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	<title>Michael L. Hays &#8211; NMPolitics.net</title>
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	<description>The real story</description>
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		<title>The American revolution of declining expectations</title>
		<link>https://nmpolitics.net/index/2011/08/the-american-revolution-of-declining-expectations/</link>
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		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Michael L. Hays]]></dc:creator>
		<pubDate>Fri, 05 Aug 2011 13:43:45 +0000</pubDate>
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		<category><![CDATA[Hays Columns]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Washington]]></category>
		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.nmpolitics.net/index/?p=30939</guid>

					<description><![CDATA[America is downsizing, and the failure of American presidents and other elected leaders to prepare for this eventuality – indeed, their success in pretending that it could not happen here and in persuading us that it could not happen here – is magnifying the strains that now jeopardize American democracy.]]></description>
										<content:encoded><![CDATA[<div id="attachment_10937"  class="wp-caption module image alignright" style="max-width: 270px;"><img fetchpriority="high" decoding="async" class="size-medium wp-image-10937 " title="US Capitol" src="http://www.nmpolitics.net/index/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/US-Capitol-300x237.jpg?x36058" alt="" width="270" height="213" srcset="https://nmpolitics.net/index/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/US-Capitol-300x237.jpg 300w, https://nmpolitics.net/index/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/US-Capitol.jpg 325w" sizes="(max-width: 270px) 100vw, 270px" /></a><p class="wp-caption-text">The U.S. Capitol building (Photo by Heath Haussamen)</p></div>
<p>The day after the 1960 election, my American philosophy professor, a man who paced back and forth during his lectures, entered the classroom and sat down. Stunned by this unprecedented act, we fell silent in wonder at what it meant.</p>
<p>Lifting his head from his hands, which had covered his face, he explained that he had been up all night, with every radio in the house on, so that he could follow the returns of the very close race between Kennedy and Nixon (the result would not be known for a few hours). Before he resumed his lecture with his customary pacing – I think that man had to walk in order to talk – he made a remark that has haunted me since.</p>
<p>He said that, though it mattered who won the election, the job of future American presidents would be to manage a country in decline.</p>
<p>Fifty years later, we are there now. We have avoided the inevitability of America’s declining strength – of its economy, of its place in the world, even of its place in the hearts of some. We indulged our good fortune after World War II; imagined that victory and the vitality of recovery guaranteed us perpetual supremacy (or required us to try to maintain it); ignored the likelihood that recovery in other countries would create economic and political, if not also military, changes and challenges to that supremacy; squandered moral, political, and military assets in unwise wars unwisely fought), showed ourselves to be poor stewards of our human and natural resources; and borrowed recklessly to sustain an unsustainable lifestyle.</p>
<p>America is downsizing, and the failure of American presidents and other elected leaders to prepare for this eventuality – indeed, their success in pretending that it could not happen here and in persuading us that it could not happen here – is magnifying the strains that now jeopardize American democracy. The country’s weakening political commitment to its principles and procedures in these difficult economic times suggests that its allegiance was always contingent and superficial. Patriotism was lip-service for pay-off. What has democracy done for us lately?</p>
<div id="attachment_30940"  class="wp-caption module image alignright" style="max-width: 120px;"><img decoding="async" class="size-full wp-image-30940" title="Hays, Michael L" src="http://www.nmpolitics.net/index/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/Hays-Michael-L.jpg?x36058" alt="" width="120" height="160" /></a><p class="wp-caption-text">Michael L. Hays</p></div>
<h3>The nightmare begins</h3>
<p>Ironically, Barack Obama is a man fit for these times; he deserves credit for being conflict-averse, easily cowed into caving on everything for which he says he stands. His weakness makes him a hollow man, filled with vain hope, emptied of vigorous audacity. He has failed to exert the leadership necessary to lead America to adjust to the reality of the modern world by managing and thereby mitigating America’s decline. He has failed to adjust Democratic principles and policies to this reality.</p>
<p>By “leading from the rear,” he has defaulted on leadership.</p>
<p>So he is getting out of the way of the future and turning it over to Republicans. For, although their distributional principles are unfair and, in the long run, will inflict even greater harm on the country’s economy and democracy, Republicans, including tea partiers, will unwittingly lead the downsizing of the country. Their policies, if implemented, will be self-inflicted wounds on their interests and the country’s.</p>
<p>Unrestrained capitalism has always undermined itself. As the saying goes, nothing fails like success. So they vehemently inveigh against government generally, and debts, deficits, and taxes specifically. They are determinedly deluded in thinking that the implementation of their ideology to shrink government and unleash capitalism will return America to an imagined golden age and thereby restore its economic, political, and moral/religious health.</p>
<p>For what has failed in the past, is not working in the present, and cannot succeed in the future will, willy-nilly, bring American down, and down to earth.</p>
<p>The dream is over; the nightmare begins.<span id="more-30939"></span></p>
<h3>Unless…</h3>
<p>Unless. Unless it is too late, Democrats need to do the equivalent of what staunch anti-communist Nixon did in visiting communist China. They need to be the ones to accept that to achieve national and popular objectives, they can no longer be grandiose, but must be pragmatic, as guardians of the public weal.</p>
<p>Michael Dukakis might have been America’s most hapless presidential candidate of a major party in recent history, but he might also have been its only candidate running before his time, with his emphasis on competence in government. The idea of the president as manager-in-chief ensuring competent government does not produce vapors of inspiration, but I think that Americans today realize that stewardship is absolutely necessary if the country is to recover the sense and the strength to adjust to the reality of diminished expectations – the second American revolution.</p>
<p><em>Michael L. Hays (Ph.D., English) is a retired consultant in defense, energy and environment; former high school and college teacher; and continuing civic activist. His bi-monthly Saturday column appears in the <a href="http://www.lcsun-news.com/" target="_blank">Las Cruces Sun-News</a>; his bi-monthly blog, First Impressions &amp; Second Thoughts, appears on the intervening Saturdays at <a href="http://firstimpressionssecondthoughts.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">firstimpressionssecondthoughts.blogspot.com</a>.</em></p>
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		<title>Rethinking education reform in New Mexico</title>
		<link>https://nmpolitics.net/index/2011/07/rethinking-education-reform-in-new-mexico/</link>
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		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Michael L. Hays]]></dc:creator>
		<pubDate>Mon, 25 Jul 2011 14:22:43 +0000</pubDate>
				<category><![CDATA[Commentary]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Hays Columns]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Education]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Roundhouse]]></category>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.nmpolitics.net/index/?p=30635</guid>

					<description><![CDATA[The usual choice presented for reforming education – money or management and technology – is a choice between irrelevancies or worse. A discussion of educational reform must start and stay with a definition of education.]]></description>
										<content:encoded><![CDATA[<div id="attachment_27741"  class="wp-caption module image alignright" style="max-width: 270px;"><img decoding="async" class="size-full wp-image-27741 " title="Classroom" src="http://www.nmpolitics.net/index/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/Classroom.jpeg?x36058" alt="" width="270" height="227" /></a><p class="wp-caption-text">Photo by sidewalk flying/flickr.com</p></div>
