieve to put their hands on the arc of history and bend it once more toward the hope of a better day. It’s been a long time coming, but tonight, because of what we did on this day, in this election, at this defining moment, change has come to America.”

Where we are met with cynicism and doubts and those who tell us that we can’t, we will respond with that timeless creed that sums up the spirit of a people: Yes, we can.” – Victory speech 2008

Building A Winning Team, Not Rocking the Boat

With eyes fixed on the horizon and God’s grace upon us, we carried forth that great gift of freedom and delivered it safely to future generations.” Inaugural Address 2009

  • Needless to say, Obama benefited from independents and Republicans and leftists who wanted something different and projected that sentiment on the blank slate with no track record that was Barack Obama. Rahm Emanuel was a triangulating-Clinton guy. Obama hired Tim Geithner, a Wall street insider as Treasury Secretary. Lawrence Summers from Harvard also involved….
  • The economic team had been on the inside. The righting the ship economically, meant hiring those who understood the system, with all the moral hazard that might entail.
  • Obama argues his hand in mentioning the success of the 90s is correlated with federal policy under Clinton…another UPO, unprovable partisan opinion.
  • Obama kept Bob Gates in as Secretary of Defense.
  • Hilary Clinton Secretary of State, reluctant at first.
  • White House staff is mostly black or Mexican indicating that most presidents were happiest if there was inequality between menial staff and leadership, according to Obama.

Crisis Is Strongly Biased to Being Fixed with a Return to the Default

  • For example, the stimulus package should not include legalizing marijuana, according to Obama.

Republicans Did Not Want Obama’s Rhetoric to Be Converted Into Actual Accomplishments, Instead the Goal Was to Humiliate Obama into a One Term Presidency

  • Congress was fluid in the 1950s and 60s. The Lyndon Baines Johnson era resulted in the re-alignment around race, Gay rights abortion etc computer models of gerrymandering in the 1980s, TV news cycles changed partisanship, the moderates were disappearing; Rush Limbaugh talk radio meant there was hyper partisanship…..
  • Obama’s central thesis / complaint / default in A Promised Land is that he was a victim of his own success and it was other people’s fault that he was not able to pass the kind of legislation that his rhetoric vaguely implied…the jury is still out on that….
  • Obama had to win Republican votes to pass any legislation.
    1) $800B stimulus;
    2) tax cuts;
    3) infrastructure and improvements
  • Boehner rarely deviated from the talking.
  • Nancy Pelosi was not making progress either.
  • These legislators were all unified in wanting to be somewhere else rather than negotiate in good faith.
  • Dissent in party is dangerous because it means what ever legislation was on the books, that legislation might not pass.
  • Filibuster could prevent cloture hence the need to have +60 votes to impose cloture on a discussion.
  • The minority would allow legislation through by using the filibuster and you needed 60 votes in the senate to break that deadlock; aka the supermajority.
  • Republican cooperation seemed very unlikely even though TARP was bi-partisan:
  • Mitch McConnell was not letting members talk to the White House, this anti-communication strategy was not overcome for 8 whole years (i.e. no carrier pigeons or otherwise). Making cross communication impossible. They literally did not want to work with the Democrats at all.
  • House Republicans announced publicly they will not support Obama’s economic bill and likely fundraised off the back of it. Obama was invited to the Republicans Luncheon which was televised. And in that room were almost all middle-aged white men, Obama noted. As far of the Republicans were concerned, the real cause of this crisis was the mortgage house law circa Bill Clinton era. Another, (UPO) unprovable partisan opinion.
  • Rahm Emanuel didn’t have an exact senator vote count but surmised that there were zero Republicans willing to support Obama’s plans. Regardless of the issues, obstruction had fewer downstream consequences than cooperation:
    a) loss of internal party influence,
    b) contested right flank primaries (amplified by gerrymandering),
    c) the Democrats have both the House and the Senate so the Republicans survival is the mode,
  • d) ‘if our primary goal is to get power again so any help Republicans give will make Obama look good’….which isn’t necessarily bad for the country since Congress is a deadlocked, snails pace branch of government….but still…
  • e) the modern news coverage was also re-calibrating as print media revenue was declining and online competition was driven by sensationalism. Obama says the media’s collective approach was to report one side and then the other side and then do polling on horse race politics which got ratings.
  • f) Rush Limbaugh said “I hope Obama fails”, he and other radio talk-shows were channeling the voters to be anti-centrist. That they needed the voter to shift to the extreme to get re-elected as well as increase voter intensity.
  • And a lot of Republicans were being pushed hard by extremist primary challenges.
  • Bipartisan Judd Gregg had to withdrawal his support or suffer a career limiting move.
  • Charlie Crist supported the recovery act; putting people first. And with an Obama handshake, Crist’s career was destroyed. If you cooperate with Obama you will lose! So, February 2009, the recovery act did get passed but solidified a legislative divide with heavy consequence for deviants…

Public Horse Trading Is Sub-Optimal

But wait a second…..the Democrats from 2009 to 2011 had a double majority, so they should have no problem passing legislation, right? Wrong, the average years of a Congress-person in either the House or the Senate was 10.6 years and the divisions were fierce and long lasting so Obama felt he needed a supermajority (ie. secure 61 Senate votes) in order to avoid the Filibuster by Republicans which would log jam legislation and prevent cloture (ie. roll call voting).

Al Franken was the 60th Democratic senator in 2009 but then there were vacancies so it was more like 58. The Congress was only Filibuster-free for 72 days out of the total session. So, centre-right Republicans like Susan Collins and Arlen Specter were key. The Gang of Four (Republicans) made random demands in order to pass bills such as the recovery act. The general public was made aware of these side-deals by the press which made things much worse since it angered the progressives who saw hope and change fading into disappointment, compromise and politics as usual. A type of politics that took progressives, minorities and other Democrat default cleavages for granted. Those folks had no where serious to park their support.

