Getting rid of Barbie for President
posted 12-19-2007 8:14 p.m.

 
In today’s Washington Post, political columnist Dana Milbank writes:

... even these private reflections of the candidate frequently centered on public policy: "Senator Clinton was one of the first people to realize that the air was toxic. . . . She wants a good education for everybody. . . . She helped set up the system to provide services to indigent clients." Even the candidate's mother, Dorothy Rodham, noted how "she's been very active with social justice causes."

Maybe, then, The Hillary They Know isn't so different from the Hillary everybody else knows: She's a public-policy savant whose idea of a good time is reading white papers into the wee hours. ...

On confusing the marketing with the message: Pushing for better campaign coverage
revised and reposted 10-29-2007 2:42 p.m.
original post 10-21-2007 1:15 p.m.

 
Maureen Dowd's columns usually make me raise an eyebrow or two, smile, or even laugh out loud. They often provoke me to think harder about a given topic, which is good. This, despite the fact that I don't always agree with her. My eyebrows went up for a different reason, however, when I read this morning's New York Times column (Sunday, October 21, 2007) entitled Cougars, Archers, Snipers.

I'm glad to know — but not really surprised — that Hillary Clinton's campaign is supposedly making use of a pollster who has broken down the electorate into categories and written a book about those categories. Pollsters, marketers and sociologists have been doing that for years. The public doesn't automatically reject those labels, either, nor does the press (remember when you first heard or read the term 'yuppies'? It sounded strange — but we all know how to recognize one now, don't we? One only hopes that the obnoxious term 'cougars' doesn't stick).

Human beings have been categorizing other human beings for nearly as long as there have been human beings, if only into the simple categories of Us and Them — Them, of course, usually being people who are different from Us in some way and, therefore, to be feared, shunned, and possibly warred against on occasion. That rulers or politicians would make use of such information to stay in office (or to keep the masses from rioting for whatever reason) is unsurprising; they've been making promises to unhappy masses for as long as there have been leaders hoping to survive their terms of office. No doubt somebody promised someone something appealing like food or an animal skin or a better hunt just to keep his head when our ancestors lived in caves. Thus was born the predecessor of the campaign promise. It was a kind of survival tool.

Still, if Hillary's — or anyone else's — pollster is creating new categories for analyzing potential voters, it's useful for those voters to know about it. Fair enough. And Dowd has never really liked Hillary, and she's entitled to that opinion. That's fair, too.

But what strikes me this morning is the somewhat toxic assumption on Dowd's part that if any of the policies Hillary proposes resonates with any one of these subcategories of people, this is automatically bad, Machiavellian, not to be trusted. Haven't we had enough of presidents who really aren't responsive to what the majority of Americans — or subsets thereof who aren't among the top economic stratum or power elite — actually want from their government? Like the dork currently in office, who talks a not particularly persuasive line of guff but got let off easy by nearly everyone until invading Iraq turned out to be the disaster that those of us in the vocal minority — like Russ Feingold — warned it would be?

To point this out (or to point out that Sen. Clinton may not be perfect but would be a much better alternative than the guy currently in the White House) doesn't automatically render me a Clinton supporter or apologist — just someone who recognizes a fact when she sees one. And the fact is that Dowd treats Sen. Clinton with nearly as much contempt (yet with less sharp analysis) as she does Dubya Bush.

Is it possible that Hillary is polling first and creating policies to appeal to microsegments of society second? Sure. But we and Ms. Dowd should look at the facts first before jumping to that conclusion. Some of the issues that Hillary talks about now and proposes policies for are issues she's been interested in for 30 years or more: child welfare, families and family law, health care. That's documented. So it's also possible, and entirely more likely, that she's using poll results to figure out just how welcome some of these proposals she's been pondering for years will be with certain segments of the populace.