<p>In two recent Las Cruces Sun-News columns (the articles are no longer on the newspaper’s webiste), Bill Soules and Paul Gessing served the discussion of reforming public education by defining its polar positions. Together, they pose the choice between Soules’ position that public education needs more money and Gessing’s position that it needs more “school choice and competition, more rigorous standards, and innovative technologies” like “online schooling.” The choice – money versus management and technology – is a choice between irrelevancies or worse.</p>
<p>These positions at the local level parallel positions at the national level. President Obama provided billions in “Race to the Top” competition for states willing to undertake reforms meeting federal criteria. Though he pledged relief from “No Child Left Behind,” Secretary of Education Duncan declared that the “administration’s agenda&#8230; includes adopting more rigorous standards, encouraging charter schools, offering tests that measure how much students learn and overhauling teacher evaluations” – NCLB lite.</p>
<p>Most discussions of education reform recycle this unproductive back-and-forth. And implementing either position leads to disappointing results and manipulated data – and more debate in defense of or attack on these positions. This futile recycling results from a widespread lack of understanding of education per se and from a resort to the easy tools of political legislation that reflect that lack of understanding.</p>
<p>Sad but true, most people understand little about education, not that they know or admit it. In our era of privileged personal opinions, because most have some experience in formal education, they believe themselves, but no one else, experts. They have strong but narrow views of “the” problem, one or more targets for blame (unions, teachers, parents, administrators – they often equate problems and targets), and a silver bullet or two as “the” solution (the small-school movement is one example). Most discount or dismiss expertise based on the relevant qualifications of education and experience in the field as elitist.</p>
<p>Most politicians are like most people, only more so. They have not only similar “expert” opinions, but also the power to implement them. They adopt “reforms” of one position or the other so long as they run no risks to their political career. They push for salaries, buildings or technologies and urge programs that appeal to their constituencies, but they dare not consider, much less advocate, reforms that are unconventional or counter powerful interests.</p>
<h3>Why their ideas are wrong</h3>
<div id="attachment_30636"  class="wp-caption module image alignright" style="max-width: 120px;"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="size-full wp-image-30636" title="Hays, Michael L" src="http://www.nmpolitics.net/index/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/Hays-Michael-L.jpg?x36058" alt="" width="120" height="160" /></a><p class="wp-caption-text">Michael L. Hays</p></div>
<p>For good reasons, everyone should take a dim view of proposals to reform education that require more money. One, the United States spends more money per capita than any other country with an advanced economy, but does not get a proportionate return. Second, increments in salary or status under merit pay, pay-for-performance, or similar programs neither incentivize teachers nor improve results.</p>
<p>I was regarded as a good teacher. Increasing my salary or rewarding my performance would not have made me teach better or my students learn more. Offering me higher status would not have prompted different or greater efforts. The same is true of all teachers, good or bad.</p>
<p>For good reasons, everyone should take an equally dim view of proposals to reform education that apply business methods and values. First, the idea that competition can improve schools or teachers misapplies a business model, with its incentive-regarding motives, to the education process and lacks supporting evidence.</p>
<p>Second, competition, whether among schools or teachers for incentives (survival, job security, enrollments, money, rankings), thus perverts performance and its measurement (business is teaching education to “cook the books,” as scandals in state and metropolitan school systems indicate).</p>
<p>Third, micromanagement to meet data-based measures of teacher or student performance corrupts education, demoralizes everyone, and encourages everyone to game the system (e.g., teach to the test or cheat on it).</p>
<p>Fourth, since teachers are prepared similarly, they are not going to do a better job in charter or non-public schools than in public ones, unless, of course, they teach cherry-picked students.</p>
<p>Fifth, “online schooling” is the antithesis of education. Online courses offer little more than menial training to acquire basic information and rote skills; neither critical thinking nor the nuanced interactions to promote it are possible.</p>
<p>Notably, both polar positions offering prescriptions for improving or reforming education say nothing about curriculum, instruction, or teacher training – in short, nothing about the essentials of education. Those wanting to reform education must think and talk about education, not something else. Otherwise, they are doing no more than finding nails for their ideological hammers, whether wielded in left or right hand.</p>
<h3>Defining education</h3>
<p><span id="more-30635"></span></p>
<p>A discussion of educational reform must start and stay with a definition of education. For get the definition wrong, get everything else wrong; or lose focus on that definition, lose sight of what matters. So I start with what it is not, then end with what it is.</p>
<p>The most common wrong definition is an enumeration of subjects, like the three “Rs:” reading, writing, and ‘rithmetic. Of course, many more courses, state-required and elective, fill up the menu and should. However, what the menu includes and excludes does not define “education” any more than a grocery shopping list defines “nutrition.”</p>
<p>Decisions about what to include and exclude point the way to the substantive part of what “education” means: not only the information and skills, but also the attitudes, values and principles, which society wishes to transmit from one person, usually one generation, to another. This broad definition covers informal and formal education, and, in formal education, public and non-public education. This education is the basis for functioning in our personal, social, civic and professional lives.</p>
<p>The procedural part of what education means is less well understood: the “educare” of “education,” the leading out of one’s inner world into the external world, the ultimate result being an ability to think critically about that substantive education; and an awareness of one’s inner world, one’s place in the external world, and the relationship between those worlds. One point about these underappreciated abilities: The conduct and quality of our political, religious and social discourse are improved or impaired in direct correlation to our education in critical thinking.</p>
<p>The indispensable requirements of education as an integrated sum of these two parts are students to learn and teachers to teach. Any educational reform must make this relationship central, critical, and uncorrupted by popular educational fads and fashions, and political fiats and platforms. Educational reform thus relocates almost all of the popular educational topics from the center to the periphery of the discussion. Reform must then ensure that, as these topics are addressed, they are considered entirely in consideration of their support to this relationship.</p>
<h3>Three reforms</h3>
<p>In anticipation of a second column on low- or no-cost recommendations for reforming education and the system that should be supporting, not subverting, it, I suggest three broad reforms now:</p>
<ul>
<li>An enlargement of the effective concept of education (balanced emphasis on all subjects – full cultural transmission – not just emphasis on literacy and numeracy).</li>
<li>The development substantive, structured and sequenced curriculums in all academic subjects (New Mexico’s benchmarks and standards as well as those adopted by most of the nation’s governors, as they were led to adopt them by bureaucrats in state public education, are sham substitutes).</li>
<li>A revamping of all schools of education to require, with annual demonstrations, that their curriculums align with the curriculum requirements of the grades or courses their graduates will have to teach (at the elementary level, teachers supposed to teach grammar do not know it because they themselves have not learned it K-16).</li>
</ul>
<p>Each of these reforms requires much in the way of understanding and determination to effect the necessary break with repeated position-taking and recycled proposals. But, as I shall argue in a second column, these and other reforms can get better results than the wasteful and ineffective nostrums of the polar positions.</p>
