Bits and pieces: Articles I’ve been reading

My reading’s been a little disjointed lately; there are some book reviews coming, but I wanted to make some quick notes about articles I’ve enjoyed or found interesting.

The Man Who Brought You Brexit is an interesting narrative about a single person undertaking a long term, almost life-long project, to bring about massive change. There are interesting questions about whether history turns on the actions of critical individuals or sweeping historical forces, and likely it’s a combination of both – but this is an interesting insight into someone who’s probably had a major role in a big change.

I’ve written before about why I read horse-race journalism, even though it has deep flaws. Theater criticism sounds like another term for the same problem. This writer over at The Atlantic sees it as useful. It’s all in the balancing.

Speaking of how policy gets covered in the media, The Future of America is being written in this tiny office is a great piece by the Huffington Post, on the heartbreaking failure of policy announcements to get anyone to give a shit:

All in all, the proposal [to reform college tuition] would require some $350 billion in new spending over 10 years, which Clinton planned to pay for by raising taxes on the rich. James Kvaal, a former Obama administration adviser who consulted on the initiative, described it in an email as “a once-in-a-century change in the relationship between the federal government and colleges, on par with the Morrill Act (which created land grant colleges in the 19th Century) and the G.I. Bill.”
A few days before Clinton’s speech, O’Leary convened a final conference call to discuss media strategy. Anticipating a lot of attention, she instructed the team to be ready by the phones. Clinton delivered her address at a high school in Exeter, New Hampshire, and afterward, held a press conference in the gym. She got just one query about the plan. Earlier that week, Trump had described Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly as having “blood coming out of her eyes, blood coming out of her wherever” during a debate, and so Clinton was grilled on whether Trump should apologize to Kelly, whether he had a problem with women, and what Clinton thought of the fact that Trump had retweeted someone who called Kelly a bimbo.

Of course, policy development doesn’t happen in a vacuum. Could Hillary Clinton Become the Champion of the 99 per cent? is a fascinating look at a progressive lobby group / think tank / organisation working to influence power structures by pulling different levers.

While Hillary marks out the final weeks of her campaign, Obama is in the final months of his presidency, and clearly has a view to history. So he’s sat down with Doris Kearns Goodwin, who’s written biographies of Lincoln, to talk about history’s view of his own presidency, in the ultimate exit interview.

‘Spectre’ and ‘Inside Man’

Spectre received mostly positive reviews. The formula is largely the same, although the foes are new and updated (global data monitoring, with the requisite link to an international cabal of criminals). Fun for what it is.

Inside Man  was also well reviewed. As a few reviews noted, the more complex plot points seem to rest on coincidences, or unlikely insights. But it’s fun for what it is.

Team of Rivals

Doris Kearns Goodwin’s Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln is an excellent biography. As someone without a deep knowledge of American history, it was a very readable account that followed the main characters – and showed them as individuals – while tracking some of the broader social movements and context.

Team of Rivals is of course the piece that served as an inspiration for Obama. Whether he’s lived up to his own stated inspiration is for others to judge. But it’s clearly a piece that was buoyed by his recommendation, and that deals with historical questions that are still pertinent and challenging today. Team of Rivals also seems to have inspired the Spielberg movie to some extent; but it goes a lot farther.

Personally, I found it fascinating. I’d never read anything about his ascendency to the presidency. So the story of the nail-biting finish at the Republican convention, with Lincoln scraping through the middle, is a remarkable read.

Kearns also does an excellent job outlining the competing motivations in Lincoln’s rivals’ characters. Seward is the consummate politician, but also one who’s taken a principled stand. Bates fades from the scene, and lives what seems to be a graceful retirement. Chase, despite Lincoln’s magnanimity, continues to scramble after an ever less likely presidential tenure.

Kearns also paints the broader scene. She talks about the economic interests to some extent, and how there was a deep conflict between particular Northern and Southern interests. She shows how Chase and Seward deployed different rhetorical devices, reframing the debate; while Lincoln used much simpler statements, and was less prone to reshaping the debate, preferring to state simply what he thought public opinion had come to reflect.

Drawing on primary sources lets Kearns show us the debates that were rending the nation, splitting sometimes even families down the middle. She expresses disagreement within the Seward family:

“But suppose, for one moment,” he later explained, “the Republic destroyed. With it is bound up not alone the destiny of a race, but the best hopes of all mankind. With its overthrow the sun of liberty, like the Hebrew dial, would be set back indefinitely. The magnitude of such a calamity is beyond our calculation. The salvation of the nation is, then, of vastly more consequence than the destruction of slavery.” 

Frances profoundly disagreed with this balancing equation, asserting there could be no “truly republican” institutions with slavery intact – “they are incompatible.” 

Kearns shows us Lincoln as the tactical politician. Organising, judging public opinion, leaking material to the press to lay the groundwork for an announcement, and implying (but carefully not writing down) instructions that votes for a Constitutional amendment will be well reward; here is Lincoln not as master statesman but as political street fighter, willing to do what is needed to get things done.

But more importantly, Kearns’ key hypothesis is of Lincoln as the great statesman. In part, that means reflecting on his wisdom, humility and patience. This is the President who writes an angry letter but leaves it unsent and unsigned, holding himself back from sending rash words in anger.

At times, this is a moving and profound portrait, of a great man, who ably steered his country through some of the greatest challenges it has ever faced. At others, it can feel a little easy. Simply describing how events played out well, and then saying that it was Lincoln’s statesmanly ability that lead him to make perfect moves, is not a descriptive hypothesis. Telling instead a story of Lincoln’s personality, and how he grew in the role, would have been more persuasive. In fact, identifying mistakes he’d made, would have shown how a trait that applied well in one situation, was less positive in another.

