Guido vs Gracchi the Counterpunch

I give this article a more confrontational title than I want it to have, because having read Guido's response at Samizdata I have to say that I think he has something right and that some of my critique of him was not as plausibly phrased as it should have been. Lets isolate I think three points- one on which we agree, one on which I think I am going to move a little backwards and one where I think we can also establish a point of contact. This is an interesting debate: it has forced me to be much more positive about the kind of blogging that Guido does.

Guido and I agree that perceived self interest is much more important to politicians than self interest- we agree that politicians have a world view in which they do things and that they operate in their own interests. I am interested in what degree politicians are a different species from the general population in this: I'm still thinking about this one.

Where I concede is that Paul Staines is right: there is a separation between Paul and Guido, between the person and the blog persona. Perhaps because this blog is so much the creation of my personal whim and not of any attempt to create a persona, that means that I underestimated that. I should apologise that criticisms of Guido were meant to address the persona and not the person lying behind that persona. I accept the assurances offered that Paul has a long record of thinking about policy- I am sure that he does- most libertarians afterall get to their position after a lot of thinking. Throughout this post therefore I'm going to be quite precise- when I say Paul, I mean the individual behind the blog, when I say Guido I mean the persona in front of the blog so to speak. I hope that is a distinction that we can all agree on.

Lastly he is possibly right that the 'struggle' so far as it is one is going on on his blog and not this one. For the sake of this one I don't care- were the struggle going on here, I couldn't write so many film posts for a start I'd have to be disciplined and stick to politics. That isn't my style. But the real issue I suppose is dual: firstly its about what Paul says is Guido's anti politics. I can see as a libertarian why anti-politics works- in a sense the libertarian answer to the dilemma is to abolish politics itself. Remove stuff from the politicians and things will be fine- I am personally not so sure, as I have written elsewhere I don't think coercive power is simply the same as state power. Nor do I accept that political power is not exercised in other ways in a libertarian society: the people might be different and wear different hats but underlying my suspicion of politicians (something I share with Guido) is a suspicion of people- and ultimately I'm not sure about an anti-political approach to dealing with that. We need to work out systems for constraining and checking individual power and though libertarianism has a lot to contribute to that, I'm not sure that it has the answers.

The second point is about where the struggle is. Paul is right- I shouldn't care about Guido and I don't really care about millions of other blogs like Guido, but I do care about Guido. Thinking about it, its not Guido that I care about, so much as the fact that a gossip blog sits atop the blogging heirarchy in the UK. Its not envy precisely- I don't want this blog to be at the top of the blogging heirarchy- its a sense that Guido's blog doesn't allow his readers to understand what they should understand about the political world. Simply put I think that Guido should exist, but I wonder about the state of the political landscape if its the biggest in the country. That turns me I suppose to a bigger issue which is what blogs do and why people read them: I often wonder whether people's readership of blogs is simply to get a quick fix and whether we bloggers over analyse our output.Whether what people want is just to go over to Guido or Iain Dale and quickly read the latest on there as they take a break from work.

In the end Paul is right when he says that everyone is free to blog as they like- and then popularity comes. I suppose what I'm more interested in is what blogs tells us about politics and whether the story that they tell helps us understand politics. I'm not sure Guido is helpful there- because I think he makes us think that politics is about scandal only. Ultimately though I wonder whether we are still in the Drudge stage of the political cycle and whether as in America we shall see the slow growth of a wonkosphere eventually alongside the blogosphere. It does strike me that the problem with Guido as a blog is that it presents a naive view of politics- even if its writer doesn't hold that view of politics. That so many people read it says either one of two things- firstly that most people reading blogs read them for entertainment not enlightenment, and secondly that most people don't really understand politics that much and turn to sites like say Chris Dillow's or Matt Sinclair's which explain the thinking behind policy much better. I think its a mixture- my real issue is that its hard to find really good political commentary around about ideas and policy at the moment, you don't get it in the newspapers and you don't get it on many blogs. Its hard I think to know about the world of thinktanks and policy making (that world extends far beyond think tanks into the civil service and the business world as well) unless you are in the midst of it. Policy discussions go on over and above the general population who just get the gossip. In that sense Dale and Guido are just extreme versions of the MSM,

and what Britain needs is a stronger Wonkosphere- someone like Matt Yglesias to appear from somewhere!

The Republican Race

Waking up this morning, the immediate big story is the American Primary. There is an interesting discussion to be had about the Democratic race which pitches different kinds of characters against each other- but ideologically the Republican race is much more fascinating. In 2000 the Republicans decided that John McCain the Arizona senator was too moderate for them: many Republicans still think that that is the case. In that sense many may interperate the result as a massive defeat for conservatism in the Republican party: I think they are right but probably not in the way that those pundits confidently predicting think that they are right.

Apart from in the North East, this hasn't been a crushing McCain victory. A typical result is that in Oklahoma where with 100% of the precincts reporting, McCain got 37%, Huckabee 33% and Romney 25%. Admittedly these are early results- but even so it looks as though McCain has only got above 50% in three primaries, all in the North East. In most other places the results look slightly higher than what he got in Oklahoma but not that much higher. Percentage wise, John McCain has not captured over half the Republican party primary voters: and that's with the fact that he is much more popular with independents than either Mitt Romney or Mike Huckabee. And yet despite that there can be no question that McCain seems to have gained the nomination- he has at the moment 487 delegates whilst his nearest challengers Romney and Huckabee both have under 200.

So what went wrong for conservatives tonight? Looking at the numbers, I would argue that it wasn't that they lacked voting strength. Put it this way in the majority of states, the not-McCain candidate won the majority of the votes. The reason why that doesn't come out in the delegate numbers is that the Republican party has a first past the post Primary system- you get past the winning post and you get rewarded. Now the point is that if this was the Democratic primary, which is PR, Romney and Huckabee combined might have equal numbers of delegates to McCain and be plausible challengers. They don't and aren't. The key thing about the conservative primary vote here is not that it didn't exist: but that it split. The Conservatives in the Republican party haven't gone away, they have divided neatly down the middle.

Look at the places where Romney and Huckabee won. Romney took states like Utah- the midwestern states. Huckabee won in the south- Alabama, West Virginia, etc. Most people would suggest that Huckabee won the evangelical vote- as he did earlier in Iowa, whereas Romney won the traditional conservative vote, coming second in California for example. This isn't because the two eliminated each other though: it is because both were deeply unsatisfactory candidates on their own. Look for instance at this Gallup poll, which demonstrates that if Huckabee had dropped out by a vast number his supporters would have gone to John McCain and not to Mitt Romney. Huckabee has been accused of socialism by Romney's supporters and Romney's Mormonism was a real problem for many of Huckabee's guys. The ultimate thing about the conservatives in this primary is that without George Allen or Bill Frist, they simply didn't have a good candidate (or perhaps their only good candidate, Fred Thompson, was fast asleep when the possibility came calling). The weakness for the conservative movement lay not so much in its base and motivating voters as in its leadership.

Part of that is just accident- had Allen not had his Maccaca moment or not faced Jim Webb in Virginia he might be the presumptive Republican nominee now. Whether there is something deeper I'm not sure- it might be that the conservative movement, naturally an oppositionalist movement has found government over the last eight years a fissaporous experience and will find renewed unity in 2012 against say a McCain Presidency or a Democratic Presidency. Or we could be seeing the effect of a quick primary season- given another two or three months the conservatives might have found their guy. The quick Primary season did not leave enough time for Conservatives to unite behind an anti McCain guy having decided which of their men they liked the most. All could be true. But what I think is definitely true is that the conservatives in the US in this election didn't lack for the troops and footsoldiers, they lacked for a plausible general to follow. In the South they marched for Huckabee, everywhere else for Romney and thanks to the East and West General McCain stormed to victory!

Britblog

I apologise for not doing this yesterday- other things drove it out of my mind! Anyway here we are today with a more limited and yet still illustrious list of posts from the UK blogosphere. We cover a whole range of experience here from the 17th to the 20th Century. Anyway to kick off how about reading James Hamilton's views on Capello's managment style- interesting and thoughtful as ever. Capello may be adopting a distant style to his players, but as Dave Cole points out the Tories are adopting a much more nannying style to the country. Freemania suspects though that the Tories themselves may need some nannying: is Cameron really only just about as good as Kinnock? Who cares anyway? From the desk of George Galloway we have the greatest attack on Imperialist scum ever delivered- may they die in their own individual Trotskyite, Zinovievist, Bukharanist, revisionist running dog hells!