Tim Geithner’s Three Options

  • The US’ credit crunch threatened to trigger a depression; credit was frozen at Fanny Mae, Freddy Mac, AIG, CitiGroup and Bank of America. If anyone of those fell, then it would cause a major financial cascade of balance sheet dependencies. So the goal was to get consumers to invest in the market.
  • There were Three Options:
    1) Build a bad bank that all other institutions could sell their toxic asset to and thus the government owned and foisted the costs on the tax payers directly through a sunk fund; problem being no one knew how to price the toxic assets and then there were pricing complications;
    2) Nationalize the financial institutions which is what the UK government did with Royal Bank of Scotland, i.e. a government take over. There was a danger of losing money and how would the public support this;
    3) Run a Stress Test which might show that market panic was not that bad! The banks didn’t know how bad it was therefore they could do stress tests and then figure out how much against agreed upon benchmark. Markets probably wouldn’t trust the government to audit their books…
  • Obama choose the option 3) the stress test. Obama put a lot of pressure on Geithner to improve communications between departments because the markets were spooked initially. Politically, obviously, the problem is that Obama was definitely abandoning the progressive wing and supported an inside guy.
  • The fact is it is always an inside guy, there just isn’t enough time for revolution. There could be structural reforms later but stopping the bleeding was priority #1.
  • Obama was always trying to minimize screwups, gaffes / pushing his team to the next phase.
  • The stress test was executed for institutions. The collective shortfall was $75B. And the Wall Street Journal said the analysis was very compelling. So through that process of price discovery, Geithner et al were able to arrest the financial crisis and begin the recovery.
  • As a result of Option 3, Obama says that the US economy bounced back faster than the Europeans which is true but associates his policy decisions with that outcome of course, unproveable partisan opinion. He saved Main Street jobs. There was no ‘let-them-fail’ attitude nor was there a ‘nationalize and criminalize the executives of the major banks’ attitude either.
  • Again, at the time, there were a bunch of people who thought he should have permanently altered the financial system with more extreme nationalization and criminalization of financial consequences. Most of those advocates will not have had experience in finance or economics to understand that the consequences were much more uncertain in such a scenario. The worse case would have meant a longer recovery time in Obama’s view.
  • Put simply, he wasn’t willing to revolutionize the system; and to what end state? He says he had a conservative approach to reform. Best to steer the economy away from disaster.
  • And so they managed to get the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act through.

Intractable Habits: Reasonableness, Blame the Other Side and Smoke A Lot

  • Obama had exuded throughout his campaign in the primaries and as president, an even keel balance that frustrated…..
  • There are a remarkably low number of UPOs in A Promised Land.
  • In the wake of the financial crisis, financial leaders gave themselves a bonus once the recover act was passed.
  • As far as Obama could see, the financial leadership rejected responsibility for the sale of sub-prime loans. That they were the arteries of the economy meant it was too bad but they were still linchpins that could not be punished in any real terms (although their career prospected were curbed much more so then their predecessors in the ’80 and ’90 “good times”.)
  • Also, Obama didn’t want to alienate investors. AIG was contractually obligated to give its employees a large bonus.
  • Many complained to Obama that ‘you should be taking over the financial sector!’ But the economics is hostage to the good as well as the bad financial professionals.
  • Obama smoked 6 cigarettes per day. Then he got busy and started smoking 8 cigarettes per day.
  • Obama did a morning workout every day. He chose to quit smoking. He had a lot of nicotine gum ready on the day the ACA was passed.

GM and Chrysler Bailouts

Obama points out that compared to financial technocrats, these auto-sector management folks were amateur about how their sales was going to increase by 2% as long as the government just bailed them out. Brian Deese came up with the incremental support and cost controls. They also wanted to replace Chrysler. To let the iconic Chrysler go under? It was throwing good money after bad. But there was hope with Fiat ownership.

The Chrysler Plants As Another Bailout Argument

The depression across their towns meant political intervention was expedient. Indiana and Ohio, men who had lost they jobs were struggling which was a similar refrain from the 1980 bailout and the mid-terms would hurt Obama if they didn’t give them ‘a fighting chance.’ Brian Deese calculated the cost of Chrysler going under and concluded it was worth it political to use Federal debt and revenue to bail them out….

On the Mind of a President

The president has to protect you from:
A. Oceans rising; (Interesting that it turns out that the IPCC doesn’t think this is a serious threat as of 2022!)
B. Earth frying;
C. Terrorist attacks;
D. The government reading your emails;
E. Nuclear war;
F. Tribalism like in Kenya had already infected US Congress in his opinion.

List of Things that Obama Couldn’t Look Soft On

  • Obama basically continued Bush policies on Foreign Policy, pushing back his left flank saying: I couldn’t look soft on:

  1. Drone strikes on Al Qaeda;
  2. Deportation of Illegal Immigrants;
  3. Free market principles of the economy, with patches of Keynesianism;

Foreign Policy Laydown Aligns with Centrism

“There has been one constant amidst these shifting tides. At every turn, America’s men and women in uniform have served with courage and resolve.” End of Combat Operations in Iraq 2010

  • Obama had conflicts with the civil service who would misinterpret, bury and slow walk presidential recommendations.
  • American forces would be leaving Iraq in 2010 and then use residual forces, once out you don’t want any other force to fill the vacuum however. Obama seems to have amazing predictive powers…..once again…implying his concern about ISIS before ISIS was thing.
  • On the Afghan campaign, once American leave, the Taliban will retrench. Karzai struggled with corrupt government. In Kabul, there were shady operations.
  • Obama in March 2009 increased the troop deployment in Afghanistan even though he campaigned on drawing down troop numbers.
  • G20 Summit: Air Force One has a shower, armored windows and 4,000 square feet of office space.
  • Obama strengthened US global vision; US was able to abide by global standards. The US had Iraq and a bank crisis was threatening to take the US over a cliff which reduced the US’ standing globally..
  • Sarkozy was crazy, genuine and would take credit for good policies. He endorsed Obama. But he was unstable and not consistent and failed to do anything tangible for the US.
  • Obama’s Read of the Global Situation
    – BRICS were big nations and saw the crisis as a means of flipping the paradigm. Give these nations more influence.
    – Brazil had promise;
    – Russia…Medvedev and Putin criminal syndicate;
    – India, hobbled by civil service;
    – China, not in a hurry to take on the world order in 2009;
    – South Africa, broken.
  • Very few countries were interested in acting beyond narrow self-interest. Bilateral negotiations were the preference.

