Defending Obama

Okay, once more into the breech.  When I started this blog, my intention was for it to celebrate eclecticism; it's a blog about pop culture, and Mormonism and politics and baseball and . . . .  This is primarily because I just have that kind of 'messy attic' mind.  I store basically everything up there: don't mind the dust.

I never thought I would post twice in a row on any subject, let alone politics.  I mean, I like politics, I'm interested in politics, but more than movies?  More than baseball?  Come on.  Especially with scorching hot pennant races in every division.  

But the conventions are going, so there's nothing on TV.  And my wife is home recovering from surgery, with me doing my inadequate best to care for her, so haven't been to the movies for awhile.  And, you know, this is the most important election of our lifetimes.

At least Chuck Norris seems to think so.

I really don't want to be snarky about Chuck Norris, either.  For one thing, even at the age of 72, he could still kick my ass.  But he's a good guy, a fellow Christian, and he clearly thinks the Ant-Christ is about to be named the Democratic nominee for President.  "Socialism. . . . or worse."  Cue the soundtrack to The Omen.

So let me defend Barack Hussein Obama's first term as 44th President of the United States.  And the basic Republican argument against him is, in Bill Clinton's memorable paraphrase, "we handed you a horrendous mess, and in four years, you still haven't cleaned it totally up, so put us back in power."

A sixteen trillion dollar national debt, eleven trillion of it on Obama's watch: that's the argument.  So let's look at the debt.  Where did it come from?  Here's what caused it.

And here we go again, blaming Bush for everything.  But what's important to recognize is that the Bush legacy consisted entirely of continuing commitments.  The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were hardly something we could just walk away from.  We had to wind them down, transition to civilian rule.  It wasn't easy and more importantly, it wasn't cheap.  The Medicare expansion was actually a good thing, completely necessary.  (All except for the 'not paying for it' part; that was a uniquely Bush innovation.)

Now, I don't think the war in Iraq needed to be fought.  But I'll concede that reasonable people disagree there.  The one completely foolish, absolutely unjustified bit of spending on that chart, the Bush tax cuts, were the one continuing commitment that could have been abandoned.  The Bush tax cuts remain the single most idiotic public policy decision of my lifetime.  They accomplished exactly nothing, except to expand the deficit and give rich guys more money.  They had no stimulative value whatever.  But I can see the reluctance to raise taxes mid-recession.  Plus there was no way Obama could have gotten ending the Bush tax cuts through Congress.  So we were stuck with that one too. (Maybe they go away in December.  We can hope). 

Okay, so there's all this deficit spending going on, all of it in continuing commitments, and the economy was in free-fall.  Tax revenues way down, making deficits worse.  What exactly should the President have done?

Well, eight days into his Presidency, Mitt Romney was already declaring Obama's policies a 'failure' on national TV.  So what exactly was he doing that was so terrible?

Not cutting spending.  Not imposing austerity.  Providing a stimulus.  Not following Great Britain, a big nation with a big economy that was facing exactly the same problems America was, with pretty much exactly the same causes.  That has to be it, that has to be what Republicans mean by 'failed policies.'  Obama didn't follow the David Cameron path.

And boy did we dodge a bullet there.

Because there's just not an argument to be made for austerity anymore.  It just flat doesn't work.  I mean, look who's tried it?  France, Great Britain, Spain, Italy, Ireland.  It hasn't worked anywhere.  Double-digit unemployment everywhere.

Oh, yeah, he also instituted Obamacare.  So let me ask this question: it's two o'clock in the morning.  You're a Mom or a Dad, in a family too poor to afford health insurance, one of the 30 million Americans in that boat, and your kid is really seriously sick.  At that point, you have exactly two choices, both of them hopelessly irresponsible.  You can take your child to the hospital emergency room and rack up a bill you have no possible way of paying, knowing your next months are going to be a nightmare of dodging calls from bill collectors.  Or you can let a potentially serious illness go untreated.  Maybe the kid has meningitis.  Maybe she has strep. Maybe something worse. 

So, okay, you hate Obamacare.  What's your solution? Uninsured Americans right now face a completely untenable double-blind, one that also has serious health cost implications for the rest of us.  The US pays twice what other nations pay for health care, with worse outcomes than almost any other industrialized nation.  Every one of our last nine Presidents has attempted some kind of health care reform.

Obama got it done.

And with apologies to Chuck Norris, this is not the apocalypse.  President Obama is not a socialist, he's not a communist, he's not a terrorist, he's not muslim (not that it wouldn't be perfectly fine if he was muslim, it's a major world religion and a peaceful and wonderful one).  He's not (apologies to Dinesh D'Souza), an anti-colonialist, except in the sense that basically everyone nowadays is anti-colonialist.  (I don't see anyone in either party suggesting that what the US needs is more colonies.)  He's a pro-business moderate, who has cut tax rates to their lowest level in years, whose Presidency has seen the highest corporate profits of my lifetime. Not that that's necessarily a good thing.