But if they don't it doesn't matter, as they'll start blogging and end up in a legal fight: Mr Eugenides seeks to adjudicate in the latest battle betwixt Tim Ireland and Guido Fawkes. Calm down lads, the real idiocy is about the issues (as I said yesterday), Matt Sinclair's got a bee in his bonnet about the latest paper from the Social Market foundation on climate change- he isn't too impressed. Incidentally happy birthday Matt- for a two year old you are quite articulate. Don Paskini is another articulate lad concerned with issues, this week its sharing the proceeds of growth and how the Tories don't even understand their own policies! And that's good as it means that you don't have to attend SOAS, where the Iranians are putting on conferences funded with our public money- go to Harry's Place and see what you can do about it. Or rather don't, because society is going to pot anyway and its all religion's fault: we've been having the argument over at Liberal Conspiracy, go and start with Kate Belgravia's provocative and well written post on why Jesus Christ should dominate our politics less. Thing is that Kate should calm down, afterall look at what all those Muslims gave us in the Middle Ages: modern science and all- not convinced- well time to bring on the historians!

And here they come, leaping like a herd of wilderbeast through some savannah forest. First up is that classic civil war debate between Pepper and Puddle the two dogs- canine confusion becomes a metaphor for other debates. On a more illustrious subject, the Early Modern Whale circles around the Old Cheapside Cross and finds out what he can about its history. Some of us though are only too depressed by the present, its hard to avoid when you here that the bulbs are coming up even earlier than usual in Kew Gardens. But not everything is depressing- and ending on a high note- just consider the Political Umpire's tale of these two human beings whose bodies are joined together.

So long till next time I host the carnival- sorry for a short one- but I hope there is something there to savour!

Anne Coulter's Endorsement

Anne Coulter, American Conservative extraordinaire, endorses Hillary as the next President of the United States should McCain win the Republican Nomination- she even commits to campaign for her if McCain is the candidate....

Robert Fisk's review of Fisk's biography of Saddam Hussein

You read the title right: here is Robert Fisk's review of his own biography of Saddam Hussein. Well not quite his own. Though Fisk has a biography of Saddam Hussein published in Egypt, it isn't actually by him, its a forgery, published by an enterprising journalist who had heard of Fisk's leftwing reputation and thought he should have written a biography of Saddam Hussein. Fisk's article is hilarious as he traces this man across Cairio but it brings up for me something even more interesting which is this. We often presume on the internet that we have our identities set in stone and the real danger is that people will snoop on what we write from afar and find out that we are secret conservatives or something. I think that's the wrong danger- though it exists- I wonder whether one of the more interesting internet problems over the next couple of years as blogging matures will be identity theft. Tim Ireland has drawn attention to the problem of sock puppetting on the internet- but I think there are more egregious things to come. Take Iain Dale, the reason I advance Iain is because of his electoral ambitions, it would be perfectly possible for someone to fake an identity as Iain Dale on the internet and start commenting on various blogs in his guise giving electorally embarrassing posts- the same goes for any politician blogging from Paul Flynn and Harry Barnes to Nadine Dorries and John Redwood. Trademark theft on the internet is an interesting issue: I'll be fascinated to see how it develops- especially given what Fisk rightly says about the difficulties of enforcing trademarks in various countries.

Guido

I know its a hackneyed subject- but Guido posted his own manifesto for the reasons for his blogging and I thought I'd reply and I have here.

McCain a Democrat?

Not all Republicans are happy with John McCain. Some even compare him to Henry 'Scoop' Jackson, and call him a populist hawk.

Criss Cross

"Everyone is either making love or else predicting rain" Bob Dylan Desolation Row

Criss Cross is a minor film noir, starring Burt Lancaster in one of his early roles. But it is still an interesting film. The device upon which the film hinges is the character that Lancaster plays- a drifter in the American West who keeps drifting back to an old love and a failed marriage in Los Angeles. All we know about Steve (Lancaster's character) is that he drifts from job to job and seems to have no independent life outside his family. His brother an impossibly all American lad is going to get married, his wise old mother is he says an object of devotion but in reality is more of a curse as she sees what he cannot. He wanders into LA and works for a firm specialising in the security of armoured trucks delivering money. His pursuit of Anna his ex wife leads him to her new husband, Slim, who is a gangster. In order to convince Slim that he isn't trying to pursue Anna he tells him he has an idea for a heist on the armoured trucks. The heist goes wrong and Lancaster ends up in hospital before fleeing to Anna, at which point Slim arrives and we see the final denoument.

The point about the film though, as ever with noir, isn't really about the plot. We know the plot will turn out bad from the first frame. More interesting are the characters and particularly the character of Steve. Steve doesn't have much of a life nor does he have a narrative of why he has come back from his wanderings to Los Angeles. Noone believes him when he mentions his feeble reasons: they all think he has come back for Anna. And he spends so much time looking for her, that so very quickly do we. We think that he is looking for Anna and in reality the reason he is looking for her is that his mind wanders back to her without much need for encouragement. There doesn't seem to be much else to distract him: he doesn't have many interests, he turns down opportunities to go to the cinema, to ice skating, to divert himself from Anna. Love for him has become the narrative of his life- like Bob Dylan's characters in Desolation Row he either is making love or else sunk in a slough of despond, predicting rain. The point is that Steve doesn't have a life beyond his quest for this one woman- he even says so at one point in the film and its that lack of any other focus that means that he is dragged into a world that he naturally is not part of.

As a morality play therefore about the consequences of abandoning all to love, this film works. It undermines that idea- playing with the suggestion that the man who abandons everything for love is actually a man with little to abandon. Interestingly Anna the other principal in the film is shown as much more calculating, she has genuine affection for Steve (definitely physical attraction) and yet she is much more determined to save herself. She would abandon him for her own chance of happiness. Anna is, we are constantly shown, more intelligent than Steve: she understands unlike him that mere affection only carries you so far, that love is no shield against bullets. She is weak though and dragged into situations: with her a lack of resolve leads her to her doom. But what she demonstrates is that passion can coexist with other emotions, can be present but dominated by other concerns, prudential ones in her case. Steve doesn't get that. He can't get it which is why in the end he is led to his doom. For Steve there is only making love or else predicting rain- and he'd rather be dead than a meteorologist!

The Elephant Man

The Elephant Man's real name was Joseph Merrick, his picture is above. Merrick was born in 1862 in Leicester. His mother died when he was eleven and he spent time in and out of the workhouse in the city. His disease which caused the deformities in the picture above began to make its appearance at the age of five- he was unable to find work either as a cigar roller (because his right arm was too large to manipulate the cigars) or as a hawker of goods (because his appearance terrified people). He eventually ended up being used by a series of fairground entrepreuneurs as an attraction, a freak that the general public would gaze at. He was an unsuccessful freak in that he was almost too freakish, he terrified most of the people that he came across. In an attempted continental tour, Merrick found little success and was abandoned and robbed by his then manager. At that point he made his way back from Brussels to Liverpool St station and fainted when he reached the station handing over the card of a London doctor Frederick Treves to the station staff. Treves once summoned arrived and recalled inspecting Merrick years before when a junior surgeon, he took pity on the Elephant Man and got him put up in the London Hospital in his own set of rooms. Merrick became a society curiosity- the Princess of Wales was only the most noble of a succession of famous guests- he attended the theatre and stayed in the country. This idyllic lifestyle ended when Merrick died aged 27 in 1890. He couldn't sleep lying down and Treves believed that in a final effort to do so, the weight of Merrick's head either broke his own neck or that his head fell forward and he suffocated himself in his own trunk.