<p><em>Michael L. Hays (Ph.D., English) is a retired consultant in defense, energy and environment; former high school and college teacher; and continuing civic activist. His bi-monthly Saturday column appears in the <a href="http://www.lcsun-news.com/" target="_blank">Las Cruces Sun-News</a>; his bi-monthly blog, First Impressions &amp; Second Thoughts, appears on the intervening Saturdays at <a href="http://firstimpressionssecondthoughts.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">firstimpressionssecondthoughts.blogspot.com</a>.</em></p>
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		<title>Gessing’s reactionary federalism misreads the Constitution</title>
		<link>https://nmpolitics.net/index/2011/06/gessing%e2%80%99s-reactionary-federalism-misreads-the-constitution/</link>
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		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Michael L. Hays]]></dc:creator>
		<pubDate>Tue, 21 Jun 2011 15:08:06 +0000</pubDate>
				<category><![CDATA[Commentary]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Hays Columns]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[History]]></category>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.nmpolitics.net/index/?p=30127</guid>

					<description><![CDATA[Paul Gessing’s recent column, “Federalism is key to America’s future,” is a local example of interpretations of the constitution tailored to serve special interests. Here’s why his reactionary federalism misreads the Constitution.]]></description>
										<content:encoded><![CDATA[<div id="attachment_30130"  class="wp-caption module image alignright" style="max-width: 120px;"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="size-full wp-image-30130" title="Hays, Michael L" src="http://www.nmpolitics.net/index/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/Hays-Michael-L1.jpg?x36058" alt="" width="120" height="160" /></a><p class="wp-caption-text">Michael L. Hays</p></div>
<p>Fifty years ago, in <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/redirect.html?ie=UTF8&amp;location=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.amazon.com%2FHistory-Modern-World-PowerWeb%2Fdp%2F0073255009%3Fs%3Dbooks%26ie%3DUTF8%26qid%3D1308666834%26sr%3D1-1&amp;tag=nmponet-20&amp;linkCode=ur2&amp;camp=1789&amp;creative=9325" target="_blank">A History of the Modern World</a>, then the standard for introductory college modern history courses, R. R. Palmer used a striking analogy to explain the Catholic Church’s reaction to the protestant idea of an individual’s right to read the Bible, interpret it for himself, and live by his interpretation, without regard to the Catholic Church.</p>
<p>He invited readers to imagine the American people’s reaction to the idea of an individual’s right to read the Constitution, interpret it for himself, and live by his interpretation, without regard to the Supreme Court. He assumed that Americans would be horrified and thus would understand the Catholic Church’s reaction.</p>
<p>What Palmer offered as a theoretical possibility has become a practical reality. I was never bothered that, from the beginning, Americans have argued about the meaning of its foundational documents and court interpretations. For, with few exceptions – the issue of slavery being one of them – generations of Americans have accepted their legal answers to legal questions.</p>
<p>The consensus has enabled America to move forward, although a few fringe groups have continued to inveigh against this or that amendment or ruling. Occasionally, the court does reverse itself, as it did when, in <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brown_v._Board_of_Education" target="_blank">Brown versus Board of Education of Topeka</a> (1954), it overruled <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plessy_v._Ferguson" target="_blank">Plessy versus Ferguson</a> (1896).</p>
<p>But I find myself bothered by a radical shift in the nature of the discussions of this foundational document. Previously, discussions have involved not only the Constitution itself, but also its historical context and court interpretations. Originalists believe that it had a first and a final meaning defined when written and ratified; they believe that the work of the Supreme Court is to apply that original intent to later cases.</p>
<p>Others believe that it had a first meaning which, in its provisions for amendment and interpretation, denied a final meaning; they believe that the court’s work is to apply meanings that reflect an evolving understanding of them and changing circumstances to later cases.</p>
<p>The division is absolute; one must take sides, not pick and choose, lest one commit the fallacy of special pleading.</p>
<h3>Rejecting originalism</h3>
<p>I accept the latter, prevalent, and traditional view; indeed, I can make no sense of originalism. Theoretically, later readers of an earlier document can never be sure to accurately and comprehensively understand its original meaning. Practically, the large majority of Americans reject original provisions in the Constitution.<span id="more-30127"></span></p>
<p>One case in point: Originalism accepts the constitutional provision for slaves, which explicitly includes them in the census but tacitly excludes them from the franchise. Another: It accepts the constitutional silence excluding women from the franchise and rejects the Nineteenth Amendment.</p>
<p>These cases show originalism to be inescapably racist and sexist, as the drafters of the Constitution themselves likely were. Originalism cannot make adjustments in such cases without undermining its basic principles and endorsing constitutional evolutionism. (One irony: Many of those who have insisted on a respect for precedent and opposed judicial activism but have become originalists are advocating aggressive judicial activism in overturning most precedents of settled law.)</p>
<p>The shift is that Republicans, tea partiers, and other reactionaries read the Constitution in ways distorted by their political convictions, partisan criticism of current laws, or special interests. They may claim to be originalists, but they are really contortionists. They offer ideological interpretations retrojecting their desires into the Constitution and producing distorted interpretations that serve special moral or religious, or economic, interests.</p>
<p>Moral or religious zealots are sincere in supporting such interpretations as the means justifying their ends. Economic self-servers are cynical in supporting them as a means glossing their greed with seeming constitutional sanction.</p>
<h3>Gessing’s argument</h3>
<p>I have glancingly addressed issues associated with the Constitution in other columns and blogs, but I directly address Paul Gessing’s recent column, <a href="http://www.nmpolitics.net/index/2011/05/federalism-is-key-to-america%E2%80%99s-future/" target="_blank">“Federalism is key to America’s future,”</a> because it is a local example of interpretations of the constitution tailored to serve special interests.</p>
<p>Gessing is the executive director of the <a href="http://www.riograndefoundation.org/" target="_blank">Rio Grande Foundation</a>, which is largely funded by oil and gas industries. These and other large corporations prefer state governments to have more, the federal government to have less, power because they can exert more influence on the former than on the latter.</p>
<p>Gessing’s first four paragraphs on federalism, most of which I quote, should be read in this light:</p>
<blockquote><p>…Federalism, at least as conceived by the Founding Fathers in the Constitution, meant that the central government in Washington had a few, strictly-limited powers, but that an overwhelming majority of what was to be done was to be left to the states and people.</p>
<p>The belief that Washington’s powers were few and limited was so important to the founders that two separate amendments essentially re-stated this. The 10th amendment clarifies the issue, simply stating, “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”</p>
<p>To say that we have strayed far from this concept over the past 225 years or so would be an understatement. Federal policies now dictate state actions in education, health care, environmental policy, and a wide variety of other regulatory powers (to name just a few).</p>
<p>None of the aforementioned policy areas were named in the Constitution and, given the strict limits placed on federal activities, it seems worthwhile to at least discuss whether Washington has a role in these policy areas at all. But we have obviously crossed that bridge in the courts and Congress, and now we have a $14 trillion federal debt to show for it.</p></blockquote>
<p>The first thing to say is that no connection whatsoever exists between the size of the federal deficit and government policies claimed to be constitutionally improper. At any time, the federal government could have adopted tax or spending policies that would have prevented or eliminated any deficit. In fact, the Clinton administration did exactly so; had its policies been continued, they would have eliminated the deficit by 2010.</p>