I personally don't think he got enough in his negotiations with AIG and Goldman Sachs et. al.  We saved their fannies; they should have agreed to cut bonuses and CEO compensation packages and agreed to much stricter regulations.  And I fault Obama for not insisting on a much stronger version of what became the Dodd-Frank bill.  The specific excesses that made up the world-wide financial crisis are still not illegal.  And they should be.    

Personally, Obama's a Christian--he and Michelle and the girls attend the Episcopal Church close to the White House, though the President isn't always able to make it.  His wife is wonderful, and his girls are adorable--he's a good father and husband.  He's a reasonable guy, thoughtful and smart, and he's also pretty cool--gets pop culture references, chats on Reddit. He likes basketball, and he loves to read.  He's not perfect, but he's hardly Satan. 

And yes, he was, in fact, born in Hawaii.

President Obama's policies will, if enacted, lead to a continued, somewhat slow recovery. I think we could do better, but I don't think he can get a huge Paul Krugman stimulus through Congress.  But in ten years, Americans will be astonished think that Obamacare was ever controversial.  He's been a pretty good guy, and a pretty good President.  This is not the End of Days. 
 

Economics and economists: part trois

So who can we trust?

Which economists, what economic models, which schools of thought within economics?  Isn't economics, after all, just a bunch of math-obsessed eggheads arguing over stuff, using big words most of us can't understand?  Doesn't economics have the same predictive accuracy as what those chirpy TV weather people offer?  How many internet arguments conclude with some arrogant jerk pompously intoning, in tones of fatuous certainty, 'well, if you understand basic economics. . . "  Like, say, I've been doing for two days now?

I take it as given that there's no such thing as objective analysis.  The academic discipline of economics tends to call itself a 'science,' but to suggest that there's not a political or ideological component to the ideas of any economist is silly.  Economists do collect and analyze data, and they do make predictions based on that data, but no one has a perfect track record. (Although some guys, as I'll show, come pretty close).  They all make mistakes.  And they disagree with each other, pretty ferociously at times.   In the current political environment, both sides have presented their 'economic plans' (which tend to be pretty platitudinous and vague), and both sides claim that 'leading economists' agree with even their rosiest predictions.  And most citizens don't have time to read tons of economic theory, don't have time to check the math.  Folks got lives. 

So people vote their gut. People distrust any statement by any economist.  People care a lot more about family members who are out of work.  And ideology becomes a convenient shortcut.  'I'm a conservative,' so I support conservatives, and I believe conservative economists.  'I'm a liberal', and so I support liberals, and believe in pronouncements by liberal economists.

I get all that. I do it too.  But doesn't intellectual honesty require that we do pay attention to data, that we do, at times, change our minds based on facts and evidence?  As a liberal, I tend to think government-provided welfare is a good thing.  I tend to dismiss arguments about welfare dependency.  I tend to think that dependency doesn't actually happen much, and that it's not generational.  I no longer think that.  I've seen enough evidence to consider welfare dependency quite damaging, and to think that we need to re-think welfare programs.  I do think we have to use our resources as the richest nation in the history of the world to provide for the less fortunate.  I do think we need to be smarter about it, though. 

Okay, so, a year or so ago, I decided to write a play about two economists, in fact about two guys famous for disagreeing with each other.  Nobel laureates both.  John Maynard Keynes, the Cambridge economist, and Friedrich Hayek, the Austrian. Keynes' great book was The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money.  It's essentially the book that created the field of macroeconomics, and is considered one of the most influential and important books ever written in the field.  It's also a chore to read, I gotta tell ya, sparkling prose interrupted by lots and lots and lots of math.  And I suck at math.  Hayek's great book is The Road to Serfdom: it's one of the most important books in the history of libertarian economics.  It's also a lot easier to read; it's actually dazzling, terrifying, brilliant.  And while I was at it, I also read everything else I could find by those two guys. 

A friend also suggested that I read Robert Heilbroner's The Worldly Philosophers, and boy am I glad I did.  It's probably the best book ever on the history of economics.  That kinda grounded me, and encouraged me to read several other guys.  Read me some Malthus, some Adam Smith, some Ricardo and Veblen.  And now our economy is in the tank, and I've read probably twenty books about the financial crisis and what caused it.  Fascinating stuff. 

And we're in a mess, and we need to claw our way out of it.  To which end, for years now, I've been reading Paul Krugman.  His latest book is End This Depression Now.  Which, I promise you, you need to read.  Liberal or conservative or libertarian: read it.  It's not a tough read, and it's a big best-seller.  And you may disagree with it.  But read it.  It's a book worth taking seriously. 