It's not clear to me that there's anything wrong with that as long as the policies and ideas came first — and it looks like in her case, they did on at least the aforementioned subjects. That her ideas might have evolved over that long a time is actually to be hoped for: it might indicate that she refined her views periodically in response to new information, learned more about what works out in the field as opposed to what looks good on paper to politicians and bureaucrats, and/or learned more about what it takes to get legislation passed and sensible regulations written that accurately reflect that legislation.

Did she and her husband bungle their health reform proposal during his first administration? You bet, but not for the reasons Dowd thinks — most certainly NOT because they were supposedly pandering to the health care industry, as Dowd accuses. I'm in a position to know: I was covering health care and health policy from a national perspective for the business press long before the Clintons ever made it to the White House and in much greater depth than nearly anyone at the Times, including Dowd, has before or since (the two possible exceptions were Milt Freudenheim and Robert Pear, and even then I'd been on my beat longer than Pear had been covering anything health policy related).

Any time Dowd has two or three uninterrupted hours to spare, I'll be happy to clue her in as to what the real deal was. In fact, I'd be happy to tell Hillary everything she doesn't know about health care reform — and there's still plenty — if she had presence of mind enough to ask me.

I could also tell Dowd why virtually all of the White House press corps did such an abominable, embarrassing job of covering health care reform last time. For one thing, they covered the horse race much more than the content, rarely discussing what should have been proposed instead or accurately analyzing the feasibility of what had been proposed — which they clearly didn't have the background to do anyway. But then, the White House press corps are dilettantes, most expert at covering the White House and its shenanigans and not at all expert in the actual subject matter of health care, health policy, or health care finance (all of which I'd by then already covered in detail during previous administrations). Reporters and columnists covering Congress aren't much better at it.

To have them covering health care reform was an error made by their editors and compounded by the reporters' and columnists' unfamiliarity with the subject matter and subsequent lousy performance. One can only wonder what on earth those editors were thinking in not reaching instead for reporters who were subject specialists. But I digress: my point is that I don't expect the Washington press corps to do any better this time around, given what I've seen so far. Dowd's work included.

One wishes Dowd had paid more attention to Judith Warner's blog item last week on the dearth of coverage on a policy speech of Hillary's. Surely, it would have provided Dowd with better meat for her knives and us with more helpful information:

An analysis of Clinton's policy proposals would give voters insight into what her administration might choose to accomplish, certainly more so than comments about her pollsters' market categories; yet practically nobody covered the speech or the material in it, or even remarked on it. If not for Warner's blog entry, I wouldn't have known a) about the speech even being given, and b) that nobody covered it, thus depriving me of important information. I'm thankful Warner wrote the item. But damn, Maureen, can't you and your other colleagues do a little bit more than dis Hillary's head counters? If you're going to slice and dice the senator, you could at least produce something that's a little more useful to the readers.

By taking on the Hillary marketers rather than detailing and dishing on Hillary's proposed policies during the week she made a major policy speech, Dowd took the easy, lazy way out. Try harder, babe: if nobody else is giving us that policy stuff, then you should be. If you don't want to be just another one of the press corps sheep, you ought to be looking long and digging deep for what everyone else is missing. It's work, yeah, but you might actually enjoy it.

Oh, and since Ms. Dowd has often complained about the lack of enough women on the op-ed pages, she ought to appreciate getting this response from an analytical reporter who just happens to be female.

/p>

Public ventures: Getting around ComEd’s rate dilemma
revised and reposted 10-29-2007 2:03 a.m.
original post Monday, August 6, 2007, 8:45 p.m.

Part two of a two-part essay
Previously: a short history of utility monopoly

We have a seeming dilemma on electric rates in Illinois. The key word is ‘seeming,’ of course.

ComEd demands higher electric rates because the parent company it created to absorb its generating plants, Exelon Corp., is raising the price of electricity to it so it can make more money. ComEd claims this is absolutely necessary or it will go bankrupt. As if Exelon would really ever let its subsidiary go out of business (if it did, it wouldn’t have a public to which to sell the power it generates … unless it wanted to sell that power at premium rates to the rest of the country instead, right? Leaving Illinois energy users up a creek. Hmmmm. There’s a thought).