Media Misinterpretation of Obama’s Global Tour

  • The ‘Obama apology tour’ was misconstrued from a comment that every country ought to believe they are exceptional. The media ran with this, pretending Obama had apologized for America’s world superpower status. Michelle touched Elizabeth II’s shoulder which was a violation of protocol….
  • No major pratfalls on the tour, Obama spent a lot of time putting out Bush’s fires. The last turn on the global board game. That is natural. You should expect that the hopeful past was now rough.
  • Turkey’s Erdogan in 2002 reshaped Turkey as a new Muslim nation-state.
  • Democratic values were in decline. Claus in Czech Republic. Obama sees these guys as power brokers at the local level with whom he had interests and had to work with.
  • Captain Philips could have gone badly. Somalis warped, religious and casually cool. Obama wanted to help these pirates rather than kill them.
  • Al Qaeda: Drone strikes and Obama was not able to track with all the burner phones. Ensured a ranking on the targets. Obama couldn’t look soft on terrorism. He did sign an executive order on waterboarding, ending it officially.
  • Obama was going to give a speech in Berlin and use a line called Community of Fate! Unfortunately, it was actually a Hitler line from one of his speeches…Obviously wanting to avoid anything remotely controversial, sometimes hard to avoid, the term of phrase was scrapped.
  • A New Beginning’ Islam speech in Egypt, probably a good speech to point out progress was inevitable and that Islamic extremists were not representative; and that the dictators who gummed up the arguments about fighting democracy were trying to cover for their failures.
  • In the dessert, Islam was dominant in Saudi Arabia….established Islamic shrines + oil development; sent their kids to Harvard and Cambridge.
  • Obama’s dad was not Muslim.
  • Obama rejected personal gifts from leaders. Obama thought about the necklace, how many kids that could help?

“In the middle of the Cold War, the United States played a role in the overthrow of a democratically elected Iranian government.” – Obama acknowledge the 1953 Coup

Mubarak, Ally to US Interests in the Middle-East

Overcame the Suez canal crises on the mid-20th century…. Pan-Arab nationalism…Sadat’s 1979 peace treaty facilitated support from the US. Obama believes that the Mubarak Palace had no broader interest then to protect the tangled patronage that kept them in power.

Healthcare Would Cost A Lot of Political Capital

  • Obama points out that Medicare and Medicaid had the effect of pushing up the prices of health insurance for insured employees in the US. Medicare for All was considered very progressive, to distribute healthcare resources not based on the ability to pay, was pushing hard to the left.
  • Obama was saying that universal healthcare campaign would build on Lyndon Johnson‘s Medicaid and Medicare plans of the mid-1960s. Why should Americans pay way more than Canadians on healthcare per person? Especially when are you getting the same or worse quality of care, another (UPO) unprovable partisan opinion.
  • Note: It’s actually very difficult to discern what is good and bad healthcare on a person to person basis even at a system level, region to region, country to country and that’s ultimately what is being discerned in Obama’s statement: the cost (budget) / capacity (accessibility) of healthcare in Canada is lower with similar outcomes. We enter a biased lens as Canadians and Americans here: of course, my family is better than yours (our emotional instincts are tethered to reality of our self-love). …more on this later!
  • Rahm Emanuel and David Axelrod advised against pushing for aggressive healthcare reform since you would spend a high degree of your political capital and if you lost you would be ‘a very weaken president.’ Of course, what Obama was saying ultimately was that he had sold the poetics and needed a major win or his rhetoric would look ridiculous historically.
  • Obama was overconfident in pushing for universal healthcare, for sure. The Democrats had the Senate, the House and the presidency so they should be able to get these things through. But, of course, the Democratic Party has factions, cleavages, strong and weak interest groups, counter-arguments and donor pressures…the Republicans also had those dynamics.
  • Obama decided to do the courageous thing. Leaving your family with a mountain of debt because you were fighting cancer is a moral problem. Obama’s mom was a victim of bad insurance policy, for example.

Sausage Making in Representative Democracy Clashes with Soaring Rhetoric

  • The politics and optics of reform is very difficult. Obama and JFK had a lot in common in that they were not able to influence congress very well. They didn’t play hard ball with legislator’s careers, they didn’t do the horse trading necessary to get things done. LBJ knew how to get legislation passed. Sure, things were different now, but Rahm Emanuel was no LBJ obviously. Rahm would bully representatives in the shower but it doesn’t appear that he was a skilled and or had the rich experience that LBJ had.
  • Obama had a naïve idea about having a public consultation on healthcare where all the different options could be discussed….but Rahm knew that the sausage making of legislation would mean that there will be many concessions and compromises at the legislative level and so having a public discourse and discussion on the nature of the policy belies the fact that getting anything through has to run the gauntlet of the legislative process. And the legislative process is a negotiation between representatives not actually a democratic process, it’s a horse trading exercise.
  • Rahm Emanuel’s line was ‘we’re gonna be ordering a sausage to be made in the sausage factory and you’ve ordered a big sausage!’
  • Obama hired Katherine Sibelius. It’s critical to have someone on the team who understands all the different policy options and the spectrum of options that could be put into practice.
  • Mitt Romney’s Individual Mandate (obligates every citizen to take person responsibility by getting a healthcare plan, and those who don’t have one can select a government funded plan) in Massachusetts.
  • This model included the creation of a marketplace for healthcare plans. Citizens could choose the plan they wanted and it would also include a clause that prevented targeting on the basis of pre-existing conditions.
  • Obama was for Medicare for all. He makes a ridiculous argument that Canada had started with Medicare “from scratch” (…in Saskatchewan in 1962 and Federally in 1965? Canada was founded in 1867, dude) but in Obama’s mind the US was not starting from scratch…it would be hugely disruptive economically, for the insurance infrastructure so Rahm Emanuel worked with Romney to line up the democratic votes and to poach a few Republicans onboard.
  • RomneyCare was a huge success?! Romney’s model would work. So, Obama began to copy that plan in order to get signature legislation through.

Pandemic Crisis with the H1N1 Swine Flu Virus

  • H1N1 hit the US under Obama’s administration in 2009 and he tapped Katherine Sibelius to lead the effort. Obama’s team was warned by the Gerald Ford retirees that they should not act too swiftly and rely on the vaccine since it could actually cause neurological harm if rushed. More people were harmed by the vaccine then the swine flu during the Ford administration.
  • But there was clearly a fear as this H1N1 was spreading to several schools and locations in the US. And the 1918 Spanish influenza which was spread to about 1 billion people and killed 50 to 100M people with the result that babies in utero develop permanent disabilities which included getting the lower standards of living, lower socioeconomic status as a result of contracting the flu in utero.
  • 12,000 people died of H1N1 and obviously comorbidities are a big factor in the US. But at any rate, Obama was lucky the virus was quick acting, showing symptoms as it spread! Obama considered closing down schools but decided against it. The virus was not contagious and did not spread across the entire population and was quarantined out of existence.