So here's what I think we should look for in an economist.  First, is this person respected in the larger profession?  Has the economist won the Nobel Prize in economics?  Or a Sloan Fellowship?  Or some other prestigious prize in the field?  (Paul Krugman won the Nobel Prize in economics in 2008.)  Second, is this person an expert in the specific economic area we're concerned about.  In the case of the US economy, that means a macroeconomist, not a microeconomist.  (In other words, a big picture, national economy guy, not a small picture, everyday market efficiencies guy, like the Freakonomics guy, Steven Levitt.) Paul Krugman is a macroeconomist, with a specialty in international trade.

I would also say this: how practical are this economist's theories?  I remember reading a Heritage Foundation plan to fix problem of American health care.  First item on this proposal: get rid of the AMA.  I don't know whether it would be a good thing or a bad thing to get rid of the American Medical Association---I suspect it would be a very bad thing indeed.  But since that's never happening, that's not a realistic proposal.  Same thing with economists who say things like "we should go back to the gold standard," or " we should get rid of the Federal Reserve."  I don't know what the effects of those decisions would be--I think pretty bad.  But since neither is ever going to happen, why talk about it?  

On the other hand, we do want an economist who is maybe a little counter-intuitive, someone whose ideas aren't part of the mainstream discourse.  To the extent that there is a mainstream consensus (right now, that deficit reduction should be our biggest priority), we should look for someone who challenges it.  After all, the status quo ain't great, right?  But here's the big question: what's the economist's track record?  What predictions has s/he made and how have they panned out?  How accurate has s/he been? 

The reason I trust Paul Krugman, the reason I think every policy maker in the country should read his new book and implement the policies he recommends, the reason I think he's the most important economist working right now, is not because he's a liberal and I like liberals, but because his track record is amazing.  He's been right over and over again.  As he says himself, it's not because he's personally brilliant.  It's because the models he uses (largely based on Keynes, who also had a freaky habit of being right all the time), are good ones.  They work. 

Examples: when the Obama administration proposed their stimulus, Krugman said it would stop the bleeding, it would save some jobs, but it was too small to make a real difference.  He predicted an unemployment rate of around 9% post-stimulus.  He nailed it within a few decimal places. When Standard and Poor's reduced the US credit rating, there was tremendous consternation, both in the White House and on the Right. Krugman said it would have no effect whatsoever.  It hasn't.  When the Cameron administration (in Great Britain) proposed their austerity measures, Krugman said they were condemning their country to double-figure unemployment--their economy has been even worse than Krugman predicted.  I could add example after example: I can't one where he was wrong.

So when a recent Nobel laureate in economics, with a track record of being right pretty much without exception, who most mainstream academic economists all quote and track and read and listen to, says we can fix our economy in eighteen months without doing long-term damage or anything, I think we should try it. 

And President Obama, finally, seems to be listening.  His jobs bill (stalled in the House) is a huge step in the right direction.  It's too small, but it will help, and if it were to pass, it would do so measurably, leading to further steps in the right direction. 

The other possibility, of course, is that Romney wins, rips off the mask, and comes out as a closeted-Keynesian.  But I'm not counting on that.

The economy: part deux

So how do we fix it?

First and foremost, we need to focus on what matters: jobs.  And right now, the focus, both left and right, is primarily on deficit reduction.  You actually hear people say from time to time things like "we need to cut spending and reduce the deficit so we can increase the number of jobs in our country."  That's like saying "we need to eat more waffles, so we can rotate the tires on our cars."  It's like saying "we need to stop watering our lawns, so we can spay and neuter our pets."  It's like saying (I can do this forever) "we need to ride our bicycles, so we don't get wet when it rains."  Deficit reduction is a good thing, but it has nothing whatever to do with job growth.  Nothing whatever.

In fact, there's no evidence at all suggesting that high deficits are currently harming our economy, not in any way.  If deficits were harming our economy, we'd see it in inflation and in rising interest rates.  Anyone out there try to buy a car lately?  I don't know that I've ever seen interest rates this low.  The deficit could become a problem, at some undefinable point in the future.  It isn't doing harm right now. 

(At this point, I suppose it's also worth pointing out that the Romney/Ryan proposed tax cuts are not balanced by their proposed spending cuts, and that their plans will, by the best non-partisan economic analysis available, increase the deficit from about 1 trillion dollars a year to about 3 trillion. So even if the deficit were a serious problem right now, the Romney/Ryan plans will make it considerably worse.  Just sayin'.)  

