Thursday, October 2, 2008
Inside Politics
Roots of woe
"In the early 1990s, I attended a conference designed to teach journalists the tools of an emerging field known as computer-assisted investigative reporting," Steven Malanga writes at www.realclearmarkets.com
"One of the hottest sessions of the conference explained how journalists could replicate stories that other papers had done locally using computer tools, including one especially popular project to determine if banks in your community were discriminating against minority borrowers in making mortgages," Mr. Malanga said.
"One newspaper, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, had already won a Pulitzer Prize for its computer-assisted series on the subject, and others, including The Washington Post and the Detroit Free Press, had also weighed in with their own analysis based on government loan data. Everyone sounded keen to learn if their local banks were guilty, too.
"Although academic researchers leveled substantial criticisms against these newspaper efforts (namely, that they relied on incomplete data and did not take into account lower savings rates, higher debt levels, and higher loan-defaults rates for many minority borrowers), bank lending to minority borrowers still became an enormous issue - mostly because newspaper reporters and editors in this pre-talk radio, pre-blogging era were determined to make it so.
"Editorialists called for the government to force banks to end the alleged discrimination, and they castigated federal banking regulators who said they saw no proof of wrongdoing in the data.
"Eventually, the political climate changed, and Washington became a believer in the story. ...
"Of course, the new federal standards couldn't just apply to minorities. If they could pay back loans under these [looser] terms, then so could the majority of loan applicants. Quickly, in other words, these became the new standards in the industry."
Leadership crisis
"At Harvard's Center for Public Leadership, which I have the privilege of directing, we have taken public surveys in each of the past three years measuring confidence in our nation's leadership. Our surveys have been done in partnership with U.S. News & World Report as well as Yankelovich," David Gergen writes at cnn.com.
"The results haven't been pretty. In the fall of 2005, some 65 percent said we have a leadership crisis in the country. By 2006, the number had risen to 69 percent. And last fall, no less than 77 percent declared there was a crisis of leadership. Moreover, 79 percent said the United States would decline unless we get better leaders.
"Please note that this survey did not reflect just an unhappiness with President George W. Bush. It was widespread across 12 different institutions and leadership groupings. Only the military and the medical profession were given relatively high marks this past fall. Strikingly for purposes of understanding these past few days, the institutions and groups with the lowest levels of confidence were smack in the middle of this financial meltdown. Four of the five lowest rated groups in the index were business, Congress, the executive branch, and the press. No wonder the 'leaders' of these institutions had so much trouble persuading the general public about the seriousness of our financial mess," Mr. Gergen said.
"What we see today then is a leadership vacuum. And in particular, we are experiencing an interregnum in Washington, a moment when the highest office in the land seems vacant and we are awaiting a new national leader.
"But we cannot assume that a new president, whether Barack Obama or John McCain, can magically wave a wand and solve our problems. It is clear that we need to rebuild leadership in institutions and groups across the board. And unless we do so, America's greatness as a nation will be severely challenged."
Hiding Bush
"I think McCain has suffered a deterioration in his poll position for a simple reason: He's the Republican," Jay Cost writes at www.realclearpolitics.com
"George W. Bush is the president of the United States. He is responsible for the state of the nation. He's not held in good esteem right now, and he's a Republican. From a public opinion perspective, it does not matter so much that the Democrats control Congress. The buck stops with Bush; Bush is a Republican; [Sen. John] McCain is a Republican; McCain suffers.
"A related factor could be that Bush is simply more noticeable than he was a few weeks ago. The president has done a good job hiding himself during the presidential campaign. Presumably, he knows that his presence hurts McCain, so he's taken himself out of the public's view. But now he's back on the television, on the front pages, giving prime-time speeches, and so on. I think this has hurt McCain's numbers as much as anything," Mr. Cost said.
"Here's a thought experiment to mull. Take 100 undecided voters and expose them to an hour of clips of George W. Bush talking. How many of them will lean Obama at the end of the hour? More than half, I'm guessing, which is why McCain needs this issue, and George W. Bush, off the front pages as soon as possible. McCain's trajectory to victory has always relied upon Bush falling out of public view. Up until this crisis, Bush seemed happy to oblige the Republican nominee. But this has put Bush front-and-center, which inherently helps Barack Obama."
One-way trade
"Our politicians are lucky that most Americans are too busy to follow their antics, because voters would surely howl over Nancy Pelosi's trade priorities this week," the Wall Street Journal says in an editorial.
"The House voted to give duty-free access to the U.S. market for Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador and Colombia for another year, even as it has refused to hold a vote on a two-way trade deal with Colombia," the newspaper said.
"That's right. Colombia will still be able to export its goods here without tariffs through 2009, but American exporters will continue to face high barriers in Colombia that the free-trade deal would reduce. So the same 'fair trade' crowd that bemoans the U.S. trade deficit wants to have only one-way free trade with Latin America - free for them to sell to us, but not for us to sell to them. Has anyone told the UAW about all those Caterpillar machinery exports to Colombia that Democrats are blocking?"
• Greg Pierce can be reached at 202/636-3285 or e-mail.