The Supreme Court is Partisan Due to a Vague Constitution, Unlike Most US Laws

Marbury v. Madison gave the Supreme Court supremacy over the constitution. Major social issues are routed through the Supreme Court as a result. Terminology within the constitution is so vaguely described that you can have competing interpretations of values and interpret the constitution to back your values. In fact, we know that the founders had competing views and values at the time of writing it and therefore the ‘founders intent’ narrative is a very weak argument.

Obama had to replace Souter and had met many ‘high IQ morons’ in academia and otherwise so he opted for Sonia Sotomayor who was born into a lower middle class Portuguese family in the Bronx.

Obama Ridicules the Left Who Will Never Have To Pass A Law

  • The healthcare negotiations were snapped back and forth by capitulations as perceived by anyone on the left who would never have to deal with actually getting bills passed without a Filibuster and therefore were very “Weimar Republic-esq” in their inability to reason out concessions legislatively but skilled at appealing to the masses (ie. as a parliamentarians, you could grandstand in the legislature and never have to pass a bill during the Weimar Republic, and thus it was a very weak form of democracy that failed to cultivate effective leaders, arguably leading to the rise of Adolf Hitler…this is just a theory from the likes of Niall Ferguson etc).
  • These progressive folks could talk about aspirations because they never had to cut a deal. They talked of railroading legislation as if that was even feasible legislatively.
  • Anyway, Obama points out the biggest problem with the doctors was that they basically could still charge whatever they felt necessary. And that patients would see a drug ad on tv and still want that drug even if it was deemed a marketing scheme by a bell-curved scientific review. So, Obama pushed for a committee to set prices. The Cadillac benefits was another problem because there were these expensive plans that didn’t really effect outcomes but were highly sought after. Union leaders didn’t trust that any saving would go to their members. And they knew they would catch flack about changes.
  • Axelrod took Obama aside and said, people who already have healthcare were skeptical of any reform as additive of their care. Maybe we should back off healthcare….

Since Politics is Emotional, Comments on Race Explode Quickly, Sensationally and Crowdout Substantive Policy Discussions

Harvard professor Henry Gates was interrogated by a police officer for seemingly breaking into his own home, so Gates branded the office a racist. Obama quietly believed that Gates had not shown respect. Cussing out a cop. Obama used to get followed around by security guards. If you were followed, it was not a matter of paranoia, in Obama’s estimation.

4 minutes out of a 60 minutes discussion on healthcare police was all the media covered, and that 4 minutes comprised of Obama saying that the police acted ‘stupidly’. This is an example of a politician’s intentions begin warped for political points.

Stupidly does not equal stupid in reference to Sgt Crowley, according to Obama. Both Gates and Crowley overreacted. So, a beer summit was done to close off the issue. Again, more sensational than anything, Obama was proposing on healthcare and this incident was what sold newspapers.

Obama was truly always navigating in the White House. He gave his white counter parties the benefit of the doubt on any sensitive race issues.

On Healthcare, Obama was hopeful that 2009 would be the signature year. Maybe by August? But Republicans had other plans, Boehner through Frank Luntz coined the term “government takeover of healthcare.” Grassly would just stall and stall. Never coming up with a compromise bill.

Have a Townhall, sure, but the Media will not Pay Attention Unless there is Blue Meat (engineered controversy) or Red Meat (actual controversy)

The Tea Party had angry protesters outside an Obama event. This new NOPE movement was led by people like Ron Paul who was calling for withdrawal from NATO and end to the Fed.

Tea Party mobilized narratives around death panels, benefiting illegal immigrants, the birther movement (i.e that Obama was born in Kenya and ineligible to be president was at least in part racism.) The fact is the thought that the president of the United States was not even an American citizen was just too juicy a story not to cover it. The news media was selling lots of papers with Donald Trump playing up the possibility that Obama was not legitimate. Threading the needle between a) a legitimate concern about a person’s place of birth, b) implied racism. If it 10% racism and 90% a legitimate concern or vice versa, the fact is that was more interesting than public policy. Trump, himself didn’t have to believe it in order be leading in the Republican New Hampshire primary in 2011…And Obama’s team knew that white voters don’t like lectures on racism so the Obama White House was silent on the matter. Finally, Obama made a statement once he released his long-form birth certificate, but he was ultimately unable to capture the media’s attention when it came to his policy.

“The paid media is not the ideal conduit to discuss your policy options as a citizen…” – Professor Nerdster

Never Call Your Opponent Racist, That’s a Common Default Assumption

Obama’s position is that you should never complain about voters. The white predecessors. Whatever truths you might have, there are competing viable explanations about intentions of separate individuals. Obama was not going to win by labelling his opponents racist. State rights versus ending Jim Crow / culture, it’s just not going to get you very far, in Obama’s estimation.

Horse Trading on the Affordable Care Act

  • Obama was no LBJ…Efforts to placate Chuck Grassley were fruitless. Finally, Obama was asked ‘If we met everyone of your five new complaints about the bill would you support it?’ Chuck Grassley paused and said “I guess not.” Rahm Emanuel was being a bitch as usual said, “Well, we should have pushed for a slimmed down bill that a few Republicans could accept!”
  • All the evidence showed the Republicans did not want to cooperate, however.
  • Obama has always felt lucky….
  • He had to explain broadly and intricately the Afford Care Act, discuss what the risk corridors are and the Excel file full of formulas and options. He needed to “fight cynicism.” Obama decided to do a TV presentation on the subject. 1 hour of the reform proposal and the time was now.
  • Obama was able to get the healthcare bill kicked out of committee. On November 7th, 2009, Pelosi needed to make sure the bill wasn’t going to fizzle. Senators had lots of requirements, there were hold outs seeking horse trades. Liberals had no problem taxing pharmaceuticals but when a company was based in their jurisdiction, individual members demanded a reduced tax rate for their donors, ie a carve out. Hypocritical!
  • Harry Reid basically sorted out the deal.
  • Senate pork barrel deals were abound.
  • Unlike LBJ, the discussions hit the press core.
  • Obama stripped the public option out, arguing the government option being removed would pave the way to get better options through later, senate didn’t support that now.
  • Joe Lieberman was an independent but had supported McCain in 2008 but Obama let him keep his committee jobs because Obama knew he needed Lieberman’s vote.
  • McConnell threatened anyone who broke ranks either with a primary challenger OR be removed from committee assignments…
  • On December 24th, 2009, they got it through the senate but then Scott Brown won in Massachusetts. Obama blames Coakley for being a bad campaigner in that race, i.e. not a reflection of the public view of Obama.
  • Senators think all congress men are ill informed and congressman think senators are bloated and ineffectual, according to Obama, they’re both right!
  • Rahm was starting to vent about Obama’s healthcare strategy to the media and the resulting ‘scaled back strategy.’ Rahm was prepared to resign over his criticism that appeared in the major papers. But Obama said, ‘go pass the goddamn healthcare bill.’