No, what's needed is more stimulus.  What's needed is more money pumped into the economy. More money circulating, more money spent by consumers, more demand.  More demand equals businesses expanding, new business start-ups.  We're in a liquidity trap caused by a demand-side recession.  Liquidity traps can last for years; they don't just solve themselves.  (Ask Japan; their demand-side recession lasted twelve years.)  Government spending cuts pull money out of the economy.  We need more money in the economy.

We can see it right now.  The single biggest factor holding back our current recovery is public sector layoffs. The private sector has been creating jobs--not as many as we'd like, but job growth has been fairly strong.  But private sector job growth has been counter-balanced by layoffs by state and local governments.  Teachers, firefighters and cops. And that has all sorts of other negative implications, like an education system where class sizes have never been higher, preventing good teachers from being effective.  

So what we need is not cuts in federal spending.  What we need to do is to spend more, not less.  The federal government can stimulate through paying for infrastructure improvements (always a good idea anyway).  The federal government can give money to states and municipalities that are hurting, allowing them to re-hire cops, firemen and teachers.  I think mortgage debt relief and student loan debt relief would also prove stimulative.

Where is that money going to come from?  Well, we'd borrow it.  And it's not true that we're mostly borrowing money from China.  Most of our debt is held domestically, by Americans.  The federal government can, under these present conditions, borrow money at essentially zero percent interest; that's how favorable the rates are.   
 
I know this is all counter-intuitive. Debt is bad. Families can't survive if they spend that much more than they bring in.  I happen to live with a deficit hawk; my wife manages our personal finances with steely-eyed vigilance; if we need to make a purchase, we can and do pay cash.  (In fact, we're not spending very much, which makes us part of the problem!)  But the federal government is not a family. 

Federal debt is not a bad thing.  Deficit spending is what defeated Hitler.  Deficit spending is what created the federal highway system.  Deficit spending is what created the infrastructure that created the wealthiest nation in the history of the world, with the strongest middle class, and the greatest possibilities for rags-to-riches success stories that the world has ever seen. 

But aren't we piling debt on our grandchildren's shoulders?  Is it sustainable, won't we have to balance the books eventually?  Sure.  But I'm less worried about my grandchildren than I am with my children, with the current generation of college graduates who can't find jobs, who did everything right, got into good schools, worked hard, got good grades, and still have to live at home with their parents in a kind of suspended half-way house to prosperity.  I'm worried about families right now who lost their jobs and are over-qualified for the only jobs available.  I'm worried about unemployment and underemployment right now.  I'm not saying 'the future will take care of itself.'  But full employment will increase the tax base, and deficits will fall.

Keynes said (I'm paraphrasing) the time for austerity is during a boom, the time for spending is during a bust.  Counter-intuitive or not, we need more stimulus.  We need to stop this focus on deficit reduction and focus instead on jobs, on the middle-class, on making it possible for our kids to live the American dream.  That's what both parties are saying right now; those are the rhetorical themes that dominated the Republican convention and that will dominate the Democratic convention.  But their plans have to match their rhetoric.

There's also a lot of talk in both conventions about 'bold leadership' and 'new ideas' and 'making the tough choices.'  Let's start by questioning all the current conventional wisdom.  Mainstream analysis in the media says 'it's time for more spending cuts.'  'It's time for austerity, time to tighten our belts.'  Most mainstream commentary agrees that the deficit is the big issue we need to address right now.  Most economists disagree.  In my next blog, tomorrow, I'll talk about those economists, the ones who have a track record that suggests we should listen to them. In the meantime, at least keep an open mind.  We need jobs.  That needs to be the priority.  Not deficit reduction. 

Post Clint: Republican Economics

I resolutely refused to watch any of the Republican National Convention this past week, and won't watch the Democrats this week.  As I've said before: I don't watch infomercials.  I nearly missed the highlight of the convention, Clint Eastwood's absurdist improv dialogue with an empty chair. Jon Stewart's response to Clint was both very funny and oddly insightful: "there's a President Obama only Republicans can see."  Hilarity aside, the Republicans are trying to combat the impression that they are primarily a party of angry wealthy clue-less old white men, so they feature, during their one hour of prime-time coverage, an octogenarian yelling at a chair?  I don't get it.

I did read the main speeches on-line: Ryan's, Rubio's, Ann and Mitt Romney's.  And they said all the right things, about the middle-class and job creation and rebuilding the economy.  My son and I set the plus/minus for use of the phrase "the failed policies of the Obama administration" at 60: if you'd bet the plus, you'd have cleaned up.  So these two questions suggest themselves: what policies exactly have failed, and what do you propose to do differently?