Getting conned by ComEd, or What’s a utility monopoly for?
revised and reposted 10-29-2007 12:27 a.m.
original post Friday, 8-3-2007, 3:50 p.m.

 Part one of a two-part essay

What happens at an auction?

Whether the material on offer is famous artwork, the remains of an estate, multiple lots of fine wines, or a farm that went belly up, the point of an auction is to obtain competing bids in order to get the highest possible price for the seller. The shared expectation is that only one party other than the seller can get the goods, or win, and anyone who can’t offer more money than the top bidder loses. Whatever is in high demand is never a bargain at auction. Auctions are about maximizing income for the seller by getting someone who wants or needs the goods badly enough to be willing to pay a higher price than anyone else. No one is surprised when that happens.

So why did anyone believe energy companies and politicians when they told us that deregulating public utilities and allowing energy auctions would lower electric rates?

For those who think energy auctions are a good idea, I have two words: Enron. California. When energy costs in California skyrocketed a few years ago at a time demand increased and rolling blackouts became the norm, electric users paid insanely high rates while energy companies and their shareholders saw hefty profits. Firms like Enron made energy auctions possible and encouraged the excessive profits that buying energy ‘on the market’ instead of producing all a utility needs internally helped to create. Enron helped energy companies make obscene amounts of money even as they created an artificial shortage that allowed them to charge such high prices for energy bought at ‘market’ rates. And this subverted the purpose of giving public utilities a local monopoly.

Over 40, smarting, and getting wiser
amended and reposted 10-28-2007 11:21 p.m.
original posted 6-21-2007, 3:44 am

 
[Note: Since this essay was written, The Starter Wife garnered an Emmy and 10 nominations in all; the award and the response to the program was encouraging enough to USA Network that it decided to turn the mini-series into a regular series for next season. Just when I was ready to start watching again … ]

Hollywood seems to be throwing women over 40 a bone at the moment. But only that much, if indeed that much. The more I consider it, the more it seems to me that popular culture is really patronizing and insulting us, possibly mocking us, too, while playing to our worst fears. None of which is particularly helpful. Or funny.

The first clue I got was the premiere of a new summer mini-series on cable called The Starter Wife. Now there’s a term that makes any woman decidedly uncomfortable: a label for a woman who’s been had by the jerk she was married to when he decided to trade up for a younger, prettier model, as if he were changing cars to reflect career advancement or a more affluent lifestyle. Ouch. It smarts every time you hear the term. We all want to avoid being that woman, and we all privately have at least a tiny doubt that we really could, if push came to shove: how do you ever know for sure, when you’re hopeful and taking those blessed vows, that the guy you’re marrying won’t one day turn into exactly that kind of jerk?

On Starbuck remaining human — and alive, or
Have You Scriptwriters Completely Lost Your Minds??
postscript appended and reposted 5-6-2007 5:41 p.m.
original post 5-5-2007 11:56 p.m.

I heard a rumor the other day — afterwards seemingly 'confirmed' by reading online posts — that on of my favorite fcitional characters on SyFy's reboot of Battlestar Galactica, Starbuck, is the fifth and final previously unknown Cylon model. The fact that she appears to Apollo at the end of the season finale (or was he hallucinating, like Baltar the mad scientist?) is supposed to make the matter clear. I understand that even Ron Moore has confirmed this (forgive me for bringing it up at this late date, but I only recently saw a tape of the finale, not having functioning cable myself).

Another bombshell in a show loaded with them, you say. Nope: just a bomb, as in dud. In fact, for the first time since the series began, Moore has made a really dumb error (if, indeed, the rumor is true). How unexpected and disappointing that in searching for a final twist for the episode, he should go for a solution so trite, superfluous, and, if you think about it, predictable. He’d practically telegraphed it. Bo-ring …

How much more interesting, though, if poor Starbuck were to return and still remain human, only to be disbelieved. Feared. Spurned.