When in Doubt, Split the Bill into Acceptable Components

So now with 59 votes in the senate, he wouldn’t get it through without a filibuster. There was another path which was Budget reconciliation; and to split the bill and pass a separate bill, had to scrap the 50 state healthcare markets instead of a national one, however.

Republicans Opposed Obama – January 29th, 2010

Republican didn’t know what was in the bill but were simply anti-Obama. But it basically emboldened the democratic healthcare bill. The press ran out of the things to talk about on the Affordable Care Act…Is it more important to get and stay elected or be courageous? Getting elected since you can’t effect change from outside.

On March 21, 2010, could have a last minute switch back by some legislators, but it was going to be passed. This law better work since Obama would be owning the healthcare system. Yeas and Nays, 216 passed. It’s done! Promise fulfilled.

Military Industrial Complex

  • The world as it is…Obama had to write letters to the families of the fallen. In Iraq, the government was split between Sunni, Kurdish and Shia; but the new regime was not willing to compromise on their ethnic dominance.
  • Afghanistan security forces needed to be trained. McCrystal asked that the White House give $1B for every additional 1,000 troops in Afghanistan. Bob Gates wanted an additional 10,000 troops. ‘We have the highest military count’ Obama was complaining that his staff should stop telling me the military sources had leaked the story. Working the press behind the scenes.
  • The 9/11 era sought to avoid congress being held responsible, need to get the country safe, shifting power to the Pentagon. Civil control of policy making was in question.
  • Afghanistan Pentagon advocates sought “$30B per year” McCrystal’s argument was to ‘give the troops a chance to succeed.’ Taliban was basically infused into the country. Afghanistan was not like Iraq; the military wasn’t optimized to solve the political difficulty; they were dependent on US support. 30K new troops, and the Canadians and Dutch wanted to leave. More of a surge than a withdrawal. They had a time table as well but Karzai didn’t feel obligated to transition based on that timetable.
  • Nobel Prize for Obama…that was a major shock. The prize was a call to action, shrinking ethnic divides, climate change. However, Obama was beginning to see a widening gap between expectations and the reality of his presidency.
  • There was another 20K troops; it was ideological, the Pentagon had a habit of getting enablers NOT included to the troops’ numbers. The Pentagon was basically trying to convince Obama to accept; December 1st Obama sent more troops to Afghanistan in order to protect the peace. War is contradiction.

“Cleared-eyed, we can understand that there will be war, and still strive for peace.” – Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech 2009

Cookie Cutter Speeches

Obama international speeches to small countries he visited has a simple template he followed. Just as individuals want to be respected so too do nations. The template was simple: [greeting in native language] great to be in this country that has brought so much to the world [insert list of accomplishments]…[US and x country summary of relations]….[How the US has been shaped by immigrants from that country]…[Closing poetics].

Iranian Relations

1951 Iran nationalized oil and British was not happy so the British convinced Eisenhower that Iran was leaning towards USSR and should therefore institute the ’53 coup…commercial interests mixed with national interests were at play when it came to oil production. Then the Shah did a horrible job and in 1979, the Ayatollah arrives from Paris. Why were they chanting “death to America!” The fact that Iraq went to war with Iran and Iran used terrorist tactics to destabilize and attempt to overthrow other regimes using US sold weapons showed the tangle web. Hezbollah and Iran were a headache. Iran had nuclear facilities at the time of the Shah; but they could produce a bomb and prevent US intervention without risking a nuclear retaliation on Israel.

Obama’s Approach with Iran was:

  1. Step up a handshake for an open dialogue, Iran was happy to give the middle finger; Iran’s Green Movement and the crackdown meant the leadership was in trouble.
  2. Peaceful passive approach; US and Iran; Obama had less influence over that.
  3. Tough Sanctions on Iran P5+1 (Germany), Iran would basically string along negotiations in order to prevent the sanctions however.

Putin was not interested in the new Russia and applied soft authoritarianiansism he was genuinely popular and wanted to escape the humiliation of the USSR collapse.

Obama’s visit to China was interesting because a lot of these remarks from both the students and the Premier were prepare or vetted in advance. The Chinese insisted that they are still developing country, those living outside grill areas were below the poverty line relative to American citizens. Concerns about the South China Sea and Iran sanctions were his primary focus.