The story may sound horrible and whatever Merrick's disease- the most modern guess is Proteus syndrome and possibly a disease of the nerves named neurofibromatosis type 1- he suffered hugely from it. His body as you can see in the photograph above was horribly deformed- with the exception of his genitals and his left arm, his entire shape was twisted and stunted. He limped. He could barely speak comprehensibly, though after much practise others might learn how to hear the words amidst his curious tones. He had continual health problems mainly bronchial but others as well- he had to have a huge overgrowing trunk sawn off in his teenage years. He was completely isolated. Most of his notions of people came from the books he read which were his only consolation. Fascinatingly he saw the normal world not as the world he saw but as the world of a Jane Austen novel- Emma was one of his favourite books. He was not mentally retarded and was perfectly aware of his own condition. He had an incredibly romantic attitude to women- seeing them as perfect and placing on a pedestal- sublimating sexual desire into a reverence for the angelic female. He was cruelly treated, and yet himself very kind, almost saintlike. Its likely that at times in his life- with his mother as a young child, with his early showmen managers and later with Treves that he found real compassion from others but it was only later on that he was able communicate.

His life is an incredible story. It does reveal a lot about the nineteenth century and attitudes to entertainment. We often think of the Victorian era as a censorious one- but in reality the story of Merrick makes us I hope realise that it was merely differently morally orientated. Laughing at Merrick would be seen as immoral today, in the early Victorian fairground it was a way of making money. The story also reveals the limited choices out there for someone like Merrick in the Victorian world: he was incredibly lucky to be found firstly by the showmen and then by Treves but he could have languished in a workhouse for years and years and almost did. The one bitterness that he constantly displayed was about his time in the workhouse and the horrible conditions in which he lived- endless bullying and endless drudgery. He was denied a lot of what we consider to be the attributes of normal life: Merrick had few friends until his later days, was almost childlike in his attitude to the world because his world was merely his own mind, he had so little engagement with other people, he had no relations with the other sex (women ran screaming from him normally: something that caused him great sadness) and though he read voraciously he had little education. But somehow despite that he was almost devoid of bitterness and hatred: the fascinating thing about Merrick is that he was gentle and kind and thoughtful, in a childish way, yet still a genuine way. He managed to overcome his difficulties according to those close to him with a real fortitude of personality.

His tale is interesting and so distinct from the rest of human experience that its hard to read lessons from it, I think what is fascinating about it is the difference that it reveals between Victorian London and our own day and also the ways that this deep interiority was actually a deep resource for Merrick. Cast upon his own mind, he found there the willpower to be a good person. Despite his terrible affliction, and his terrible life, he succeeded in ways that people richer and more powerful than him did not. Furthermore we should also remember that he was lucky: there were no doubt hundreds like him or even thousands who perished, abandoned to the meagre resources of the early welfare state.

Jaw-Jaw

Andrew Stuttaford is entirely right here when he discusses why its a good idea to talk to Iran. The point is that you might not gain anything, in which case if the talks are done at a low level you haven't lost anything. You might though gain something in which case you have a success. Talking is a bad idea if it gives the other side a propaganda coup- I remember Blair going to Damascus and being attacked by Bashar Assad but if done properly at low levels what is the problem with it. Furthermore if its done properly with a proper arrangement in place, it can even work at higher levels. The point is that negotiations don't lose you anything, they may even gain you advantages.

McA-Levels

Dave Osler I think is wrong to rebuke the government at Liberal Conspiracy over its latest wheeze to allow major companies to train their workers and receive qualifications worth as much as A-Levels: he fears a polytechnisation of the new qualifications- I can see where he is coming from but disagree. The degrees and A-Levels could work as described here- as effectively qualifications in management. There is nothing wrong with such a qualification- indeed if done well it could lead to jobs in the future- there are management schools afterall now and I can't really see why this wouldn't be a build up to one of those schools.

Where I think the government are wrong is in giving this to the companies to run. Not because there is anything wrong with company run training, but because the reputation of any courses will rest on the reputation of the companies concerned. The real issue here is that what you need is something you see in other branches of the economy. I'm thinking in particular of law and accountancy. In those two proffessions outside bodies regulate professional qualifications and they are well respected, whatever happens to the companies involved. I think that's a much better way of proceeding and it avoids another criticism that people might just be trained in company specific knowledge. What you really need is an association of catering management that say the big catering companies funded and was independent of government but respected by them all: so MacDonalds, Wetherspoons or even just those who had received the degree contributed. I do see that as being a way forward in the way that I don't see these present proposals being a perfect way forward.

I think though Dave underrates the importance of lifelong training here. The Leitch report on Skills revealed a lot about the nature of skills in the UK population: I'm not sure about some of the bolder predictions and the bases for them but I can see that this kind of skills training isn't a bad thing. Particularly because not everyone can succeed at school- for many people 16 or 17 isn't the right age to succeed, they aren't ready for it or interested in it and its only later in their twenties that they can succeed. That's particularly true for kids with learning difficulties: I know someone who is a chef at a Wetherspoons because he dropped out of school because of dyslexia, he would be perfect for one of these programs. He has the ability but lacks the confidence and its precisely that person that the government scheme with these companies is intended to attract. I would tweak it so as to make it run independently of the companies- but I do think in principle this is a good idea particularly for those who don't have a good experience of the education system and consequently don't fancy facing an educative institution again, be it a school, night school or the Open University.

Done well this could be a real success- done badly and with too much government control it could fail- but I think it could work particularly if these courses separate themselves eventually from the companies and become courses say at the Institute of Catering Management which companies invite people to apply for. I think it could work and if it did it would be great for many people who the education system fails but who have as much talent as those for whom the education system works. There will always be people, because of the key fact that we don't all grow in the same way at the same times, nor as we find out who we are do we all find relating to authority easy, who get left behind and feel very sceptical about education. This seems to me to be a very good move to get those people back on some kind of education wagon: and done well could be a real boon.

Mervyn King

Mervyn King has received another term as Governor of the Bank of England, thanks in part to his reputation for a sensible inflation policy and partly due to the fact that the recent Treasury Select Committee Report on Northern Rock condemned the FSA and not the Bank of England. I have no quarrel with the decision: I am no expert in who should be Governor of the Bank of England and given the relative consensus about the reappointment see no reason to be disquieted about King's return to the top post. But there is something interesting I think we should reflect on and its this. Increasingly posts like the Governor of the Bank of England or should it become independent the Head of the Health Service and other jobs are getting more and more powerful: at the moment they are appointed by ministers without much consideration by anyone else until after the event, should that be true?

I don't think it should. Ultimately the UK government is beggining to gather and use instruments within the leglislature to check and scrutinise central government. Whether it be the Public Accounts Committee using the National Audit Office to scrutinise government spending or the Select Committee for the Treasury examining the events at Northern Rock almost all of the select committees have had their moment in the sun. Perhaps though its time to expand their role even further and adopt the US model of confirmation hearings- making these senior and responsible appointments subject to public examination. Often the US system doesn't work and there are problems with it: but on the other hand there are merits to any nominee for a senior position like the governorship of the Bank with large discretionary powers in facing Parliament. It would not be appropriate for a civil servant whose responsibility is to ennact ministerial policy: but for someone whose responsibility is to define what policy is, Parliament should be able to hear what their intentions are, what their philosophy of monetary policy (in the case of the Bank) is and how they would behave. The public are also entitled to hear from them: unlike a civil servant for whose decisions the minister is ultimately responsible, the Governor of the Bank, the Auditor General and other officials are not presided over by a minister. The public ought to know who they are, what they want to do and what their responsibilities are. Confirmation hearings can but help.

And we have the appropriate places for those hearings to take place: the Select Committees. The function would strengthen the role of those select Committees politically too- it would raise their exposure and hopefully demonstrate to MPs that there is a career beyond being an executive minister, that there is a career in scrutinising policy as well.

The Bank of England

Andrew Lillicoe is entirely right on Conservative Home to draw attention to the fact that the Chancellor needs to explain the way that the Bank of England is and should be interpreting his inflation target. One of the strengths of the model of independence used for the Bank of England is that whilst the Bank is accountable for the operation of monetary policy, the Chancellor is accountable for its ends. The Chancellor sets the rate of inflation he would like to see- and the Bank finds a way to bring that rate or an approximation to that rate into being. That system means though that the Chancellor needs to take control of the issuing of that rate: he is the democratically elected politician and no matter how technically proficient the economists are at Threadneedle Street, it is for the Chancellor not them to decide the ends of UK monetary policy. That means that the Chancellor needs to exercise that power and not be intimidated- there is a worrying trend in British public life for politicians to devolve power to experts. Its not worrying if the experts implement the instructions of the politician, it is if as it seems in this case from Mr Lillicoe's reporting, the politicians forget that they should demand answers if the experts don't produce the conclusions that they have asked for.