<p>The second thing to say is that no credence whatsoever attaches to a claim that “we” – millions of Americans, thousands of elected federal officials, and hundreds of federal judges – have “strayed far from this concept” of limited federal powers. Democracy can make mistakes, but it is rather audacious, if not arrogant, for anyone to imply that everyone else has been wrong about everything important for over two centuries.</p>
<h3>A reactionary’s discontent</h3>
<p>In raising these two non-constitutional issues, Gessing reveals a reactionary’s discontent with things as they are. In purporting to offer a federalism for the future, he actually offers a tendentious redefinition of it based on four common fallacies of reactionary constitutional interpretation – to which I now turn.</p>
<p>One, Gessing reads the Constitution without regard to its historical context. A significant part of that context is its predecessor document, the Articles of Confederation (1781), which, as its name implies, defined the American polity as a loose association of states. The failures of that political arrangement were its inabilities to deal with matters of foreign policy and of domestic relations within and among the states.</p>
<p>Political leaders recognized the need for a strong central government that could provide a unified approach to relations with other countries and a government capable of ensuring stable intra- and inter-state relationships and of regulating interstate trade. They convened the Constitutional Convention to that end and created the Constitution articulating it.</p>
<p>Two, Gessing reads the Constitution selectively, to cite the provisions that serve his point and to skirt the others. He ignores the Preamble, which states: “We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”</p>
<p>He avoids the first purpose for the Constitution: “to form a more perfect Union,” not a more perfect confederation. This phrase implies predominant powers for the federal government in its preference for national unity over state multiplicity.</p>
<p>Three, Gessing reads the Constitution perversely, with a “reverse rhetoric;” what comes first counts for less than what comes last. The Constitution ratified in 1788 specifies the three branches of the federal government and their powers. The Bill of Rights, the first 10 amendments, ratified in 1791, places some restrictions on the government largely in favor of individual rights; the Tenth Amendment reserves to the states whatever powers the Constitution does not grant to the federal government or deny to state governments.</p>
<p>His strange argument makes this afterthought the foremost concern of the founders in drafting the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. (He asserts that two other amendments limit federal power without naming them or later identifying them when asked to do so.) Those like Gessing, who use this amendment as a standard to judge the constitutionality of federal legislation might appropriately be dubbed “Tenthers.”</p>
<p>Four, Gessing pretends that the general language of the Constitution precludes specific legislation reflecting its preamble’s concerns. That the Constitution does not mention “education, health care, environmental policy, and a wide variety of other regulatory powers” does not imply that the federal government has no powers in these areas. (What makes these and other areas “regulatory” only? Why are his choices not cases of special pleading?)</p>
<p>Obviously, a phrase of purpose like “promote the general Welfare” can be meaningful only if the government creates laws and agencies to serve this end.</p>
<h3>The irony</h3>
<p>Ironically, by paltering with language and logic in this way, Gessing undermines the rationale for federal government support of the special interests that contribute to his organization. For, if a phrase of purpose precludes specific federal powers in areas related to it, then the absence of a phrase of purpose also precludes specific federal powers in areas related to it.</p>
<p>Ergo, according to his logic, if the preamble says nothing about a constitutional purpose to promote prosperity, the federal government has no powers of any kind to assist private interests, which constitute a large part of the economy – bye, bye, subsidies, tax benefits, waivers, exceptions, etc.</p>
<p>Of late, reactionaries have been urging distorted interpretations of the Constitution and its amendments as part of their more general effort to “take the country back.” This serviceable ambiguity means both of two things: taking it “back” from others and taking it “back” to a past. Which is to say, reactionaries want the country to go backward, not forward, into the future.</p>
<p>They repudiate the modern world – its demographic diversity, its mixed economy, its sciences, its arts, among others – and propound flawed arguments to persuade the unhappy or the unwary that the Constitution sanctions a return to some Garden of Eden or Golden Age. These fictions are myths of the past, not maps for the future. For that, we need the federalism defined by the Constitution of traditional American consensus to help us move forward.</p>
<p><em>Michael L. Hays (Ph.D., English) is a retired consultant in defense, energy and environment; former high school and college teacher; and continuing civic activist. His bi-monthly Saturday column appears in the <a href="http://www.lcsun-news.com/" target="_blank">Las Cruces Sun-News</a>; his bi-monthly blog, First Impressions &amp; Second Thoughts, appears on the intervening Saturdays at <a href="http://firstimpressionssecondthoughts.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">firstimpressionssecondthoughts.blogspot.com</a>.</em></p>
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		<title>Analyzing the 2012 presidential field</title>
		<link>https://nmpolitics.net/index/2011/06/analyzing-the-2012-presidential-field/</link>
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		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Michael L. Hays]]></dc:creator>
		<pubDate>Tue, 14 Jun 2011 14:18:32 +0000</pubDate>
				<category><![CDATA[Commentary]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Hays Columns]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[2012 election]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Washington]]></category>
		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.nmpolitics.net/index/?p=29922</guid>

					<description><![CDATA[Given most of his competition at this time, I have to hope that Barack Obama wins re-election, but if he loses, as the chances of his doing so improve with every dodge and dither, he will have earned his defeat.]]></description>
										<content:encoded><![CDATA[<div id="attachment_29924"  class="wp-caption module image alignright" style="max-width: 270px;"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="size-full wp-image-29924" title="White House" src="http://www.nmpolitics.net/index/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/White-House.jpg?x36058" alt="" width="270" height="235" /></a><p class="wp-caption-text">The White House (Photo by Heath Haussamen)</p></div>
<p>Fewer than 18 months to go until the last ballots are cast in the 2012 election. The outcome is, of course, impossible to predict.</p>
<p>In some states in which Republicans control both the executive and legislative branches, they are doing everything they can to not only redistrict seats to improve their chances of electing Republican congressional representatives, but also to restrict the franchise among groups –seniors, youths, and minorities – who are most likely to vote Democratic.</p>
<p>In fairness, when Democrats get the same chance, they redistrict to improve their chances, but they try to expand, not restrict, the franchise.</p>
<p>The flat-out truth, which the mainstream media refuses to state, is that Republicans are abandoning all but the pretense of adhering to democracy. They have long feared and now despair that demographics are against them and the doctrine of laissez-faire capitalism is inoperative.</p>
<p>Fear and despair make them desperate that their only hopes for electoral success are efforts to target reductions in the franchise – to intimidate minority voters who are predominantly Democratic; to engage in dirty tricks; to spend obscene amounts of hidden special-interest money on candidates and advertising; and to throw truth and decency aside in national, state and district campaigns of lies and smears.</p>
<p>If they succeed, Republicans will do in other states and in the federal government what they are trying to do, with some success, in Wisconsin, Ohio and Indiana, among other states – namely, legislate Democrats out of meaningful participation in the political process.</p>
<p>After running on the slogans of, say, jobs, as they did in 2010, they shall, if elected in majorities, implement their stealth agendas of economic benefits to their special-interest contributors and of moral, religious and lifestyle restrictions on those who are not “real Americans.” (Attacks on women’s abortion rights will intensify, and attempts to reverse same-sex legislation and policy will increase.) In short, the run-up to and the election of 2012 will see a Republican effort at an electioneered coup ending democracy as we have known it.</p>