Climate Change Views of Obama In a Nutshell

  • Obama’s views on climate change were informed mostly by his mother who lived in Indonesia and had, as an anthropologist, had other preoccupations such as starvation, jobs and so pollution was a post materialist concern, well after jobs are secured.
  • Obamas daughter was concerned about tigers and deforestation however the primary concern was that climate change would raise the oceans. Increase the likelihood of more severe storms because there’s more urban centres to worry about but also more severe weather. Nixon launched the EPA, had to be mentioned.
  • Labour union leaders were against any kind of climate change measures that would hinder the union member jobs. And climate change is a really difficult problem to solve given that it’s short term pain for long term gains and partisans are only secured for four years terms. Bush ignored the reality of climate change. Doing so would lead to a challenge from the right which denied its existence.
  • Obama supported a cap and trade model; emphasized oil and gas production, but was happy to support ethanol in the swing states. Acknowledging that he can’t lose Ohio and Pennsylvania in 2012! Ambitious but realistic goals. Obama was concerned about coastal town flooding. Solar panels and windmills were still rare in 2009 and depended on whether the sun will shine or the wind would blow. The economy was built around resource extraction and oil and gas.
  • The best laid entrepreneurial plans will lead to risks. Solindra failed by 2011, cheap Chinese manufacturers crushed it. Clean energy moon shots to combat climate change were long-term.
  • The Clean Air Act 2003 was a step forward but Bush’s EPA didn’t want to control exhaust from cars and refused to classify it as a pollution.
  • For Obama, regulatory policy actually helps make life more safe. For example, airline regulations make flying more safe. And clean water is more likely with regulations. But regulatory policy was always viewed as bad by the right. In part because it created government jobs? But also the red tape inhibited economic development so the thinking goes.
  • Case Sunstein: The benefits of regulation outweighed the costs. Automakers accepted national standards, The auto-bailout (never mentioned bailouts) when they accepted the new standards.
  • Obama had collaborated with McCain quickly after his election defeat recently on environmental policy but as soon as that was released to the press, McCain received a threat from his right flank if he continued to work with Obama so he had to withdraw or risk losing his senate seat.
  • Congress was unhappy about these centrists. Senate is where good ideas go to die. Cap and Trade: companies that exceed have to pay a fee. They would support it even if Bush senior had a cap and trade policy but not if Obama proposed it. Getting a congress environmental bill before December was not realistic. Not enough runway to land this bill.
  • Brazil ‘92 Earth Summit, Kyoto Protocol had a cap and trade function. Kyoto was mothballed by Bill Clinton in 1997.
  • Lindsay Graham was media savvy but a double crosser on bills such as climate change legislation.

Common Differentiated Measures

Common differentiated meant that rich countries that had higher emissions standards could achieve greater reductions but were also the bearers of most of the costs in fighting climate change (even if it was through pollution that these countries prospered, it was a tough sell). China and India didn’t have to work by the same rules. Measures that Obama wanted to improve upon:

  1. Self-determined; wealth energy profile and would be revised
  2. Measures to verify
  3. Wealthy countries would help developing countries

Ban Ki-moon was not a social guy. Copenhagen Summit: treaty was held up. Chinese and BRICS were not supportive. It was already looking like an eminent failure, as Obama crossed the Atlantic: Obama was self-aware that his carbon footprint was wacky high (not necessarily hypocritical since it’s a broad policy aspirations). Rasmussen was the Dutch PM but was ignored at the summit.

Copenhagen – Cornering Your Negotiation Opponents

  • When the Chinese delegation went up to hold a separate meeting with Brazil and India, Obama burst into their meeting. They were all shocked…Their view was that Kyoto is fine, the West was responsible, national sovereignty concerns trump the environment.
  • Obama said they were holding it up, try telling the people downstairs what you were doing, that the poor countries would be losing funds from the US. The US was going to provide aid to these other countries to be environmentally sustainable, and these developing counties and big polluters were holding things up….Obama pushed it through.

Into the Barrel Stories

The negative stories if they aren’t broken up by global news stories or other distractions build up a negative perception and then opposition grows built up around that perception further. Then you get thrown over the Niagara Falls, according to Obama. The press was more critical;

Cabinet and staff would prevent leaks. There were no ethical lapses during Obama’s two terms. Dr. No (if it sounds fun you can’t go to that event)….

Women in the White House

Obama didn’t perceive much gender bias until he had a meeting with female White House staff. It was good to air things out. These women did not feel that they were being respected. The towel snapping was not something these women understood and appreciated ie. male networks of influence. Obama’s view was that no one was respected in the White House, it was about ideas and forcefully arguing your point. Need to fight for your own voice. At any rate, he agreed to do better to accommodate female voices.

Wall Street Reigned In, Modestly

  • Congressional progressives were skeptical of all the human psyche with its ups and downs as well as the economy under capitalism with its ups and downs.
  • But Obama’s primary goal was to stop financial crises; reinstating Glass Steagall just didn’t make sense since this was not an issue of investment banking and retail banking overlap. The left believed that Wall Street was a trillion dollar casino. Based in quarterly earnings. The offshoring of the jobs and the retaliation of regulating finance was not going far enough. Limiting the size of banks was another idea; but that was an idea that didn’t work for Obama. It was not necessarily mega banks that were the problem. Cutting the banking sectors size didn’t really make sense. Euro has a lot of big banks, for example, in Obama’s rationale.
  • Obama’s mandate for change was not strong enough because he had held off the worst of the crisis. But what he did institute was:
  • – More capital liquidity requirement:
    – Derivatives intensified; used to hedge their risk;
    – Needed better risk management;
  • Elizabeth Warren created the consumer protection project. Harry Reid put her in the Banking, Housing & Urban Affairs committee. She was a grandstander to the point of dishonesty but Obama understood that she was playing to the crowd in committee.
  • Chris Dodd was long a legislative animal. While a colleague makes an impassioned plea and then in backroom deals taking the exact opposite stance, Dodd turned to Obama and asked “You didn’t think this was ever on the level? Did you?”
  • The House could pass the bill but they would need a Democratic senate needed every vote. Had to serve the conservative Democrats. Regulation happy Democrats were afraid to go after any of the major banks. Politicians who were complaining about special deals being carved out for healthcare reform, now wanted to carve out special deals for whatever they could get for their constituents.

Obama consistently feels like the fisherman from Old Man & the Sea with the sharks eating the tuna as he brings it home.

  1. Increased transparency on Senior Leader Team compensation;
  2. Consumer protections;
  3. Clawback mechanisms for questionable practices.

Mostly came through intact. Amendments didn’t nip away much. July 2010 Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act. It had compromised: fairer consumer protections. Dodd-Frank is now possibly going to be adjusted, with reduced regulation. Promise fulfilled.