Lord Ashdown Viceroy Extraordinary!

Peter Cuthbertson is pleased that the Afghan government turned down the services of Lord Ashdown, former leader of the Liberal Democrats and British peer, as UN special envoy to the troubled democracy. Cuthbertson may be right in the general case: that having failed as a party leader is no qualification to run a country after you leave office. But Ashdown is different and he is different precisely because he is one of those rarities amongst professional politicians: a man who has had real experience outside politics. Ashdown has military experience with British special forces, experience working in the foreign office and even perhaps though he has never confirmed or denied these stories in MI6. He was handled the Balkan role because of his long interest in the region in Parliament- frequently making trips there whilst Liberal Democratic leader. In such a way Ashdown combined real diplomatic, military and intelligence experience with the fact that he had been a party leader in a major democracy and therefore understood the way that politicians and campaigns worked- that unique combination meant that he was well qualified for a role in Bosnia and would have been well qualified having been a success there for a role in Afghanistan.

If politicians have done more in their private life before politics and demonstrated a particular interest and ability in one area, there is no reason that they should not be nominated for office there when their political career is over.

Index of Cinema Posts at Westminster Wisdom

• In the Valley of Elah
• Gaslight
• No Country For Old Men
• Charlie Wilson's War
• Reservoir Dogs
• The Saragossa Manuscript
• Little Dieter Needs to Fly
• Grizzly Man
• The Big Heat
• American Gangster
• Lions for Lambs
• Nightmare Alley
• The Counterfeiters
• L'Argent
  
• Control
• Interview
• Zodiac
• Twelve Angry Men
• Letter from an Unknown Woman
• The Hills Have Eyes II
• Rebecca
• Belle de Jour
• Vivre sa Vie
• The Battle of Algiers
• Thank You For Smoking
• Marie Antoinette
• Scarface
• Double Indemnity
• Rope
• Sunset Boulevard
• L'Enfer
• The Killers
• Winter Light
• Summer with Monica
• The Trial of Joan of Arc
• It's a Wonderful Life
• The Man from Laramie
• Wild Strawberries
• Bonnie and Clyde
• Force of Evil
• Humanity and Paper Balloons
• The City of God
• Casino
• All Quiet on the Western Front
• Sophie Scholl Die Letzen Tage
• All The King's Men
• M
• Memento
• The Devil Wears Prada
• Born to Kill

A UN University?

No longer a fantasy, it seems from Der Speigel's English edition that a UN university is in the process of being set up. There has always been a UN university but until now it has functioned as a kind of UN thinktank. Now they are thinking of taking on students and becoming a more conventional university based in Yokohama. This is one of the most absurd ideas that has ever been put forward- let me just give a couple of reasons why it is absurd for this body to do that- partly the issue is that the UN University could be doing something very useful but instead is engaged on this vanity project. Lets for a moment think about why the UN ought not do these things and then concentrate on why the University is doing these things and then move to what it could more usefully do.

The argument about why it shouldn't do this is pretty simple. There are a number of great national universities out there in the developed world whose work it would be duplicating- why should there be a UN university- it isn't like the world is lacking in Universities. National Governments and private individuals seem willing to endow great institutions from American Universities like Harvard, Yale and Princeton, to European ones like Oxford, Cambridge and the Max Planck Institute. Furthermore most university systems cope fairly well with all levels of ability- academic students go to the Harvards and Yales, people who want to study vocationally go to say Loughborough (in the UK for sports science) or Westminster (for nutrition). The world is filled with universities- the UN don't need to fill this gap.

The only places which don't have many universities are poor countries- but again though it might seem like a good idea to found a UN university- it isn't. All that this will acheive is to attract even more of the brightest students away from idigenous universities- meaning that those third world institutions are deprived of their best resource- the talent of their students and professors and the wealth of the endowments that they might leave. The foundation of a UN university would just add to the already existing brain drain from the developing to the developed world- why do we need to do this?

Bureacratic vanity is the best answer. Always governments and institutions ought to be asking not whether we can do something- but why we ought to do something. Its a fairly good rule that if the market or other institutions can and do provide a service, that you don't need to get involved. It doesn't work in all cases- but there must be a clearly demonstrable public good from something that the government or an international body does. The reason to do something cannot be as it seems to be here the ambition of one or a couple of individuals: government spending needs to be justified and its justification can't merely be that this is something we can do.

The UN University would far better be employed as a group of elderly, even retired, academics who would help governments that don't have university systems set them up. Say providing exam papers that would be respected as a gold standard and hence gain respect for degrees from new universities in developing nations. The UN University could organise for first world academics to go on regular lecturing tours in Africa or in the poorer parts of Asia. It strikes me that this would be a far better use of time and resource than competing with those new universities. The UN University would be far better used as a resource for all the Universities in the world- if its used at all but it should not compete with them.

We don't need it, we shouldn't have it and the only reason we do have it is vanity. This is exactly the kind of thing that gives government a bad reputation and its exactly the kind of thing which ought to be abandoned.

In The Valley of Elah

The Valley of Elah is one of the latest in a line of films about Iraq and the war there. The Valley of Elah was the location of the battle between David and Goliath in the war between the Philistines and Israelis- the title gives a clue to the real subject of the film. At one point in the film the main character, the father of a US soldier, investigating his son's murder, tells a young boy the story of David and Goliath and tells him that the moral of the story is that you should go down into the valley of Elah, get close to whatever scares you, the Goliaths of your life, and aim your slingshot right at them the moment before they are about to kill you. You have to confront life and take the utmost risks and in that moment you become a hero, its implied that in that moment you become a man. The father, Hank Deerfield, is an ex serviceman, ex military policeman whose son seems to have taken his advice, gone to Bosnia and then Iraq and confronted evil. The question that the film poses is what happened to him.

What it reinforces rightly is an important lesson in a society which is largely demilitarised: that war changes people and can often deform or reform them. The soldiers that we are shown coming back from Iraq are definitely altered by their experience. Driven to seek out cheap thrills whether drugs or strippers, in order to find relief from dreams of horror in the desert. Life around barracks in America is shown as depressing: soldiers struggling from drink to drink, men getting into the army who are basically criminals before they start, the experience of war turning others into criminals- the horrors of Iraq and the ways that it justifiably empties soldiers of trust for others and turns them from normal young men into killing machines whose first response is to go for their knives. 'Doc' the son of Hank, a young man we are led to believe of impecable character before he went to war, gets his name 'Doc' from the particular way that he mocks Iraqi prisoners when they are arrested.

The contrast between military and civilian worlds is deeply embedded in this film. There are moments when the ordinary police come up against the fact that not having fought, they do not understand the mindset of soldiers. Furthermore all the way through Hank uses his intuition as an ex-soldier to argue about who might have killed his son: he too is willing to deal in violence whenever he suspects. The whole film is filled with a confrontational atmosphere: people don't talk, when they disagree, they shout and scream. All the aspects of life here seem disfunctional: the police department is riven with sexism and favouritism, producing macho posturing and screaming rows. Everyone lives at a high level of tension- everyone lives on the edge of their emotions. Tommy Lee Jones's performance as Hank is particularly impressive because his face reveals in its wrinkles all the emotions he has to contain in order not to scream out loud in pain and anger.

But the film needs to go further. The ending is trite- we suddenly have a solution through a confession but we never get inside the heads of those that commit the murder: however important it is to understand the way that soldiers are changed, we don't see enough of what propels people into the army. We never understand these soldiers' earlier lives and consequently we don't know to what extent what they become is innate within them. The film could have been stronger by giving us more detail about them. Furthermore there are too many longeurs here: what I'm sure the film makers intended to create tension, little dialogue and lots of moody music, merely irritates. It doesn't create atmosphere, but slows the film down. A two hour film is a good effort, but could have been more powerful if reduced to one and a half hours instead. Moody music is also no substitute for scenes that often have only two lines of dialogue- and more often than not, scenes are missing. It would have been interesting to see a scene for instance in which the soldiers being interviewed by the police lied, interesting to see their reactions and their ways of expressing their lies. Afterall the way that soldiers react to coming back from Iraq is the core of this film: and that's what we are missing.