<p>Come we then to the candidates for the highest office in the land.</p>
<div id="attachment_29923"  class="wp-caption module image alignright" style="max-width: 120px;"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="size-full wp-image-29923" title="Hays, Michael L" src="http://www.nmpolitics.net/index/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/Hays-Michael-L.jpg?x36058" alt="" width="120" height="160" /></a><p class="wp-caption-text">Michael L. Hays</p></div>
<h3>Barack Obama</h3>
<p>On the Democratic side, there is, of course, only one (but, starting now, the party should hedge its bets): President <a href="http://www.barackobama.com/" target="_blank">Barack Obama</a>. Frankly, the longer he serves in office, the less I understand what public-service reasons he had for seeking it in the first place (except to prove that he could seek and secure it). The more he makes fine speeches, the less he makes good sense in addressing the nation’s needs.</p>
<p>At another time, I shall dissect, by elaborating <a href="http://www.nmpolitics.net/index/2011/05/reassessing-obama%E2%80%99s-%E2%80%98failed-and-failing-presidency%E2%80%99/" target="_blank">earlier criticisms</a>, his failures at home and abroad. But not just now. Suffice it so say, as they used to say, Obama is not only Bush-lite, but also Bush-bad. He may be moderate, but he is certainly Republican in his top-down approaches to the economic problems. So he fixed banks and big businesses, and forgot about jobs and homes.</p>
<p>Given most of his competition at this time, I have to hope that he wins, but if he loses, as the chances of his doing so improve with every dodge and dither, he will have earned his defeat.</p>
<p>Many are beginning to think that his re-election, far from being a done deal, is doubtful or doomed. I agree. An Obama campaign based on an it-could-have-been-worse theme is not going to beat an opponent’s campaign based on an I-can-do-better (much better) theme. Given an economy still muddling along, with high rates of unemployment and foreclosures, and high gas prices – not to mention a slide into the second dip of a double-dip recession – Americans may be willing to vote for any warm-blooded alternative, even defective candidates far worse than Bush or McCain, whom Obama followed or defeated.</p>
<h3>The GOP field</h3>
<p>So it is hard for me to get excited about a candidate whose chief recommendation for re-election is that he or she is not Barack Obama. The current candidates who advocate tea party or other hard-right positions offer nothing that can appeal to most Americans. <a href="http://www.michelebachmann.com/" target="_blank">Michele Bachmann</a> is a lot smarter than most pundits give her credit for being, but she may be too cutesy-clever by half. <a href="http://www.sarahpac.com/" target="_blank">Sarah Palin</a> is a lot dumber than they give her credit for being, but she has the “reality” show audience on her side.<span id="more-29922"></span></p>
<p>Both of these darlings of the tea party have taken positions from which they could never back down without triggering a vociferous and possibly enervating backlash. Neither of them seems to have passed high school history or high school civics – which makes their misunderstanding of America’s past a sign that they misunderstand America’s present, and misunderstand its Constitution to boot.</p>
<p>By contrast, <a href="http://www.newt.org/get-involved-now" target="_blank">Newt Gingrich</a>, who, as a professor of history, has presumed to be an intellectual and has coasted on that reputation for years, is slowly being exposed as an imposter and poseur.</p>
<p>Two other candidates on the hard right appealing to the tea party go in very different ways. <a href="http://www.ronpaul2012.com/" target="_blank">Ron Paul</a> is a smart guy with a clear and consistent libertarian ideology, which appeals to the streak of American individualism in us all but which disqualifies a true believer from high office in a government that must meet the needs a society, whether conceived in democratic or capitalistic terms.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.ricksantorum.com/" target="_blank">Rick Santorum</a> has proven so morally absolutist and callous that his former constituents want nothing to do with someone who prefers the purity of ideology – on abortion, no exception for the health of the mother – to the sanctity or well-being of adult life, and thus are resistant to the very facts he has demanded in debate and has received in disproof of his doctrine.</p>
<p>I give great discredit to panderers to the tea party like <a href="http://www.timpawlenty.com/" target="_blank">Tim Pawlenty</a>, who has not only flip-flopped – he is not alone to do so – on abortion, but also advanced such a retrograde prescription for economic disaster that I expect him to encounter so much trouble from the less-hard right in the party that he tries harder on the harder right of the party. He looks weak and is weak and will remain weak – not the kind of leadership we need.</p>
<p>To his credit, <a href="http://www.mittromney.com/" target="_blank">Mitt Romney</a> is smart enough to keep quiet, build a campaign coffer, and outwait and thus outlast the incandescent burn-outs who will titillate us for a few weeks at a time; and he is starting to move furtively toward the center. Then, there is the sleeper, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jon_Huntsman,_Jr." target="_blank">Jon Huntsman</a>. Keep an eye on that boy; he’s a smart one. (Sorry, <a href="http://www.garyjohnson2012.com/" target="_blank">Gary Johnson</a> is comatose.)</p>
<p>So, on the Republican side, I prefer the two Mormon candidates for the Republican nomination. Perhaps Mormons are the country’s last best hope of moral rectitude and political moderation. Whether someone is waiting in the wings at this stage for this lot to falter remains to be seen. If it is <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rick_Perry" target="_blank">Rick Perry</a>, perhaps 49 states should secede from Texas!</p>
<h3>Dreadful thoughts</h3>
<p>In any event, Obama will have his hands full. His record on the matters that count – killing Osama bin Laden aside – is not one with great voter appeal. Why a smart guy could not learn the simple lesson – it’s the economy, stupid – I do not know.</p>
<p>Of course, the appeal of voting for our first black (actually, bi-racial) male president (I do not forget fully black <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shirley_Chisholm" target="_blank">Shirley Chisholm</a>) and the thrill of electing him are gone and cannot be repeated (you get to be first only once). Indeed, I worry that Obama has done so badly that, though he remains personally popular and likeable – I like him, and Michelle, too – he may prompt suspicions, especially in those who struggled to overcome, or over-compensate for, their prejudices to vote for him, that he has not been up to the job because he is half black – dreadful racist thought.</p>
<p>But we are thinking many dreadful thoughts just now about far more important and truly dreadful things.</p>
<p><em>Michael L. Hays (Ph.D., English) is a retired consultant in defense, energy and environment; former high school and college teacher; and continuing civic activist. His bi-monthly Saturday column appears in the <a href="http://www.lcsun-news.com/" target="_blank">Las Cruces Sun-News</a>; his bi-monthly blog, First Impressions &amp; Second Thoughts, appears on the intervening Saturdays at <a href="http://firstimpressionssecondthoughts.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">firstimpressionssecondthoughts.blogspot.com</a>.</em></p>
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		<title>Uniting Americans by accommodation, not acculturation</title>
		<link>https://nmpolitics.net/index/2011/05/uniting-americans-by-accommodation-not-acculturation/</link>
					<comments>https://nmpolitics.net/index/2011/05/uniting-americans-by-accommodation-not-acculturation/#comments</comments>
		
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Michael L. Hays]]></dc:creator>
		<pubDate>Wed, 01 Jun 2011 05:10:29 +0000</pubDate>
				<category><![CDATA[Commentary]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Hays Columns]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Military]]></category>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.nmpolitics.net/index/?p=29635</guid>

					<description><![CDATA[All residents have an obligation to serve this country. So I want a restoration of the military draft, and the establishment of national service for those not drafted.]]></description>
										<content:encoded><![CDATA[<div id="attachment_29636"  class="wp-caption module image alignright" style="max-width: 120px;"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="size-full wp-image-29636" title="Hays, Michael L" src="http://www.nmpolitics.net/index/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/Hays-Michael-L1.jpg?x36058" alt="" width="120" height="160" /></a><p class="wp-caption-text">Michael L. Hays</p></div>