Deepwater Horizon, Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill

  • April 20th, 2010, it was a space agency-caliber problem; the underwater leak was almost impossible to clog.
  • Politically, the oil spill was right in the middle of negotiations on Climate Change legislation in which a concession had been made for Republican support in exchange for regulatory loosening of the offshore drilling protocols. Therefore, Climate Change legislation was killed off after this accident.
  • British Persian petroleum in the 1950s had spurred the coup in Iran. Beyond Petroleum now had a real time camera of the underwater leakage that outraged the world.
  • Jindal was making a political play around building a marsh so that he would look like he was doing something as governor of Louisiana.
  • Hurricane Katrina was a mess, quick to respond, most of the victims were black. Couldn’t relocate because they didn’t have a car.
  • This new crisis was going to hurt Obama

Obama v. Carville

Carville (Bill Clinton’s 1992 campaign manager) basically blasted Obama for not doing enough with this crisis. The truth was Obama couldn’t plug the hole himself…”What am I supposed to dive down with a wrench myself?” Obama wanted to blast the American public by saying that this spill is partly due to 30 years of Republican idea that the regulation was the problem. BP didn’t have the tools on hand because they calculated a spill was unlikely and wanted to save money. That people didn’t want to pay taxes, Jindal tried to score a point while he was an oil industry insider, that Americans love their cars and cheap gas more than they do the environment. Boring to talk about environmental goals and or would be seen as boring, that Americans just wanted this issue to go away so they could feel less guilty about polluting as usual.

Axelrod needed a break and Rahm decides to run for Mayor of Chicago. So they both quit.

The Republicans were tasting blood. They wanted to block the Repeal of don’t ask don’t tell, needed to muster 60 votes for a bunch of other items. McConnell had a tax cut bill while Warren Buffett pays less than his Secretary proportionally or in fact in absolute terms if other entities for which Warren Buffett pay the taxes on his behalf…tax law is complicated. Bush tax cuts were happy, doctors and lawyers don’t think their own taxes should go up. Anyone making more than 200K are rich. Obama would need to compromise.

Any increases in taxes would be harmful to get that through Obama’s agenda.

Extending the Tax Cuts

Joe Biden negotiated McConnell legislation. McConnell said the only thing he ‘wanted to do was make sure Obama was a one term president.’ Joe Biden was a better negotiator. December 6th 2010 got the concession for his bills in exchange for extending the tax cuts for another 2 years. The idea was that McConnell was betting Obama would lose in 2012 and Obama was betting he would be able to reform in 2012. The worry was that the Bush tax cuts would be made permanent. Bill Clinton had a “reasonable centrist” view to get the détente.

Michelle was doing a good safety bill. 3 ½ weeks of Christmas, had to posse for the secret service staff photos.

The Dream Act: the American children of illegal immigrants worried so much that they would need to self-deport or be deported without notice,
Don’t Ask Don’t Tell: Obama was not enlightened as a kid but his views changed overtime. The discrimination of the LGBTQ community, changed his view.
Opponents of Repeal: Obama didn’t want to do an executive authorization. Marine corp. didn’t really have a problem with being gay. The idea that these folks can’t fit in is a weak argument in Obama’s view.
DACA militarized: creating border crossing cartels. And most folks overstayed flight entry visas. 11M people in the US were believed to be illegal immigrants.
Border Enforcement: Obama didn’t want to reverse the immigration reform and then be accused of being weak on border laws.

The Dreamers Act DACA

  • Smart kids who didn’t take the country for granted, is how Obama characterizes the Dreamers. Harry Reid called the dreamer act critical. Claire McCaskill explained that “if I support this I would lose my job.” They had the DACA vote, but were 5 votes short, it didn’t pass. But Claire said she had to vote Yea. She just couldn’t look up at the gallery at the kids in attendance and vote Nay.
  • Lame duck session in the house was surprisingly productive. 25% of the legislative was done in that one one month. Democracy was normal again for December 2010.
  • Obama owed his foreign policy stability to the dictatorships. Terrorist attacks had been narrowly evaded by the dictatorship interventions at the last moment, yeah right! Planted by the dictatorship (reverse causation). Suppress press, police state.

The Betrayal of Mubarak

  • He had a genocide human rights lawyer named Samantha Power who had inverted neo-liberal opinion by advocating punishing countries who engage in genocide, when Obama wanted to abide by state sovereignty. The Armenian genocide and announcing it was blocked because Obama was in negotiations with the Turkish government to support Iraqi withdraw. Same with Mubarak Egypt…As Tahrir Square took off, the US press demanded Obama take a stand.
  • Mubarak said they were an emotional people that would cause a huge regime crisis. Obama got Mubarak on the phone, trying to get Mubarak to retire into the sunset and Mubarak said “you don’t know the Egyptian people, they are very emotional!” Obama then publicly sided with the protesters. Counter-protests happened. US journalists were assaulted. Without intervention, subsequent protests were met with extreme violence to prevent any kind of public political protest resulting in likely repression in places like Bahrain and Iraq.

The Thing About the UN

Syria had Russian support while the public protests were occurring. Therefore, the UN veto is another political body that blocks doing the “right thing.”

Qadaffi in Libya

Somalia Black Hawk Down (1993) was fresh in the minds therefore boots on the ground was not feasible. Libya was using ground forces to clear out (kill) citizens house by house in territories now ruled by competing factions. The consequences of intervening were significant. Obama led with intervention and so other regimes would quell protests much earlier in their cycle to prevent a potential US intervention.

Osama Bin Laden Execution Was Well Planned

Joe Biden was hesitant to proceed with the raid on the Abbottabad Compound. Obama weighed the probability that the tall man walking in circles in the courtyard was Bin Laden…Obama instincts were good…He got Bin Laden which was a rare bi-partisan victory...

Book 2 is likely coming in a year or two….more to come then….

This Holiday Prepare Yourself for Any Argument With These Simple Reminders

Or Just Don’t Get Into Arguments At All

Life is short. Love one another….focus on common ground. But if you’re getting into an argument, check these classic argumentative habits. But know that the biggest mistake you can make in life is to believe that your opinion is the correct one, that your opinion should be imposed on all others in your immediate or extended sphere. The second biggest mistake is to think that people will ever really understand what you are saying, even if you try to be as clear as possible. And that’s because others: a) can’t live your life, b) want to project on to you their interpretation of what you have just said and c) will never be able to fully get inside your head. Plus, your counterpart is too busy preparing their next point in the conversation…while you are talking. So accept that a civil argument is mostly to exercise your own mind.

A List of Classic Social Science concepts to be aware of in any Argument:

Winning” an Argument

Okay, you can’t really win an argument, but the best next thing is to say to your counterpart, “fine, what is the next step based on your argument?” If your counterparty has made a valid point, they will frequently stay mired in the awareness stage in which they are trying to validate the logic of their argument rather then extending it outwardly to the implications and the consequences of their argument. For example, that inequality is evil. All you have to do is say; “So, what’s the next step.” And they will have difficulty because a policy of enforcing equality is way more difficult than the normative claim that equality and fairness is a positive aspiration. Saying “what’s the next step” typically shifts the debate into your corner.