Let me quickly throw in my two cents: I think the Obama administration doesn't really know exactly and specifically how to get the economy rolling again.  His economic team has some ideas, but they're unfocused, contradictory.  When the President says, "I have a plan," I don't know that he really has one.  His economic team tends to lurch from idea to idea, from Keynesian stimulus to cost-cutting austerity, and back again. His singular achievement, Obamacare, was compromise legislation, and is flawed.  I support it, not because it's perfect, but because it's SO much better than the status quo.  Obama doesn't have the gusto, the charismatic confidence of FDR, but his Presidency does remind me a bit of Roosevelt's restless willingness to try anything.  FDR was advised by Keynes himself, and ought to have followed Keynes' advice more closely, just as Obama would be better off if he'd listened more to Paul Krugman.  Obama's been muddling through, but he did save the auto industry and he did save 3.5 million jobs with the stimulus package (according to the painfully non-partisan CBO).  It's a mixed record, but over-all, some progress has been achieved.  And it was never realistic to think he could fix things in four years.  After all, Great Britain, France, Spain, Italy, Portugal, the Netherlands, Ireland et. al, faced the same difficulties, and, if anything, are doing worse than we are.

I think the Republicans, on the other hand, think they know exactly how to fix things, exactly how to get the economy rolling.  I think they're brimming with confidence.  I think they think they've got a genuinely brilliant economic thinker in Paul Ryan, a serious policy wonk, and I think they're completely on-board with his ideas.  I don't sense any self-doubt at all.  I'm sure Ryan is a die-hard conservative ideologue, a man with a plan and a self-appointed mission. I hadn't thought that described Romney . . .  but he did put Ryan on the ticket. 

And they're completely, totally, 100% wrong about all of it.

Their proposals are on-line, and actually fairly specific.  Romney is on record as proposing to cut marginal tax rates to 28%.  Ryan's plan cuts them to 25%.  Presumably, they'd split the difference somehow when it came time to actually pass legislation.  This is a massive tax cut, targeted towards the wealthy, and would add billions (the figure I've heard is 4.2 trillion) to the deficit over ten years. The cuts would be partially off-set by cuts in social spending, cutting such programs as food stamps, Pell grants, Aid to Dependent Children, school lunch programs, Meals on Wheels; essentially eroding the social safety net. 

This plays into a standard Democratic meme; Republicans as heartless plutocrats, callously enriching the rich on the backs of the starving poor.  Democrats like to see themselves as uniquely virtuous and caring--I don't think that's true.  I think Republicans genuinely do believe that tax cuts will stimulate economic growth, helping the middle class and providing opportunities for upward mobility.  I think Republicans genuinely do believe that welfare dependency is a real danger, that generational poverty is bad for everyone, not least bad for the poor themselves.  I really do think Romney and Ryan think these tax cuts and spending cuts will pay for themselves in time, and lead to greater prosperity for all.

They're just wrong about all of it.

Conservatives famously dismiss Keynesian economics, and dismiss stimulus programs like the one Obama implemented.  But Keynes did believe that, under some circumstances, tax cuts could prove stimulative.  When inflation was high, and interest rates were high, tax cuts for rich people could free up much needed investment capital, stimulating economic growth.  This is what happened in 1980.  That's why Reagan's tax cuts had stimulative value.  Those were the conditions that existed then.  But that's not what's going on right now.  Right now, investment capital has never been more plentiful--interest rates could really hardly be lower.  Right now, we're caught in a liquidity trap caused by a demand side recession.  What's needed is more stimulus.  And Obama tried a stimulus, and it did work, some.  It was just too small to repair all the damage wrought by the financial crisis.

But we can know, for an absolute certainty, that the Romney/Ryan plans won't work.  Spending cuts, these kinds of austerity measures have been tried.  Most of Europe suffers under the same conditions we're facing; something akin to the Ryan plan has been tried.  To say it won't work isn't just theory.  We're actually in a position to look around and see other countries--Great Britain, France, Ireland--with the same problems we have, with the same causes, and see what they're trying and what's working for them.  We can KNOW, with something approaching absolute certainty, what doesn't work.

So in this election, we have a choice, between uncertainty shading towards truth, and certainty in the service of untruth.  I'm not certain Obama knows how to fix things.  I am certain that Romney thinks he can.  But he's wrong, and Obama is closer to right. 

Stories within stories within . . .

My wife has been home this week, recovering from surgery, and we decided, since we had some time on our hands, to watch the entire Lord of the Rings trilogy, the extended versions of all three movies.  Thirteen hours, or whatever, journeying through Middle Earth.  The movies proved to be every bit as magnificent as I remember them being, and by the end, we felt as wrung out as if we'd actually been with Frodo and Sam, climbing to the fiery pits of Mount Doom. 