Having said all of that, the performances are strong and there is a point to this movie. The point comes back round to Hank Deerfield's speech about the valley of Elah: the film is all about the effects of confrontation. Hank's son goes down into the Valley of Elah with his comrades and he is changed by the experience: changed into a bitter and deformed young man, crippled mentally, sent to drugs and prostitutes by the experience. All his comrades too are vividly effected by the experience: reliving it. There is one wonderful moment when a soldier tells Hank that when in Iraq he hated it, but two weeks after getting back there is nowhere else he would rather be. The truth of this concept is reflected in most studies of what happens to soldiers after any war when they come back (one of my problems with this film is that it presumes that this is true only of Iraq: it isn't, plenty of young men were changed by World War One and Two). The film dwells on this idea though and it repeats it again and again: most evocatively in the way that Hank who knew and brought up his son, confronts the contents of his son's mobile phone, filled with videos of the torture of Iraqis and the tragedy of war.

But there is another valley of Elah here- and that is the investigation itself. Hank confronts the very issue of his son's death, the very fact of his murder and the existance of his corpse. Again the experience changes him. There is no question in my mind that Hank is deeply disturbed by his experiences, he lashes out often against those around him. But he also is humiliated by the truths that he finds out, he is blamed by his wife for his sons' deaths and he finds himself stymied at every turn by bureacracy. Ultimately the story is as much about his descent into the valley, his confrontation with the monster, the Goliath of his son's murder and what he gains from it and how he changes from it. The problem is that his gain might be negative, his change might be to the worse- the truth is hard to confront sometimes and the verdict delivered by Hank on life is not a positive one.

Its a message that sits uneasily with the film's aim which is to bring America itself to its own valley of Elah, to its own confrontation with the Goliath of what it has done in Iraq to its young men. The message is pacifist. But its also strangely a message for complacency- don't look too hard, don't confront too much because what you will find will disturb and upset and disorientate you. The film doesn't really raise sympathy for the soldiers because we know too little about them, it does create sympathy for the father but it shows the process of investigation as a futile one. It embodies exactly the nihilism that the soldiers have coming back from Iraq: in that sense this film is very much the product of its times- rather than being a post Iraq film, it is a film that is founded amidst realities shaped by Iraq. It is interesting, it is a cinematic failure, its worth seeing but it is also deeply problematic.

Biblical Curse Generator

Courtesy of Vino- I offer you the Biblical insult generator- my favourite so far is

O that thou wouldest be kicked by an incontinent camel, O thou bull of Bashan!

Take that you bulls of Bashan!

Boris in London?

One of the most interesting questions incidentally should these jubilent Tories over at Conservative Home see their wishes fulfilled, is what happens to a politician when his party are out of power who becomes London Mayor. As such he would represent more people than any other figure bar the leader in his party and possibly more than his leader. He would be a key figure in terms of any election campaign in 2009 as well. One of the most interesting things about this mayorality race is that you could easily end up either with Johnson winning (under Brown) or with Livingstone winning and then Cameron in as PM say in 2009 or 2010. I think that might have a very interesting effect on British politics. The UK has not really had politicians who have built up local profiles like US governors do since the Chamberlaines ruled Birmingham in the early twentieth and late nineteenth centuries- it would be fascinating to see how the London Mayor fits into national politics should we see a mayor from the opposition party in charge at City Hall.

It took a couple of years for the full political implications of Scottish devolution to sort their way through and we are now seeing the first SNP government up there- I don't think we will see London devolution's political effects (which could be much greater given the fact that its the major parties who contend in the capitol, not one major party against a regional party) until we see what a mayor from a party not in power does- what position he has visa vis the government and visa vis his own party. The traditional route in British politics takes you through Whitehall and Westminster- it will be fascinating to see whether there are other routes to the top that say involve becoming mayor of London and establishing a powerbase.

The Weakness of Rudi

Having hammered Danny Finkelstein recently, its nice to see him return to form with a perceptive analysis of Rudy Giuliani's campaign strategy so far. Essentially Finkelstein rightly points out that Giuliani didn't abandon the early states, he did so after they all turned dark for him. The campaign strategy to avoid them was a neat way to say that he didn't mind about bad results there- it was a press strategy in reality to stop them running stories about him not winning those early primary states. Danny rightly points out that the implication of this in a wider way is that most political strategy is pretty adhoc, it runs to the moment and its success is often reliant totally upon the moment. One week's strategical genius (Gordon Brown last summer) can look like an idiot the next week (Gordon Brown last autumn) and vice versa. However such movements do reflect a kind of reality.

What do they reflect in Giuliani's case? In my view, and I say this as a longtime sceptic about Giuliani's potential as the Republican nominee, they reflect that Giuliani is a weaker candidate than he immediatly appears. America's mayor has nice bipartisan positions and a good record of government but as soon as opponents focus on him, other disquieting things emerge. His private life has not been unimpeachable- he has links with dodgy figures in New York Politics (Bernie Kerik anyone?) and also the Catholic Church. He divorced his wife on nationwide Television without telling her first. All these things are easily transformed into quick disadvantages especially in the remorseless environment of a Presidential election. Anyone who doesn't think that Mr Giuliani is a very bright guy is an idiot, but anyone who doesn't think he is very vulnerable is also struggling. Perhaps in Iowa, New Hampshire etc you were seeing that vulnerability emerge- it will be fascinating to see how Florida goes because should he lose there that could be the end of his campaign.

Gaslight

Why is it that Gaslight doesn't work? Its a fine film featuring one of Ingrid Bergman's best performances- she plays the slowly disintegrating Paula with all her charm and considerable acting ability. Charles Boyer playing her husband is a smooth villain- a seducer, a snake in the garden with a real sting. The supporting cast are fantastic- Joseph Cotton is as always a good actor- so is Dame May Whitty reprising her dotty old woman from Hitchcock's Lady Vanishes and Angela Lansbury also does well in her first role. But it still doesn't work- it feels contrived to modern eyes- it feels like there is less suspence than their should be. George Cukor even directs it well- filling rooms with objects in order to symbolise visually the increasing paranoia of his heroine- but it still doesn't work. Something doesn't come off- and many modern reviewers have that same sense that there is something missing, something that would be better in the film which isn't there.

The first thing you might think of is that it doesn't have the pace of a modern thriller- and that's accurate. It doesn't have much pace at all- the basic storylines are fixed pretty much as soon as we land in London around a third into the movie and from there on we merely follow them. There isn't much in the way of deceptive plot twist or new angle- the story is what the story is and most of the viewers watching it can see it for what it is. But again that doesn't really answer why the film doesn't work as it should work- the plot may develop slowly but the idea of someone being convinced that their mind is slowly disintegrating is a fascinating one. The idea that that lie might convince someone, that they might be persuaded that they were mad and hence be driven out of their mind is crazy but interesting. It makes you reflect on what the nature of madness is- and to some extent it happens with various diseases like depression that someone can be driven out of their mind by persistant taunting. In this case Bergman's character is driven out of her mind by her husband and her servants who play her husband's game.

So what is it that doesn't work? Ultimately I think what doesn't work in this film is the situation. Its hard to beleive that Bergman would or could have believed that her husband's lies were true. However much we believe her acting, the premise behind it seems unbelievable. Its unbelievable because of two things- firstly because the mood of the film at the beggining and the end is romantic and not mysterious. Its hard to switch Bergman's character from what she is to what she becomes. Secondly and more importantly the mind revolts at her submissiveness. This is love on bended knee, not love of equals and as such she is in a position to be convinced of her madness. She is swept off her feet and then forced into the position of a slave. That isn't love as I understand it- its not women as I understand them. The ultimate problem with Gaslight lies in the fact that its central character is not a human being but a fairytale, a princess. Perhaps the element of fantasy at its first showings worked, hence the wide acclaim, and Bergman could portray a woman under great psychological stress and subject to deceit, as Notorious demonstrates, but this film doesn't work because the drama of its central character is implausible.