<p>In <a href="http://www.nmpolitics.net/index/2011/05/the-child-born-today-in-20-years/" target="_blank">a recent column</a>, Michael Swickard encourages young people to consider military service as a career. I do not disagree with him in principle or in practice. For I do not discourage anyone from considering a career with redeeming social value, and I recognize the need for a professional military of volunteers. However, I do not want to perpetuate an all-volunteer military.</p>
<p>An all-volunteer military separates those who make sacrifices to serve the country or the public – I include all members of police and fire departments, and most educational, medical, social service and pastoral professionals – from those who make few or no such sacrifices. I believe that all residents have an obligation to serve this country because their service benefits them, their communities, and this country. So I want not only a restoration of the draft, but also the establishment of a national service for those not drafted.</p>
<p>Arguments for national service are invariably complex and unavoidably controversial because they involve many economic, political and social issues. At least for now, I want to address only some of the social issues, mainly the fraying of the bonds which have united us as Americans, and the role which national service can play in reweaving them.</p>
<h3>A society of enclaves</h3>
<p>If we ever were a cohesive society – we never were – we now are not one. Increasingly, we are a society of social and cultural enclaves, and affinity or interest groups, in an ever more diverse populace. Most people admit not only divisiveness in Washington between Democrats and Republicans, the latter aided and abetted by tea partiers; but also rancor everywhere between the political parties; between haves and have-nots; between whites and non-whites; between straights and GLBTs; at Muslims in New York, Tennessee, and Florida; and at Hispanics mainly in the Southeast and Southwest.</p>
<p>In this societally corrosive context, many people yearn for reconciliation and amalgamation of some sort.</p>
<p>Myths die hard, and the myth of the melting pot also dies hard. The various minority movements in the second half of the twentieth century made it obvious that previous efforts to acculturate others into a white, Anglo-Saxon, protestant ethos had failed. But the myth, with its presumption of hegemony and entitlement, lives on as a cultural relic, at least in some backwaters, in the code words “real Americans.” Demographic realities demand, not a reactionary effort to revive a moribund myth of cultural homogeneity, but a liberating effort to replace it with a vibrant myth of accommodation of cultural diversity.</p>
<p>We need the myth of the frying pan. Instead of the smooth, bland uniformity of the soufflé, we need the lumpy, spicy variety of the omelet.<span id="more-29635"></span></p>
<h3>Schools and the military</h3>
<p>We have two institutions that enabled the myth of the melting pot in the past and can enable the myth of the frying pan in the future. We must recognize the need to redefine their purposes from acculturation to accommodation.</p>
<p>The first melting pot was the public schools on the Eastern seaboard. As large numbers of immigrants arrived in the last three decades of the nineteenth century and the first two decades of the twentieth century, educators developed a curriculum aiming to acculturate them to American life and the dominant ideal of an American identity. (For example, young boys were taught baseball to discourage them from playing soccer.)</p>
<p>However, shortly after mid-century, educators recognized the changing realities of the country’s demographics. They realized the impossibility and inaptness of a WASP-centric curriculum, diluted or displaced it, and supplemented it with, or substituted, a smorgasbord of culturally diverse materials. These efforts at multiculturalism fell from fashion and were discredited and demoted with the decline in education.</p>
<p>The new fashion abandons focus on the humanities, which can unite people, and augments focus on mere literacy and numeracy, which cannot. But the aims of multiculturalism, in accord with the myth of the frying pan, were the right ones. If we could and would repair, develop and deliver a proper, robust and diverse curriculum in the humanities – in particular, restoring history, literature, civics or government, and the arts, and adding economics – public schools could become agents of accommodation.</p>
<p>The second melting pot was the military services that blended professionals and conscripts for the Second World, Korean, and Vietnam Wars. The story of military service by men and women of all races and religions, from all economic and social backgrounds, and from all places is one of America’s great narratives. But we forgot both the story and its moral.</p>
<p>We did so in ending the draft in response to middle-class resistance to the Vietnam War. But we did so for the wrong reason. We decided that the draft was wrong only after we decided that the war was wrong and did not want middle-class whites to die in it. By turning to an all-volunteer military, we enlisted young men and women from long-time military families mainly in the South or encouraged disadvantaged young men and women from anywhere and everywhere to serve. So, according to the myth of the frying pan, the military achieves diversity – at long last, gays and lesbians will soon be able to serve openly – and achieves its benefits on a small scale.</p>
<h3>Unfortunate consequences</h3>
<p>But an all-volunteer military has had unforeseen but unfortunate consequences.</p>
<p>First, the separation of a professional military from the civilian populace has enabled elected officials, especially presidents, to commit troops to hostilities costly in lives and resources without securing the consent and commitment of the people. As such, wars have become unpopular, officials have deflected criticism by invoking support for the troops on the fallacious logic that, if people do not support the war, they do not support the troops. The ability to use an all-volunteer military without accountability has, willy-nilly, made it a hidden cause of political division, not social cohesion.</p>
<p>Second, an all-volunteer military diminishes the concept of citizenship and segregates the commitment to the country’s survival and welfare. Support for the troops comes easy to people eager to say thanks to those who spare them the dirty work of sacrifice for their country. The hypocrisy and selfishness of these parasites of patriots – not to mince words – appear in the persistently inadequate support given to returning service personnel and their families who, in many cases, suffer grievously for their patriotism.</p>
<p>Third, an all-volunteer military drawn largely from lower-middle and lower classes partly explains why many federal and state politicians as well as most corporate moguls have lost touch with ordinary people. Unlike past elites raised to accept public service as a duty, especially during wartime, today’s rich and powerful serve themselves, not their country, in part because they have no sense of country.</p>
<p>They know mostly privilege, pampering and protection in up-scale neighborhoods, gated communities, private schools, expensive colleges, second homes, country clubs, overseas vacations and corporate suites; and come to believe themselves entitled to them. They avoid military service; lack contact with people of different kinds, backgrounds, and experiences; and then misunderstand or ignore the interests of the people whose lives they affect. (A few still act out of a social conscience in, say, The Peace Corps and Teach for America.)</p>
<h3>The solution</h3>
<p>To recover the benefits of social cohesion on a national scale means two things. One, a return to a draft. All would be eligible: men and women, whole and handicapped, rich and poor, educated and uneducated, legal and illegal residents – any who permanently live in, benefit from, or owe taxes to America. Only some would be inducted.</p>
<p>Two, for the rest, a program of national service. Dropouts, high school and college graduates, green-card residents, immigrants – all, depending on their competence, would become “national interns” in schools, hospitals, government agencies, companies doing public-sector contract work, among other possibilities. For young adults especially, such internships could provide the rewards of broadened social and vocational experience, including on-the-job learning and career networking, and encourage further education.</p>
<p>These two options, either military or national service, would enable residents to develop or fulfill an obligation to serve this country; encourage all residents to build a better country; and help unite Americans, however diverse we are and however more diverse we shall become.</p>
<p><em>Michael L. Hays (Ph.D., English) is a retired consultant in defense, energy and environment; former high school and college teacher; and continuing civic activist. His bi-monthly Saturday column appears in the <a href="http://www.lcsun-news.com/" target="_blank">Las Cruces Sun-News</a>; his bi-monthly blog, First Impressions &amp; Second Thoughts, appears on the intervening Saturdays at <a href="http://firstimpressionssecondthoughts.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">firstimpressionssecondthoughts.blogspot.com</a>.</em></p>