One thing that really struck me watching the movies this time through were the little stories, the minor stories, the nameless characters and unheralded actors that helped round out the story, that gave it substance and variety.  I mean, obviously Lord of the Rings is about Frodo and Sam, about Gandalf and Saruman, about Aragorn and Boromir and Theoden, king of Rohan.  In a class I used to teach about dramatic structure, I used to say that the trilogy was built on three basically tragic stories.  Fellowship of the Ring is the tragedy of Boromir, The Two Towers is the tragedy of Smeagol/Gollum and Return of the King is the tragedy of . . . Frodo.  But that way of looking at the film leaves out Aragorn, perhaps the most powerful and compelling character of the entire series. 

But this time through, I kept noticing tiny stories, little stories that Peter Jackson weaves in the fabric of the entire trilogy.  For example:

The barmaid of the Shire:  In Fellowship, we get just a hint of Sam's unrequited longing for a girl we only see briefly, slinging ale in a Shire tavern.  Her name, apparently, is Rosie Cotton, and the actress who plays her is Sarah McLeod.  Sam dances with her at Bilbo's farewell party, after mooning after her like a love-sick calf.  I think we see him briefly remember her in The Two Towers, but at the end of Return, Sam musters his courage and boldly goes over to her in the tavern, and next we see, they're getting married.  And at the end of Return, she and Sam can be seen outside their home, with two small children in tow, and we're thrilled; brave, loyal, heroic Sam has achieved a happiness Frodo will forever be denied.  But it works because Sarah McLeod makes the most of her tiny part; she's a cheerfully beckoning presence in the film, in Sam's life. 

The Rohan woman and her two children:  In Two Towers, we see a village of Rohan, beside a creek, about to be attacked by Saruman's Orcish army.  A woman puts her two children, an older boy and a little girl, on a horse and tells them to spread the word, promising to meet up with them later at Helm's Deep. I can't find the older actress' name on IMDB, but she's tremendous in the part, fierce and strong.  We think she can't possibly have survived the Orc attack, but later we see her and she did survive it, and is reunited with her children.  She then waits with the other women and children in the cave beneath Helm's Deep, while the older child, her son, joins Aragorn as a fighter.  He and Aragorn have a brief scene together, in which he admits he's afraid, and Aragorn tells him he has a good sword.  That's it, that's all we see of this family, but we assume the boy survives the battle, and that this small family is saved because of the heroism of the Helm's Deep defenders.  Strictly speaking, we probably don't need that story line, but it gives a moving, human face to the victims of Saruman's treachery. 

Gamling's heroism:  Gamling is not a character you probably remember from the books and movies, but this image, you might remember.  We first meet Gamling at Theoden's castle at Rohan.  Gamling is basically the captain of the guard, taking orders from Grima Wormtongue, but clearly not thrilled about it.  When Gandalf frees Theoden from Saruman's spell (his face morphing from 'senile ancient geezer' to 'powerful middle-aged king' in one of the coolest effects ever), Gamling's in the background, restrained from interfering by Legolas.  Gamling gets a tiny scene with Theoden right before the Helm's Deep battle, in which he admits to being scared.  But he's still alive and fighting alongside Aragorn in the final battle in Return.  Bruce Hopkins, the actor who plays him, does a wonderful job giving this tiny part a real story arc, from a guy who is basically there to take orders, even if it means serving a loathsome rat like Grima, to a frightened-but-game soldier, to a battle-scarred, heroic soldier. 

The Orc Richard III.  As the Orc forces gather outside Minas Tirith, capital of Gondor, this one deformed looking chap, Gothmog, leads them into battle.  I love the way he moves: with one arm and leg crippled, he's the very image of Richard III. At one point, a Minas Tirith trebuchet launches a big rock at him; he glares at it contemptuously as it hurtles towards him, then steps aside at just the last instant.  He later gets in a fight with Merry and Eowyn, nearly kills them both, but is beheaded at the last second by Aragorn.  Basically, all by himself, Gothmog gives the Orcs some character, some individualization.  The actor who plays him, Lawrence Makoare, plays an earlier part in the trilogy, in which he is likewise beheaded by Aragorn.  He's Lurtz, the muscle-bound archer leader of the Uruk-hai in Fellowship; the scary-looking dude who kills Boromir.  Makoare plays a third character as well, the Nazgul king who Eowyn kills so memorably in Return.  It's difficult to imagine Lord of the Rings being as rich and powerful as it is without this fine actor, who brings such a menacing physical presence to his three roles. 

I don't know that there's much of a lesson for writers with these subplots.  Most of us don't write thirteen-hour long movie trilogies.  The lesson, if there is one, is that details matter.  Small stories can be as powerful and important as bigger ones.

Also this: there's no such thing as an unimportant part in a play or film.  And actors in smaller roles still get to enrichen our show with their own humanity and talent and presence.