The issue here is that the genders are drawn too stereotypically for me to believe the story. Bergman's Paula is too ready to collapse into male arms and heed her husband's seductions. Boyer's husband is too much the evil cuckold. Minor characters too are too stereotypical- Cotton's detective isn't given anything to do beyond look handsome and be virtuous. The whole scenario starts as an interesting idea but because all the characters are cardboard it ends up being less than what it could be. Gaslight's failure is interesting because it demonstrates the need for completeness and complexity within cinema- the later Notorious works so much better because the characters aren't as simple and don't conform as easily to gender stereotypes. Gaslight ultimately has an interesting concept but fails because it has no psychological core- and it lacks that core because of its inability to evade the world of fairy tale and enter the world of reality.

Civility

I found this post from Craig Murray rather surprising. Murray is rightly a critic of the ideas of the Times journalist David Aaronovitch- but he has gone further and stated that Aaronovitch is a "sleazy fat neo-con slob". Murray says in his defence of those words that

David Aaronovich is confused as to why I would wish to be impolite about him. The answer is quite plain. Supporting the Iraq War, and cheerleading for it, is not a legitimate policy choice. It is complicity in an appalling act of aggression and mass murder. The invasion of another country, resulting in the death of (literally) countless civilians, in order to seize control of natural resources, was an act of hideous criminality. Nazi "Journalists" stood trial at Nuremberg charged with propagandizing for illegal war.

I tend to have rigorously argued political views. I am, for example, strongly against the private finance initiative and other private provision in the NHS. I am opposed to state aid to Northern Rock. On those and other issues, many people have other opinions and I genuinely respect those views and engage with them, much as I may disagree.

But the Iraq war is not like that. Supporting the illegal invasion of other countries is a crime; it is no more legitimate than to argue that "The Yorkshire Ripper Was Right". It does not surprise me that Aaronovitch and other renegades of the hard left like Phillips and Hitchens have taken this position - ruthlessness and disregard for individuals provide the consistent thread in their odyssey around the unpleasant extremes of politics.

I am afraid, David, that decent people will look down on you the rest of your life. Get used to it.

Murray here equates some political choices with crimes whereas he says that others are just differences of opinion. To invade Iraq is to behave like the Yorkshire ripper, to demand that the NHS be left in inefficient public ownership is to have a political opinion. Nowhere does he define exactly what he means by any of this. Indeed the standard that Mr Murray adopts seems to be whether Mr Murray cares about a particular issue or not. Being opposed to state aid to Northern Rock risks for instance causing the decent into poverty of its depositors- no doubt Mr Murray would disagree- but you could say that to advocate that is to have that on your conscience. Again if you believe that (which I don't) the NHS is more inefficient within the public sector, to oppose its privatisation is literally to sign the death sentence of those who die because we have a worse health sector.

Those who argued for the invasion of Iraq argued that it would produce democracy within Iraq and replace a particularly nasty dictator with a democratic regime. They argued that the concept of international law that Mr Murray believes in, in which the invasion of Poland was a more serious crime than the Holocaust, is overwritten by a concept based on human rights law according to which Saddam Hussein's regime was illegitimate and ripe for deposition. You may agree or disagree with their analysis or their argument- but it isn't a criminal argument or criminal analysis no more than the prudential calculation about the health service or Northern Rock is. I am not sure that there are criminal arguments in politics anyway- though if there are they would one might think have to aim at criminal ends, like the extermination of a race, rather than aim at democratic liberation. Mr Murray's argument makes no sense.

Furthermore its also bad practise. Democracy is about different groups of citizens having widely different opinions on important issues. Freedom of speech allows us all to discuss those issues and come to a view. If we are to do that, we must be at liberty to make our views known and furthermore we must take our time to evaluate and consider views before dismissing them. We also have to take the fact that we are citizens of a comunity that has others within it too seriously- so for example we need to listen and attempt to persuade others to our point of view. Insulting people doesn't help persuade them that you are right- indeed insults prove to me that you have lost an argument because you aren't considering the possibility of persuading your interlocutor. We all occasionally lose our cool- and I am sure Mr Murray has on this occasion- these remarks are not aimed at him personally and there are some arguments which seem petty and ridiculous- but he has announced a principle and I disagree with him. Civility ultimately is neccessary for democracy to survive- something that eighteenth century theorists who crafted our modern notions of politeness well knew.

Amongst the blogosphere's major problems is this tide of invective: it doesn't help either those that manufacture it or those that are the recipients of it.

Plague

Plague is one of those diseases that most of us relegate to the history books. Great outbursts of plague have had a dramatic impact upon history. Athens in the Peloponesian war was heavily blasted by plague, medieval Europe suffered greatly from the disease as did 19th Century China. The disease is largely transmitted by fleas living on rodents- rats it is presumed in medieval Europe- and proceeds to infect human beings afterwards. Human to human transmission is possible but the key catalyst for an outbreak appears to be the presence of rodents in large enough quantities. Plague no longer severely threatens developed world countries and in the world at the moment there are only an estimated 1-5,000 cases per year over the last twenty years. Africa seems to be the main locus of plague cases with 90% of the cases in the last five years coming in Madagascar, Tanzania, Mozambique, Malawi, Uganda, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). Plague outbreaks though can have a dramatic effect on a country- in India in 1994 an outbreak killed 50 people in the city of Surat, an event which led to a nationwide collapse of trade and tourism and the loss of an estimated 600 million dollars to the Indian economy. Hence a recent study in the Public Library of Science's Medicine Journal calls for more attention to be paid to the disease and to methods of treating it- and also to studies of whether the disease may be able to evolve into new forms in order to further threaten humanity.

I don't consider myself as having the medical expertise to comment upon the development of plague as a disease- no doubt others are in a better position. But one thing that is interesting does arise I think from this analysis and that is that economic development tends to present new opportunities for the aspiring virus and to erradicate disease. It presents new opportunities because increased trade leads to increased human contact and hence the risk of infection. Nigerian truck drivers spread aids to South African prostitutes. It tends to erradicate diseases because it presents us with options to control and contain the disease in locations or by advancing cleanliness and healthiness amongst the general population. Successful public education campaigns in the US and Europe helped eliminate Aids through encouraging condom use for example. Furthermore a well developed health service can lead to diseases being spotted earlier and therefore dealt with more quickly. I wonder and this is just a thought that others can comment on, whether there are particular states of society in which epidemics are more likely to hit than not. Obviously in the events after the breakdown of sophisticated societies during wars- like say the influenza epidemic of 1918- we should expect massive dislocation and possible medical disasters. But are there other moments- for instance at the birth of capitalism where the structures of trade have evolved faster than the wider society- when we should look for epidemics. I wonder if anyone has plotted this data- if they have it would be fascinating.

The studies on plague are interesting and worth thinking about- the disease may not be a historical footnote.

I should say I've written a further post about plague and climate change over at the Liberal Conspiracy.

Advisors

Could I reccomend this Bloggingheads dialogue- Megan McCardle examines the economic advisors to the Presidential candidates, Spencer Akerman the national security advisors- its well worth listening too- particularly when it comes to the differences economically between Hillary and Obama.

Police Pay

I must confess to a personal quirck here- I am fascinated by how you effectively tie pay to performance in the public sector. The Institute of Public Policy Research this morning has announced that in February it will publish a report covering police pay, unfortunately as we do not have the report itself but only an executive summary on the website of the Institute there isn't much we can say. However the reccomendations on that website- which one assumes will be central to the report raise serious questions about its contents. The central reccomendations, reported this morning by the BBC, concern the introduction of performance related pay into the police service. The IPPR point out that the rates of crime detection per officer in the UK have hardly moved since 1997 despite huge increases in pay for officers and that furthermore pay within the force does not reward performance but rewards seniority. They want to shift the balance of pay to reflect performance and to get officers to train more effectively.

