Page 2 of 2 Paulson's Lilliputian moment
By Julian Delasantellis
government and the bankers bickered all weekend; when it became clear that
neither side was going to turn away from their positions at the last minute,
this adolescent-like game of chicken ended with Lehman filing for bankruptcy
and the whole world crashing.
What cautionary tale does this provide Obama?
Living on America's west coast gives one a unique perspective to the current
concept of what political consultants call the "24-hour news cycle" - throwing
up for grabs each day a new, separate, discreet contest for the political
actors to win or lose. Thus, as the radio political talk shows here are signing
off at midnight, on the east coast it's 3am, and the newspapers that will
define the next day's contests are starting to roll off the presses; 5am east
coast time sees the cable news networks open their sleepy eyes; at 7am comes
the national morning broadcast network chat shows, and with that the battle for
that day is fully joined.
Who are the contestants which take the field of battle? Well, now America
essentially has six network news operations, with CNN, FOX and MSNBC
supplanting the three traditional networks (MSNBC and NBC News operate
independently, well at least sometimes they do) and many fewer newspapers and
newspaper journalists than previously.
What is new is the whole new population of Internet-generated and delivered
content, whose material goes a long way towards determining who will win or
lose the day's debate. You have news sites operated by the traditional
networks, which regularly produce content that never makes it onto the air;
news blogs, opinion blogs, combinations of the two; many times all are
cross-pollinating their existence by their perpetrators appearing on the
afternoon shows on the cable news networks.
Whatever the qualifications are to be included in this brood, it is obvious
that to hew to the zeitgeist of the time by being an honest-to-God
breathing, bleating pundit, knowing anything about what you are talking about
in a specialized subject is not one of them. It is far more important to be
able to fill up the dead air until the next commercial break with derogatory
and incendiary rhetoric about your ideological opponent.
When this group, having no knowledge of the dire situation that the financial
markets were in, and caring not a whit about that state of ignorance, made it a cause
celebre to oppose all new "bailouts" as a betrayal of the people's
will, and when Paulson, seeing that he was losing these daily media
engagements, listened to them, the die was cast for Lehman and the markets.
Paulson soon did a quick volte face and saved AIG, then just about
everybody else in the markets who could get their fingers onto a federal check,
but by then the dam had burst, and the world had flooded. (Paulson did another
about-face on Wednesday, when, in response to the massive unpopularity of his
Troubled Asset Relief Program, or TARP, he scrapped the program's original
focus on buying distressed mortgage securities from the banks in favor of the
much more questionably effective action, but one in line with current thinking,
of taking equity shares in banks.)
It might be a surprising argument for a pundit like me to argue that pundits
should be ignored. Of course, with my finely honed pundit skills (don't try
this at home), I could cut the Gordian knot by arguing that only Asia Times
Online pundits are worth taking seriously.
After the February 1, 2003 Columbia Space Shuttle tragedy, when the
vehicle disintegrated during re-entry, killing all seven crew members, one
pundit actually opined that this had made the obviously upcoming Iraq invasion
by the US less likely, as it dimmed Americans' faith in the promises of
technology and, by extension, techno-war. Nothing was further from the truth;
we now know (to me, it was pretty obvious then) that it was only blood that
would quench the raging Oedipal fire consuming President George W Bush's soul.
Still, the Bush that ignored the pundit class in 2003, and in doing so drove
America off a cliff in Iraq in 2003, followed the same class to the letter in
not rescuing Lehman in September, and, in doing so, proceeded to once again
drive both the world economy and his party right off a precipice.
When, president-elect Obama must wonder, should the pundits be listened to, and
when they should be ignored?
The answer lies in the mostly ignored issue of how the public at large views
the punditry's histrionics. Some react like fans of the exhibition that is
American professional wrestling, fervently wishing that the pundit on their
side break an aluminum folding chair over the head of their hated opponent.
However, for most, these ideological spectacles are roughly equivalent to the
roar of a huge bear when the circus trainer has him up on one leg on a stool
and is taunting him with a whip and chair - it is for them pure escapist,
mindless entertainment.
So the modern version of Machiavelli's Prince should adhere to the people's, as
opposed to the pundits', views? How? Through reading polls? That's the last
thing one should do. A public policy wholly designed around poll results would
resemble that of a manic depressive simultaneously taking a full regimen of
both tranquilizers and stimulants. Americans regularly report to pollsters
wildly inconsistent and unreal beliefs, such as wanting both higher government
spending and lower taxes, or that all of the country's fiscal difficulties
could be solved if only the foreign-aid budget that only benefits "all those
foreigners" was slashed (at around US$30 billion, the foreign-aid budget is
less than 1% of the Federal budget, as opposed to the current modest estimate
of a nearly $500 billion deficit for fiscal year 2009).
No, what a great leader must do is to fire the pollsters and polemicists and
find out where the people really want to be led. Conservatives think that a
candidate advocating higher taxes is automatically taking a deep drink from a
hemlock-filled chalice, but what the people really won't accept is higher taxes
disappearing into the miasma of the bureaucracy without seeing any benefit.
Currently, the punditocracy is working itself into its usual frothy lather over
the pending rescue of General Motors that will soon emerge from the upcoming
lame-duck session of the US Congress, claiming it as another bailout betraying
free-market principles. The people, on the other hand, would see the possible
million or more prompt job losses that would ripple through the auto industry
and its suppliers in the event of total GM shutdown, and wonder why the
politicians are waiting so long to act.
As the players enter Center Court at the All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet
Club, more commonly known as Wimbledon, they are given advice in the form of a
sign containing excerpts from If, the Rudyard Kipling poem written in
1895:
If you can meet with triumph and disaster
And treat these two imposters just the same ...
Yours is the earth and everything that's in it
And - which is more - you'll be a man, my son.
And if Obama can
meet and overcome the challenge of the legions of fatuous haranguing imposters,
of both the right and left, who all day and night pollute the public square
with their unending, ultimately pointless bloviations, he'll be a great
president.
Julian Delasantellis is a management consultant, private investor and
educator in international business in the US state of Washington. He can be
reached at juliandelasantellis@yahoo.com.
(Copyright 2008 Asia Times Online (Holdings) Ltd. All rights reserved. Please
contact us about
sales, syndication and
republishing.)
Head
Office: Unit B, 16/F, Li Dong Building, No. 9 Li Yuen Street East,
Central, Hong Kong Thailand Bureau:
11/13 Petchkasem Road, Hua Hin, Prachuab Kirikhan, Thailand 77110