Anchoring

Your counterparty will want to make the first offer in a negotiation, so that they frame the discussion around what they are advocating. That’s why striking a specific price point is critical. You could say that healthcare is a human right for example. That anchors and locks down your position and shapes the discussion thereafter.

Cognitive dissonance

Is a situation where you mind holds two conflicting ideas at the same time. When you have a belief that you believe is true and then discover that the facts show otherwise, instead of accepting being wrong, you come up with scrambled thinking to avoid reconciling yourself with the truth that you were wrong. This is also known as negative capability; the most successful management and leadership are able to overcome cognitive dissonance, identify it and figure it out in others. Tells that someone has cognitive dissonances are: 1) using word salad to win an argument, 2) mind-reading the other person’s intentions, 3) expanding the opponents argument with absurd absolutes, 4) tells like “so….your saying” which are misinterpretations of what you are saying. Cognitive dissonance is a flaw that EVERYONE has and can be used to turn others onto your side, if you point out someone else’s cognitive dissonance in a compelling way, you can help them see your world view better, as long as you do that gently.

Confirmation bias

Is where your brain subconsciously finds evidence in the real world that reflects what you are most thinking about. The human brain builds biases based on patterns observed over time. As a result, biases are impossible to get rid of. The curious point here is that confirmation bias is also where your brain starts pointing out instances that align with what you are looking for as evidence to support your pre-existing view. So when you are in an argument, you might actually have confirmation bias that the other person does not and because neither of you can access eachother’s biases directly, you just argue without knowing which biases are preventing clarity of position from being realized. And of course, if people are involved there are competing interpretations of what the truth is from their perspective….

Filter

We “filter” reality and each person is interpreting reality from their own perspective. Bertrand Russel said that there only markers that we are experiencing the same reality are physical markers. A filter is the brain’s interpretation of physical reality. The brain is shaped by the Value Laden hypothesis. Max Weber described this phenomenon in the 19th century; basically, we have values or theories or frameworks (based on pattern recognition and the like) that we believe can predict future actions and we go out into the world, to prove our theories are correct. And sadly, we tend to believe our filters too much which creates confirmation bias.

High-Ground Strategy

Taking a debate away from the level of detailed debate to a topic that everyone can agree on. Being intentionally vague has its place in any communication strategy. It’s also known as triangulation, we aren’t trying to win an argument this way, we’re just trying to make ourselves feel better about ourselves.

Thinking Past the Sale

Persuasion tactic where you get those you are trying to persuade to think about what it will be like after the decision is made. The act of forcing us to imagine what you want to have happen is a means of shaping opinion, as long as you can also sell the good and downplay the bad. Visualizations are very powerful.

Pacing and Leading

Pacing and leading is when the speaker gets into the learner’s head, so that they understand your thinking, speech and breath of the speaker and thus this more persuasive because we believe the speaker is speaking for us. As I said in the introduction, your counterparty is never going to fully get you but if you can create the illusion that you get them, you’re ahead of the game. Things like repeating in your own words what your counterparty has just said is helpful. Basically, mirroring the audience or counterparty. Negative attacks on your character is what people remember in these conversations. You should match your counterparty’s cadence of attacks until you’re both covered in holiday stuffing or whatever. Just kidding, chill.

Psychic Psychiatrist illusion

Believing that you can diagnose someone’s sanity just by their outward actions from a far is just wrong. This activity is typically shunned in most circumstances but can be used as an attack on someone who’s leadership you detest.

Walking Talking Contradiction

Policies are obviously going to overlap and conflict with each other. Politicians by definition will make statements that contradict other statements made because facts are moving objects in the sense that time is a moving object. People want snacks and beer and burgers and salad. We are walking emotional contradictors, not logical beings. Get used to it, don’t fight human nature unless you intend to be confounded by it (i.e lose).

Rhetoric is Not Action

If you ask your counterparty to put their money where their mouth is (demonstrate how they live by their opinion /or make a bet) and they refuse, they are simply being rhetorical. Rhetoric, virtue signally is also an extension of the contradiction since emotional statements are often illogical and will contradict themselves. Words matter but to what degree depends on how much you want to undermine the communicator. The difference between assimilation and integration for example, is mostly in the speakers head. Understand that top persuaders will communicate to the the less informed (who have not studied the nuances) with the aim of persuading. Most folks are least likely to detect contradictions and most likely to be appealed to on emotional grounds but when the general public spots a contradiction, we as people get a little high off of the enlightenment that needs to be handled with care or you risk insulting the intelligence of the uninformed. Remember that the less informed aren’t necessarily idiots are all, it’s just they have better things to do then argue about what you care about.

History Does Not Repeat Itself

Using analogies from past events to imply a future outcome that is relevant to whatever argument you are having now is hollow talk. You can’t predictive the future generally, but in particular by saying this current situation is just like this other past situation and look how that past situation turned out therefore the same will happen here, is lazy thinking.

Facts are Weaker than Fiction

Better more reliable facts are helpful but secondary. Facts relating to human behavior and activity can change and evolve. Facts are moving objects therefore any statement is subject to being made false through time-lapse (passage of time). Meanwhile, fiction is static because there are no reference points to suggest it is changing. And people love certainty!

Rationality versus Irrationality

Human beings are irrational most of the time, therefore appealing to the irrational is far more effective. Get used to it. An example where rationality does not take hold is the financial sector. There are systems to analyze finance which managers use to ensure they are in control of the apparatus of capital creation, however, Burton Malkiel’s A Random Walk Down Wall Street illustrates that irrationality rules the stock market. Human are irrational with pockets of rationality in specific circumstances; the final purchase decision is usually not rational. Love is not rational. And politics is the art of the possible, not the art of the rational. Complicated prediction models with many assumptions have the possibility of being very wrong because the assumptions are rarely dispassionately derived.

Acknowledging that this Argument was good Exercise:

it’s a nice way to diffuse a situation, if you can explain what this argument really was about. It was about exercising your brain. The most important “muscle” in the human body, needs a good work out and so you can finish off any argument by stating the obvious that 1) we’re not going to solve the world’s problems by the end of this argument, 2) it was good exercise…