All of that is laudable as an aim but there are some serious questions about it that deserve to be raised. Firstly there is the obvious structure and predictability of performance related pay- how it fluctuates for individual officers year on year. No doubt the IPPR would be keen to argue that it should not fluctuate too much- uncertainty of pay award is just the kind of thing to drive talented and therefore useful people away from the police force just at the moment when we most need them. But the real issue is a second one. The problem with performance related pay is never the concept but the metric. Its the way that you measure performance. A classic case can be seen in the IPPR's own research. They argue that police performance should on their website be measured in terms of arrests per officer- but of course there are other ways of measuring police performance. As advocates of the 'bobby on the beat' will often tell you the provision of a sense of security to the public is another measure of police performance for example. The idea of performance related pay risks skewing the performance of police to reflect one or two or three different metrics. The IPPR imply that performance's definition will be decided locally- in which case one has to ask why they use a central figure of police arrests to demonstrate failure and in which case one has to ask furthermore are they willing to see the price of localisation (local failure) to be paid.

None of this is to say that their report is neccessarily wrong- we can't, its not out yet (and quite what the IPPR are doing in releasing to the press a report that hasn't been published, getting publicity for the argument before they get criticism for the research I'm not sure) but it will be interesting to see how the institute has managed to square some of these circles. In particular it will be interesting to see how they manage to derive a concept of performance that doesn't warp the performance of police away from things that we want policement to do. In general within the public sector- the problem is also there with teachers and doctors- there are two great problems. One is that pay doesn't advance much until you move into management and therefore out of the job in the field which if you are talented is the place you are most needed in, and the other is to do with how you measure performance. Just asking for performance related pay is the easy bit, working out how it works is the hard bit. It will be interesting to see what the institute thinks about that!

Obama and Political Correctness

Barack Obama's speech to the congregation of a church in Atlanta provided in full by Andrew Sullivan here are very inspiring. He says in that speech something that is very important to say- that the basis for the way that we treat other people lies in empathising with them, in creating community with them. One of the most illustrative and interesting examples he draws upon in the speech is right at the end, in describing a campaign meeting, he describes how one of his workers Ashley got everyone who joined the campaign to sit down and describe why they were there.

And Ashley said that when she was nine years old, her mother got cancer. And because she had to miss days of work, she was let go and lost her health care. They had to file for bankruptcy, and that’s when Ashley decided that she had to do something to help her mom.

She knew that food was one of their most expensive costs, and so Ashley convinced her mother that what she really liked and really wanted to eat more than anything else was mustard and relish sandwiches. Because that was the cheapest way to eat.

She did this for a year until her mom got better, and she told everyone at the roundtable that the reason she joined our campaign was so that she could help the millions of other children in the country who want and need to help their parents too.

So Ashley finishes her story and then goes around the room and asks everyone else why they’re supporting the campaign. They all have different stories and reasons. Many bring up a specific issue. And finally they come to this elderly black man who’s been sitting there quietly the entire time. And Ashley asks him why he’s there. And he does not bring up a specific issue. He does not say health care or the economy. He does not say education or the war. He does not say that he was there because of Barack Obama. He simply says to everyone in the room, “I am here because of Ashley.”

That speech explains why Obama is a viable candidate but it also explains exactly what politics ought to be based on- the sense that it isn't my greivance that matters but yours. Politics can often and does often become a matter of shouting insults at each other- trading blows. Indeed when for instance politicians ramble on about the threat from x social group- often what they are doing is encouraging the rest of us to join the mob and start throwing blows- you can see it in discussions of immigration particularly. Obama's principle is more interesting and more important- because it encourages in us a truly moral ideal of politics, not morality in terms of codification of a set of principles for others to follow, but morality in terms of an outward looking benificence.

This struck me today as I read Jonah Goldberg's recent comments on political correctness. Goldberg rebukes both conservatives and liberals when it comes to political correctness- and made the crucial point in an earlier article that

The reality is that much of political correctness — the successful part — is a necessary attempt to redefine good manners in a sexually and racially integrated society.

Goldberg is entirely right. The problem for conservatives on the issue is that they are paranoid about the Orwellian dimensions of political correctness- and that they become interested in their ability to be rude to others. For liberals its the other way round, attempting to catch others out in conversation is the classic nit picking academic parlour game (you see a different specimen of the same thing on blogs when people take others up for their spelling and typos.) History afterall has nothing to do with the male possessive noun- but refers to the Greek word for story historia and when academic idiots start writing about herstory all you observe is their ignorance! The point is that political correctness ought to be something that we do voluntarily in order to make others feel comfortable- its a code of politeness, intended as the original codes of politeness were partly for political reasons to bind society together and partly for purely social reasons, to make civilised conversation possible.

It is a real sign of hope that two such individuals as far away from each other as Obama and Goldberg though get this central point- that a key part of politics is other regarding action. And that whether its a call to moral rearmanent based on charitable impulse or a call for good manners and political correctness, the point is that that political society is based upon empathy and the more we think about that, the better.

Fate and America: history according to the Coen Brothers in No Country for Old Men

Fate or fortune has been at the centre of our understanding of human history for so long that sometimes it is easy to forget. Minds as subtle and interesting as Thucydides, Polybius, Machiavelli and Tolstoy have sought to understand how fortune governs human history. How it elevates the humble and humbles the proud. The Bible in some of its most interesting book is a mere account of the control of fate by Jehovah- for St Augustine fate was a servant in the evangelical mission of Christianity- for Hegel it was the process which drew out synthesis from thesis and antithesis- for Marx it was the turning of the screw of class conflict. Fate or fortune might be explained but humans could never master it- they could never govern it- they might never as a character at the end of this movie complains meet God.

No Country for Old Men is about fate and its workings through history. Symbolised by a remorseless and brutal killer, whose dress cinematically hints at that other remorseless slaughterer Ingmar Bergman's Death in the Seventh Seal, its impact is truly devastating. It rips families apart and confounds the confident in their search for safety in a world where you get what is coming to you. His victims live in the slipstream of history- they live in the tides of events which sweep them off course and belie their confident plans and predictions. He is seemingly invulnerable- even when wounded he can treat himself with ease- he is not a homicidal maniac according to the voice of wisdom, the local sheriff, he is fate itself. And his victims respond with fear to him- the fear that they would award to fate. From the first frames of the movie, where a man in a bar tosses a coin for his life or for his death- the killer moves according to seemingly arbitrary choices made by his victims. Should you get in his way there is no need for him to kill you, but he has to kill you because of your failure to submit to inevitability. Your death in No Country for Old Men is absolutely inevitable- it is fated and almost all the characters accept that template.

Almost all- because one of the characters doesn't. And the key exchange of the film revolves around this character's decision. When she is confronted by the mysterious killer, instead of taking his gamble, instead of agreeing with him that her death would be accidental, she confronts him with the fact that this is his act. No matter whether she lives or dies, she wants to make him feel his moral responsibility. Throughout the film the murderer is reduced- to a madman, to an epitome of modern society where robbers walk in the street naked apart from dog collars to get attention, to a force of history ('things are always the same' says a friend of the sheriff at one point) but at one moment he is confronted with his own moral agency- with the fact that it is his decision not that of fate as to whether she lives or dies. Interestingly that is the only death or possible death that we don't see (we don't know if she lives or dies) because its the conversation before that matters. Whereas with the other deaths, they have become part of the story- the story of fate- in this case moral responsibility is the story and hence the exchange is more important than the event.

The film flips its attention- the Coen brothers are keen to leave motivations out of the film for the most part. Their characters are taciturn and live in a world where an eyebrow moving conveys the fall of the Berlin Wall- perfectly acted though by the end of the film these are not marionettes but human beings. The film starts with a sequence of characters who gradually grow into a story- but the organisation of the film is such that whereas at the beginning one feels the effects of fate, by the end one feels the effects of choice. Choice is of course unpredictable in its effects- and everywhere through the film choice becomes unpredictable. Taking money doesn't often lead to slaughter, taking on your murderer doesn't mean that he will seek out, pointlessly, to kill your wife. Staying in a hotel doesn't always lead to a massacre. As the film begins the murderer is an anonymous expression of the power of chance, by the end he has a moral character, he does things because he wills them not because he has to do them. What the Coen brothers create is a world that depends on lots of people taking different choices- whose set of choices add up to the events we see on the screen. No fate intervenes just the movement together of hundreds of little choices which chart a way to destruction. This story has an explanation.