But overall, this is still a masterful piece. It’s an excellent piece of history, and an excellent biography. Well worth the read.

Notes and quotes

• His experience taught him what every party boss has understood through the ages: the practical machinery of the party organization – the distribution of ballots, the checklists, the rounding of up of voters – was as crucial as the ideology laid out in the platform. 
• When first running for election (before his presidential nomination), Lincoln: likened his politics to an “old womans dance” – “Short & Sweet”. He stood for three simple ideas: a national bank, a protective tariff, and a system for internal improvements. 
• Kearns quotes another (presumably a biographer) for Lincoln’s view of history: Like the ancient Greeks, Lincoln seemed to believe that “ideas of a person’s worth are tied to the way others, both contemporaries and future generations, perceive him.” 
• Lincoln’s ability to win the respect of others, to earn their trust and even devotion, would prove essential in his rise to power. There was something mysterious in his persona that led countless men, even old adversaries, to feel bound to him in admiration. 
• Even a full decade later, during his debates with Stephen Douglas, Abraham Lincoln would maintain that he had never been in favor “of making voters or jurors of negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry.” 
• For many more Northeners, the expansion of slavery into the territories threatened the triumph of the free labor movement. Events of the 1850s would put these “antagonistical elements” on a collision course. 
• A brilliant woman, Frances [Seward] once speculated whether the “various nervous afflictions & morbid habits of thought” that plagued so many women she knew had their origin in the frustrations of an educated woman’s life in the mid-nineteenth century. 
• In order to make his argument, Lincoln decided to begin with nothing less than an account of our common history, the powerful narrative of how slavery grew with our country, how its growth and expansion had been carefully contained by the founding fathers, and how on this fall night in 1854 the great story they were being told – the story of the Union – had come to such an impasse that the exemplary meaning, indeed the continued existence of the story, hung in the balance. 
• A Southern member of Congress physically attacked an abolitionist – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caning_of_Charles_Sumner.
• Kearns acknowledges the racism of her subjects, but isn’t willing to condemn them: These statements of Seward and Chase, coming from the leaders of the antislavery cause, reveal that racism, the belief in white supremacy, was deeply embedded in the entire country. It is only in this context that the statements of Lincoln and his contemporaries can be judged. 
• Kearns notes the tactical elements of the politics – in securing a nomination in Chicago, Lincoln was a step ahead of his rivals.
• Lincoln had long believed, as we have seen, that “with public sentiment, nothing can fail; without it nothing can succeed”. 

Ip Man

At one level, the Ip Man series is a beautifully choreographed and filmed set of martial arts movies. It takes as its story the life of Ip Man / Yip Man, a legendary teacher who trained Bruce Lee.

Over the course of three movies, Ip Man survives the Japanese invasion of China, establishes himself in Hong Kong, and deals with the threats to his martial arts school in Hong Kong.

But even as someone without a deep understanding of contemporary Chinese cinema, it was interesting to see the nationalism expressed through a re-appropriation of different points in history.

There’s at least one source to suggest that Ip Man went to Hong Kong as a result of the communist take over in China. That’s gently glossed over in the movies, however. In the recreated narrative, Ip Man’s struggles are always against foreign oppressors. Japanese invaders, corrupt British cops in Hong Kong, and finally Mike Tyson all serve as stand-ins for the oppression of China by foreign powers. Ip Man’s flying fists defeat them all.

Articles worth reading

Life’s been a little busy recently. I’ve read a few things and meant to note them down, but haven’t had a chance till now. So, in no particular order:

James Fallows’ Trump Time Capsules

It’s been a bizarre, and disappointing stretch in U.S. politics. Fallows’ Time Capsules feel re-assuring because of the sanity of his writing. He writes from the explicit viewpoint that what is happening is fundamentally different from what has come before. That in itself is re-assuring, and provides a useful counterpoint to a series of headline that can often feel like a bad acid drip. Also welcome is his consistent willingness to highlight false equivalence.

Worth reading if you want to keep on top of major US political developments without feeling your sanity leeching away.

Peter Beinart: The death of ‘He said, she said’ journalism

An interesting reflection on how newspapers are responding to Trump. Credit to those who start from principles to reach a principled conclusion, rather than following a party line. Included that is credit to the Dallas Morning News. 

Adam Frank, What if evolution bred reality out of us? 

This is an interesting piece, based off the work of Donald Hoffman. What if accurate perception of reality isn’t optimal in evolutionary terms?

The Atlantic, Here’s how NASA think society will collapse

Short answer: Going beyond the environmental carrying capacity, and unequal distribution and consumption of resources. An intriguing topic; NASA’s conclusion seems in line with the Jared Diamond thesis in Collapse, and doesn’t match the unusual but less compelling Tainter thesis that it has to do with diminishing marginal returns to social complexity.

Lee Drutman writing in Vox

Lee Drutman is an American political scientist. He’s written some excellent pieces over at Vox. They’re long, but well worth the read. Particularly, they’re great examples of taking theories from an academic literature where they’re well understood, and translating them for a broader audience, with a clear application and insightful analysis.

How race and identity became the central dividing line in American politics is a great read, about exactly what it says it is. Why race and identity will remain the dividing line in American politics for a while to come is a follow-up piece that looks at a slightly larger picture, based more on theory, to argue that unfortunately we’re likely to be in this situation for a while.

The good news, argues Drutman, is that as political coalitions realign, we’re likely to see less polarization.

David Roberts, Why the media will lift Trump up and tear Clinton down

A prescient piece from May argues that the need for a horse-race may drive unequal coverage of the campaigns.