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		<title>Reassessing Obama’s ‘failed and failing presidency’</title>
		<link>https://nmpolitics.net/index/2011/05/reassessing-obama%e2%80%99s-%e2%80%98failed-and-failing-presidency%e2%80%99/</link>
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		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Michael L. Hays]]></dc:creator>
		<pubDate>Wed, 11 May 2011 05:26:18 +0000</pubDate>
				<category><![CDATA[Commentary]]></category>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.nmpolitics.net/index/?p=29147</guid>

					<description><![CDATA[I have been challenged to revise my previous assessment of Obama because of his “gutsy” decision to kill Osama. I am probably not going to revise it any time soon because it is simply too soon to tell; the differences between leading in military affairs and leading in domestic ones are simply too great.]]></description>
										<content:encoded><![CDATA[<div id="attachment_29148"  class="wp-caption module image alignright" style="max-width: 120px;"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="size-full wp-image-29148" title="Hays, Michael L" src="http://www.nmpolitics.net/index/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/Hays-Michael-L.jpg?x36058" alt="" width="120" height="160" /></a><p class="wp-caption-text">Michael L. Hays</p></div>
<p>Just a quick comment on my previous assessment – <a href="http://www.nmpolitics.net/index/2011/04/obama%e2%80%99s-once-and-future-failed-presidency/" target="_blank">“Obama’s once and future failed presidency”</a> – of Obama’s capability as a leader in light of the successful execution of the plan to kill (or capture – ha!) Osama. I have already been challenged to revise it because of his “gutsy” decision and its successful results.</p>
<p>I am probably not going to revise it any time soon because it is simply too soon to tell; the differences between leading in military affairs and leading in domestic ones are simply too great. My column considered his failing performance only in the domestic domain, and it remains to be seen whether that assessment requires revision.</p>
<p>For now, I think too many people are rushing to judgment and confusing a capability for leadership in one domain with a capability for leadership in another domain. I think any assessment must distinguish what the president can do as the leader of the executive branch in executing covert military action against an agreed-upon foreign enemy (he need negotiate with no one, certainly not the opposition party in Congress), and what he can do in that capacity when he has to address domestic issues with Congress and has to deal with not only his party, but also an opposition party.<span id="more-29147"></span></p>
<p>If Obama displays the same kind of leadership in the domestic as in the military domain (at least in this instance), I shall be gratified to acknowledge as much because it is what I want. I certainly shall not begrudge him for learning from this belated experience in the military domain and applying it to the domestic domain.</p>
<p>Indeed, for reasons of policy, I shall be glad to see some carry-over and some executive leadership on domestic issues. In the meantime, I adopt a wait-and-see approach.</p>
<p><em>Michael L. Hays (Ph.D., English) is a retired consultant in defense, energy and environment; former high school and college teacher; and continuing civic activist. His bi-monthly Saturday column appears in the <a href="http://www.lcsun-news.com/" target="_blank">Las Cruces Sun-News</a>; his bi-monthly blog, First Impressions &amp; Second Thoughts, appears on the intervening Saturdays at <a href="http://firstimpressionssecondthoughts.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">firstimpressionssecondthoughts.blogspot.com</a>.</em></p>
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		<title>Obama’s once and future failed presidency</title>
		<link>https://nmpolitics.net/index/2011/04/obama%e2%80%99s-once-and-future-failed-presidency/</link>
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		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Michael L. Hays]]></dc:creator>
		<pubDate>Thu, 28 Apr 2011 14:06:49 +0000</pubDate>
				<category><![CDATA[Commentary]]></category>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.nmpolitics.net/index/?p=28819</guid>

					<description><![CDATA[Even if Barack Obama wins re-election against mounting odds, I think we will continue to lose. We are losing in his first term as he acquiesces in the erosion of the social compact. Given the history of two-term presidents, we cannot hope for better in a second term.]]></description>
										<content:encoded><![CDATA[<div id="attachment_28821"  class="wp-caption module image alignright" style="max-width: 270px;"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="size-full wp-image-28821 " title="Obama, Barack" src="http://www.nmpolitics.net/index/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/Obama-Barack.jpeg?x36058" alt="" width="270" height="204" /></a><p class="wp-caption-text">Photo by Pete Souza/The White House</p></div>
<p>Even at this late date, I can think of nothing about President Barack Obama as a person not to like. He is intelligent, informed, sensible, sensitive, articulate, gracious, amusing and decent. But about Obama as a president – well, that is a different story.</p>
<p>For months, I have been detailing Obama’s failings as president. Between late April 2009, just three months after his inauguration, and early December 2010 – a period of over a year and a half – I wrote half a dozen columns or blogs (published in various places including <a href="http://www.nmpolitics.net/index/2010/12/obama-has-irretrievably-failed/" target="_blank">here</a>) that repeatedly called into question not only his competence, but also his capacity, to lead.</p>
<p>The gist of my increasing discontent has been Obama’s lack of convictions and courage, thus a lack of decisiveness and persistence. Perhaps my happiest phase summarizing his failings: “This Prince Hamlet decides and does nothing; instead, he dithers and dodges.”</p>
<p>As I said at the end of these writings, “Increasingly, Democrats, liberals, progressives hope and pray that Obama will assert leadership on this or that issue. Sorry, my friends on the left, give it up. It ain’t gonna happen.”</p>
<h3>The reasons for Obama’s failure</h3>
<p>It gives me no pleasure to predict that Obama’s presidency, whether for two terms or, more likely, only one, has failed and, so long as he is in office, will to continue to fail, for three reasons.</p>
<p>One, by circumstances, he became temperamentally unsuited to succeed in a national politics torn by sharp and sustained partisan divisions. Undoubtedly, racism plays a role in opposition to him and his policies – it inspires the birther movement – but his failure does not result from racism. Instead, it results in part from his acquired reflex, shared by some blacks rising into the higher circles of the society in which they find themselves, to be ingratiating almost above all else.</p>
<div id="attachment_28820"  class="wp-caption module image alignright" style="max-width: 120px;"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="size-full wp-image-28820" title="Hays, Michael L" src="http://www.nmpolitics.net/index/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/Hays-Michael-L.jpg?x36058" alt="" width="120" height="160" /></a><p class="wp-caption-text">Michael L. Hays</p></div>
<p>However, disciplining oneself to be ingratiating is poor training for making executive decisions, implementing them, and running the risk of offending some people in discharging one’s responsibilities.</p>
<p>Two, as a result, he has displayed an inability to articulate, advocate and advance clear policies. He has repeatedly shown himself to be – unlike Bush the Decider – Obama the Undecider, advocate of interminable debate, adopter of half-measures, promoter of pullback from their implementation – all under the cover of a bogus bipartisanship.</p>
<p>The result is that he splits the difference with Republicans as they raise the bar. If the choice is between 2+2=4 and 2+2=6, he goes for 2+2=5; when the next choice is between 2+2=5 and 2+2=7, he goes for 2+2=6. Incremental abandonment of traditional Democratic, liberal or progressive positions will doom him not only with his natural constituencies, but also with independents, who most respect decisiveness and determination on issues.</p>
<p>Three, as another result, he cannot effectively lead the country to achieve many of the changes he advocated in his campaign and that attracted the electorate to him. I give him partial credit on health-care reform, the recovery of financial and automotive industries, and the end of DADT. But what else? Not much.</p>