But its explanation is not based on class nor is it based on some Hegelian progress of ideas but on the action of individuals. A great story develops out of small choices- moments of decision. It recalls C.S. Lewis's perceptive comment that your descendants could include a Hitler or an Aristotle without you intending either by your choice to have children. Randomness is a consequence of the vastness of the world and the way that your choices interfere and interact with other choices. It is not part of any plan- there is no one in control, no God manipulating things, no secret power behind the scenes- there is just human choice and all its unpredictable consequences. There is no way in No Country for Old Men to say that any particular moment leads to the outburst of violence- and we do not know what ultimately the violence stemmed from nor do we know why a large suitcase of money is sitting in a field somewhere in Texas. We don't know why the killer is involved- though we can assume that some debt of honour is involved- all we know is the series of choices which take people into the road in front of the juggernaut and the series of decisions taken by the murderer to murder. Decisions for which he is accountable ultimately.

The world of choice is ultimately more terrifying than a world controlled by even a mystical power. The killings in this film have no meaning as far as we can see- they don't need to happen. None of this film needs to happen. All of it is consequential upon some voluntary act. The Sheriff's depression which leads him to give up his job is precisely because of this. The United States is No Country for Old Men because an old man understands how arbitrary the process is. He understands that there are no guarantees even when shooting cattle- its always possible for the gun to slip, no one is invulnerable, no principle is sacred, no group all powerful. What if is not a purposeless question but is the heart of human history because there always could be another what if. And stories of course which suggest these conclusions to us are lies because they are just good stories (like the story with the bull) they are stories which indicate to us the fragility of telling stories. The stuff of history is too vast to know and appreciate in all its arbitrary glory- all we know is that we are alone, as if on a darkling plain, and we have choices to make- choices whose import we have no idea about.

Film as an art form is most appropriate to do this- to rip away the veil from human freedom and leave us exposed 'naked before the throne of God' (to quote Francis White), naked before our conscience. The Coen brothers in the film show the evolution of a historical understanding- showing how vast impersonal forces can be imagined by the historian as event piles on event. Showing how our search for explanation becomes a search to avoid the arbitrary nature of human freedom, how we attempt to govern anarchy through the imposition of rational ideas like fate. The point is that at the beginning of the film any viewer believes that there is some reason, some rationality behind the moments of savage slaughter. We believe that something could have stopped it, something could have prevented it, that if only we could think it out we could avoid it. The film doesn't imply that there are forces beyond our control- but shows us that there are no such things as certain ways out because ultimately we cannot be certain of the interior of other people's heads. And it is in other people's heads that we find either our salvation or our sorrow. Film, an art which marries together on screen story and characters (in a sense every actor is an author of his own character) is the perfect way to express this truth about the world and the Coen brothers have presented it wonderfully in this film.

The United States may be No Country for Old Men- but its also No Country for those who have watched this film- the view from the heights of experience and understanding is terrifying because it is so arbitrary. Yeats talked of a terrible beauty being born- its our privilege to watch it on screen.

Kevin Keegan Newcastle United Manager

Here he is in all his glory.

Charlie Wilson's War

Charlie Wilson's War does what it says on the tin. It is a film about the maverick Texan Congressman Charlie Wilson (for maverick read drunk on Whisky for twenty four hours a day, and fornicating for all the 24 he wasn't asleep during). The film portrays Charlie, a Texan charmer with a southern drawl, as an instinctually good man: sure he may employ women only in his office because you can teach them to type, but you can't teach them to have tits but only a fundamentalist Christian would object. Sure he may use his power as a member of the Defence Sub Committee for Appropriations with unchecked arbitrariness- but then again he uses it for good. Good ol Charlie has a bleeding heart, underneath the whisky, and can see through the thighs of a stripper to the agonies of Afghanistan. He can see it and once he sees it, he uses every ounce of his corrupt charisma to get Washington to see it.

For Charlie was not merely a maverick, a drunkard, a womaniser and a charmer: he was also the Congressman who took the United States to war in Afghanistan. Convinced by a sexy Texan socialite (played here with Cruella de Vil looks by Julia Roberts) who is happy to fuck him and wear scanty bikinis for him and by a renegade CIA man with undoubted anti-communist credentials, Charlie goes to war in Washington. He faces obstacles- some of the human obstacles (Rudi Giuliani and John Murtha) will be familiar to any students of today's American politics. (Incidentally Giuliani was trying to prosecute Wilson for taking drugs whereas Murtha was a colleague that our Charlie saved from an ethics investigation and so helped our Charlie on the sub committee). Charlie expanded the US covert ops budget in Afghanistan from 5 million to 500 million and set up an alliance spanning Pakistan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Israel. Just think about that alliance for a moment- as one of the Isreali characters in the movie says- Pakistan has never recognised us, Egypt invaded us ten years ago and every single assassin coming to kill me has been trained in Saudi Arabia!

The point is though that noone is invincible to Charlie's charm- not even General Zia the dictator of Pakistan. Charlie twists and turns through meeting after meeting- calling in Julia's bikini and the smile of a good ol boy doesn't work. And we see in working there on the screen. We see the guns arriving in Afghanistan. We see the missiles coming in. And we see the mujahadeen hitting helicopters with missiles- shocking the Russian soldiers who are sailing oblivious of the work of the US Congressman until their helicopter explodes in a new form of Texan fireworks. Afghanistan becomes a constituency of Texas- we even see Charlie take out a friend from Congress and both of them rouse a crowd the way that they would in Austin. The point is that through intrigue and through battling in Committees you can do as much as any agent in the field.

The history here is simplified beyond belief. There really can't be any question about its accuracy or not- because the reality was just more complicated. Of course the US weaponry ended up in the hands of the Taliban eventually. And the explosions in Afghanistan were a prelude to those in New York and London. Charlie Wilson though it has to be said bears little responsibility for that- he was responsible for funnelling money and not for the overall strategy. Furthermore Wilson wanted the US to reconstruct Afghanistan. To rebuild it and to build schools and hospitals there- for some reason, unexplored in the film, his reconstruction requests fell on stony ground. The old southern charm didn't work so well and it all failed. The film's story is one of triumph- though its tinged with sadness, towards the end of the film many characters make references to what followed- to the failure of the reconstruction effort and the rise of the Taliban. If the film has lessons for today- its in precisely that and for Afghanistan. Afghanistan once again has fallen and once again the world is turning away in frustration- Charlie's lessons still aren't being learnt. We heed his life and live in luxury- we don't heed his efforts to help the Afghan people.

Of course the film is simplistic in its political analysis- but at 97 minutes it could hardly not be. The performances are all good- even Julia Roberts does well here, exploring her evil side. She should take on more of these kinds of roles. Tom Hanks is brilliant- really demonstrating that ability to take on southern charm and give it an extra shot of Scotch. Hoffman is as always excellent and the script by Aaron Sorkin who wrote the westwing is quotable and amusing. This is not a great film- its not up there with such great political films as Citizen Kane or Nixon- but its a very good film and you'll definitely enjoy it. At times it is cloyyingly patriotic but that's the American style and boy does this film have style!

I'd reccomend Charlie Wilson's war- though with this last proviso- no matter how bloody and heroic those battles in committee in Washington were, just think about the battles in Afghanistan. And lets remember this time, we shouldn't desert these people to another round of tyranny- we need to make Afghanistan work and I'm sure Charlie with his hookers and his liquor will be cheering on from the sidelines should we do so.

Crossposted at Bits of News

Impossible Politics

Danny Finklestein suggests Al Gore as a possible VP pick for Barack Obama. Its not an implausible pick for Obama to wish that he could make- but there is a reason that noone has done three terms as Vice President- the job frustrates and infuriates its occupant more often than not. Furthermore having run for President once and turned down a good chance of the Democratic nomination this time, why would Al Gore want to run for Vice President again? If he really wanted a career in Washington he would have run for President- it strikes me that the chances he will run for Vice President alongside Obama are minuscule. Equally implausible is that John McCain (who don't forget needs to shore up his Republican base and whose health will be an election issue) would risk picking a liberal Democrat (on some issues) Joe Leiberman as his running mate.

There are people who look credible VPs at the moment- Jim Webb, Evan Bayh might be good Democratic names- but the paucity of good coverage in the UK press is reflected by the fact that when British journalists do talk about the possible VP picks of Presidential candidates they tend to suggest people like Leiberman and Gore who realistically are unlikely to be the second name on either ticket in November.