How not to root for a Mormon, when you are one

My grandfather was a Norwegian, a steelworker, a union man, and a life-long Democrat.  As such, he believed that Walter Mondale was the finest man ever to run for national political office.  Of course, a lot of that had to do with Mondale's strong support for unions, but a lot of it was Mondale's Norwegian ancestry.  Mondale's grandparents were from Sogndal; they moved to Minnesota in the mid-nineteenth century.  That was close enough for my grandfather; he loved the guy.  He walked on clouds for most of the '84 election; well, all except for the result part.

I thought about that last night, as Mitt Romney accepted the Republican party's nomination for President.  A Mormon: a major party nominee.  I thought, of course, of Missouri and Governor Boggs, and Van Buren of 'your cause is just' fame, and of the humiliations of the Smoot hearings.  Of the colossal unconstitutional farce that the Smoot hearings even happened.  I thought of Joseph Smith's quixotic run for the Presidency back in 1844.  He had no chance of being elected, of course, but a platform of internal improvements, compensated emancipation for slaves, and prison reform could well have headed off the Civil War, if implemented.  I thought of the great Mo Udall, such a great mixture of ironic distance and passion, for the poor, for an end to Vietnam; still my favorite Mormon politician ever.

And I thought of Barack Obama, and what his victory meant to my African-American friends.  The idea that he could win was inspiring in ways I can hardly imagine.

A Mormon, one vote away from the Presidency, and the validation that would mean.  It's an awesome thought.

We all have these words we use to describe ourselves, and we all feel close to people who describe themselves similarly.  I am a father, I am a baseball fan, I am a playwright, I am an American, I am a liberal.  When watching the Olympics, we find reasons to root for or against certain athletes, and of course, one major rooting interest is patriotic. As an American, I root for Americans.  As a Norwegian-American, I also root for Norwegians.  I am a Mormon, and a Mormon is now the Republican candidate for President.

But boy am I torn.

Because another word I use to describe myself is 'liberal.'  And I go with liberal, not 'progressive' or 'left-leaning moderate' or whatever.  Ever since the Fox News commentariat started treating 'liberal' as a dirty word, I'm got even less interested in backing down from it.  In my ward, at Church, I've heard people use the word 'liberal' as an epithet; I call 'em on it, and it hardly ever happens anymore.  I'm a liberal.  I'm also really into politics, really into policy; being liberal is something worth defending, I think. I'm an L-word liberal, in other words, and the more I'm attacked for it, the more tenaciously (obnoxiously) I cling to it. 

So Mitt Romney is the Republican nominee for President, and a self-described conservative.  (This week: snap!).  I think he's a good guy--I still have very fond memories of the Salt Lake Olympic Games, and give him full credit for stepping in like he did.  I think that's a genuine accomplishment, something to be proud of.

But I don't want him to win.  I think the policy positions he has chosen are uniformly awful.  I think he'll make a terrible President, if elected, not because he's a bad person, but because he believes in policies that have no chance whatever of working.

So I'm conflicted.

I have a Dad and a brother who love Romney like my Bestefar loved Mondale.  And my Dad seemed genuinely puzzled the other day.  I have a lot of misgivings about the Obama presidency--so why wouldn't that make me a Romney supporter?  What I did not explain carefully enough is that my difficulties with the President are precisely why I'll never vote for Romney.  It's not that Obama is too liberal--he's not liberal enough.  I have reservations about Obamacare not because it's a step towards socialized medicine--I have a problem with the fact that it's NOT socialized medicine.  That's what I want: a single-payer system.  Of course, it's possible that Mitt Romney is not actually the die-hard tea party conservative he's campaigning as.  That's frankly the only reason to not move to Canada if he wins (as my daughter threatens to do.)  He might actually not be completely horrible.  He might even be a slightly less inept President than George W. Bush.  That's a thin hope to cling to.

But he's running against Barack Obama, a man who I also genuinely admire, and who holds policy positions that, though somewhat to the right of mine, are reasonable and thoughtful and likely to work, somewhat, at least.

I want to warn people against Romney, warn them against the perils our country faces if he wins.  But I have to do it without warning them against a man I admire, a kind of man I also sort of am.  The approach has to be: "Don't vote against the Mormon! Do! Not!  Uh, for policy reasons, mind.  He's actually a really good guy.  But don't vote for him!  Oh, and I'm a Mormon too, as it happens. . . So. . . ."

What do you know about the Church and would you like to know more?"     

The New Normal

Every fall, the TV networks announce their new fall 'season.'  TV's calendar has traditionally followed the school calendar--summer ends when school starts in the fall, at which point, presumably, folks have more time in the evenings to watch TV.  Plus, they're building audience for October sweeps (the Nielsen ratings in October that determine advertising rates).  So there are all these news shows in late September, and ads for those shows starting in August.

A few years ago, I taught a class on sit-coms, which meant watching every new sit-com one fall.  Since that time, I've gotten in the habit of trying to watch at least one episode of every new show (except for reality shows, 'cause life's too short).  My wife has put up with the fall new show blitz for years, and is tired of it, so we'll pull back this year, only watch some of them.  One we will not be watching is The New Normal, on NBC.  KSL, the NBC affiliate in Salt Lake owned by the Church (my church, Mormon), won't be showing it.

The premise of The New Normal is something like this: a gay couple in LA decides to adopt.  A single Mom from the midwest agrees to be their surrogate.  Her conservative grandmother rounds out the cast.

It's from the makers of Glee, I'm informed by the ads for the show.  Well, I like Glee a lot, because I like music a lot, and I like the idea of a musical TV show.  (Anyone else remember Cop Rock?  Check this out!)  And the singer/actors on Glee are all really good, and the musical sequences are often very clever and fun.  And the show's terrifically gay friendly, which I also like.  Kurt, a gay kid who's one of the show's central characters, is exceptionally well acted by a kid named Chris Colfer, who has the most beautiful singing voice.  And his father is a mechanic, and a very blue-collar guy, who nonetheless is completely supportive of his son, and their relationship is really lovely.  It's the best thing on the show, honestly.  The writing on the show is also massively preachy and irritating and cliched and bears the same resemblance to actual life in an actual high school as The Village People bear to actual construction workers, police officers and Indians.  So Glee's a mixed bag.  Boy, is it ever.  But it's worth watching, because of stuff like this.  And this.  And this. 

So The New Normal is going to be a gay-friendly TV show by some of the same people who write Glee.  Which might mean what's bad about Glee (the writing), and not what's great about Glee (the music.)  Which might mean kind of a bad show, honestly.  I love that Glee's gay-friendly.  I think that's awesome. It's also not all that ground-breaking. Uh,Will and Grace? 

Which is why, although this is the kind of thing about which I suppose I ought to have an opinion, either outraged or supportive, in fact, I don't.  KSL's statement defending their decision was pretty weasel-y: "dialogue might be excessively rude and crude. The scenes may be too explicit or the characterizations might seem offensive... For our brand, this program feels inappropriate on several dimensions, especially during family viewing time."  Might be?  Didn't they at least preview the pilot?

But rude and crude dialogue?  Uh, have you seen an episode of Whitney?  Also on NBC? Sexually explicit, and aggressively, unwatchably un-funny Whitney?  This fall, NBC's got a sitcom during family hour called Animal Practice, about the sexual hi-jinks of veterinarians; that's okay? And they're both on during 'family viewing time.'  

Ah, 'family viewing time,' that supposedly sacrosanct hour from 7-8 (first hour of prime time) when TV's supposed to show some discretion and at least marginally better taste; well, the New Normal's on after that.  When you think of the irredeemable rubbish available on TV, cable and networks, during that hour, it seems a little preposterous to insist that networks follow it.  And, of course, they don't.  Also, count how many police procedurals are on during 'family viewing time.'  Shows that basically live for rape and murder and serial killers.  Of course, on those shows rapists and murderers and serial killers all get caught and sent to jail, but with lots of graphic bad stuff shown along the way.  So how is that 'family viewing'? 

Look, to state what's obvious, KSL overreacted to a show that suggests that loving and committed gay couples represent some kind of 'new normal,' even though they actually obviously do. I think the show promotes gay marriage and I think the Church owns KSL.

I was talking to a friend the other day, a great guy, LDS like me.  And he said that he opposed gay marriage.  I know this friend's brother, who is gay, and I asked this: "if your brother were to come to you and say, 'I've met the man of my dreams, we're flying to New York and getting married,' what would you say?'"  And my friend said, "I'd be so happy for him.  That would be awesome."  And he would, and he'd come to the wedding, and he'd give the new couple a crock pot or a small appliance or something. It's possible to oppose gay marriage in the abstract, as a political issue, but also support your gay friends.  In fact, isn't that what most people, on either side of the political spectrum, do?

I'm on record as supporting gay marriage politically.  I'm also on record as opposing bad television shows.  I have no idea where that places me in regards to The New Normal.  Quite possibly, the show may be so dreadful that this entire kerfluffle will have been forgotten in six months.  If it turns out to be good, I'll catch it on Hulu.  Or maybe even NBC.com.  KSL's decision won't affect anyone who really wants to watch it.  Meanwhile, older viewers, who maybe don't know how to access Hulu, won't have to be troubled by it.  And that's all this is about.