<p>In foreign and military affairs, he did not close Guantanamo, pursue or even investigate the civil and human rights abuses of the Bush administration, or end American involvement in two Middle East wars. In domestic issues, he dropped immigration reform, abandoned his energy policy, and weakened the social safety net. When Republicans insist on major program cuts to avoid a debt-ceiling crisis, trust him to further weaken them.</p>
<h3>Inattention to the economy</h3>
<p>All three reasons reflect his lack of leadership, the monument to which is a still-weak economy. From first to last, Obama has demonstrated a marked degree of inattention to the economy, especially unemployment, and a callous disregard for the unemployed – a few speeches to the contrary cannot erase his save-the-rich-suffer-the-rest approaches.<span id="more-28819"></span></p>
<p>In the face of rising gasoline prices and in the context of his caving on his energy policy, I expect him to cave to demands for more oil and gas drilling in sensitive areas and for less regulation, at the cost of endangering the safety and health of Americans, and of further despoiling the environment, though such steps will not depress gasoline prices one cent. Are many Americans becoming an endangered species?</p>
<p>One note: I had thought that, by linking economic recovery, new alternative-energy energies, and a cleaner environment, Obama had created a synergistic approach to inspire Americans to work together to build a better future. Now, in his presidency, each area – economy, energy, and environment – are, if not weaker, at least not stronger, than before.</p>
<p>This change is not the one in which anyone believed.</p>
<h3>The GOP field</h3>
<p>Whether Obama’s presidency is a one-term or a two-term failure, his re-election is doubtful unless he is saved by a weak opponent from among those already positioning themselves on the right. The changing line-up of weaklings now includes Bachmann, Daniels, Gingrich, Huckabee, Palin, Paul, Pawlenty, Romney and Trump. None of them (I omit Huntsman and Johnson as presently invisible to the public) can succeed without taking the gamble of distancing themselves from the economic or social ideologues on the right.</p>
<p>You can safely bet that most or all will not take the risk.</p>
<p>That said, I think Romney might have some chance of securing the nomination if he dares to take two steps. One is to oppose the crazies and appeal to other conservative voters willing to support someone stable and sane (despite some Christian resistance to a Mormon, especially among many fundamentalists who will never warm to him despite his best efforts). Two is to flip back from his flip-flop on health care – that is, to endorse, instead of disavow, his smart state program that Obama acknowledges influenced his federal program now liked by majorities of all political stripes.</p>
<p>If Romney took these difficult steps, he would make a convincing display of decisiveness and determination, boldness and grit, which would most starkly contrast with Obama’s dithering and back-downing. He would also disarm Democratic attacks on his politically expedient but ineffectual effort to win far-right support, and he would re-assure all Americans that he will protect at least this part of the social safety net.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, more sensible conservative candidates are likely sitting on the sidelines, biding their time, watching celebrities make a degrading spectacle of themselves and damage others and their side, and quietly preparing to enter the race if and when the electorate tires of their inanities. Their wait-and-see strategy may be wrong, however; the electorate may be so eager for change that it might go for anyone other than Obama, however loony, and give solid candidates no chance to get into the race at a later date.</p>
<p>If not Romney, maybe Bloomberg. But, after a failed experiment with a black president, I doubt Americans will opt to try a Jewish one.</p>
<h3>Continuing to lose</h3>
<p>My problem is that, even if Obama wins against mounting odds, I think we will continue to lose. We are losing now in his first term as he acquiesces in the erosion of the social compact. Given the history of two-term presidents, we cannot hope for better from him in a second term.</p>
<p>And, if Democrats lose control of the Senate – and Obama will not try to help them keep it and should probably do them the favor of not trying – things will go from bad enough to worst of all.</p>
<p><em>Michael L. Hays (Ph.D., English) is a retired consultant in defense, energy and environment; former high school and college teacher; and continuing civic activist. His bi-monthly Saturday column appears in the <a href="http://www.lcsun-news.com/" target="_blank">Las Cruces Sun-News</a>; his bi-monthly blog, First Impressions &amp; Second Thoughts, appears on the intervening Saturdays at <a href="http://firstimpressionssecondthoughts.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">firstimpressionssecondthoughts.blogspot.com</a>.</em></p>
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		<title>Do conservatives care about the truth?</title>
		<link>https://nmpolitics.net/index/2011/03/do-conservatives-care-about-the-truth/</link>
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		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Michael L. Hays]]></dc:creator>
		<pubDate>Wed, 23 Mar 2011 14:12:06 +0000</pubDate>
				<category><![CDATA[Commentary]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Hays Columns]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[Tea Party]]></category>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.nmpolitics.net/index/?p=27577</guid>

					<description><![CDATA[Some Republican or Tea Party conservatives accept or create fictions to support not only specific policies, but also a general re-orientation of American government.]]></description>
										<content:encoded><![CDATA[<div id="attachment_17326"  class="wp-caption module image alignright" style="max-width: 270px;"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="size-full wp-image-17326  " title="Palin, Sarah" src="http://www.nmpolitics.net/index/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/Palin-Sarah.jpg?x36058" alt="" width="270" height="246" /></a><p class="wp-caption-text">Remember Sarah Palin saying her hero Ronald Reagan went to college in Eureka, Calif.? Not true. (Photo by Heath Haussamen)</p></div>
<p>In 1976, President Gerald Ford, seeking re-election, campaigned on his vast and diverse experience against the one-term Georgia Governor, Jimmy Carter. In their second debate, on foreign policy, Ford made and repeated <a href="http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,946700,00.html" target="_blank">a mistake that discredited his competence</a>. Flatly contradicting Cold War facts, Ford stated, “There is no Soviet domination of Eastern Europe, and there never will be under a Ford Administration.”</p>
<p>Answering a follow-up question, Ford specified that “Each of these countries (Poland, among others) is independent, autonomous; it has its own territorial integrity.” In the opinion of many, this blunder, following his unpopular pardon of resigned President Nixon, cost Ford the election.</p>
<p>Ford was a moderate, not a conservative, Republican. Today’s Republican or Tea Party conservatives are more fact-free or fact-defiant, but less accountable for what would have been damaging gaffs years ago. Some accept or create fictions to support not only specific policies, but also a general re-orientation of American government. So their disregard of the truth becomes a habit of mind evident in matters large and small.</p>
<p>Consider the examples of prominent fabulators:</p>
<ul>
<li>Sarah Palin, who declared that, pursuing opportunity in the west, her hero Ronald Reagan went to college in Eureka, Calif., when, in fact, he <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/06/29/sarah-palin-eureka-colleg_n_629183.html" target="_blank">graduated from Eureka College, in Illinois</a>, and only later went west. Wink, wink.</li>
<li>Michelle Bachman, who celebrated Concord, N.H., as the birthplace of the American Revolution – never mind that “the shot heard round the world” was fired at Concord, Mass. She then <a href="http://news.yahoo.com/s/yblog_theticket/20110313/pl_yblog_theticket/michele-bachmann-makes-an-embarrassing-flub-in-nh" target="_blank">blamed her mistake on Obama’s teleprompter</a>. Cute.</li>
<li>Mike Huckabee, who, claiming to know something about Obama’s early influences, detailed <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/03/01/mike-huckabee-obama-kenya-_n_829912.html" target="_blank">a Kenyan upbringing</a> by his father and grandfather, although Obama met his grandfather never, met his father once, and visited Kenya only as an adult. Oops.</li>
</ul>
<p>It is easy to dismiss Palin and Bachman as bobble-heads who appeal to other bobble-heads. It is harder to dismiss Huckabee, who presents himself as an honorable, religious man, but who tells lies and then tells more lies to cover them up.</p>
<div id="attachment_27578"  class="wp-caption module image alignright" style="max-width: 120px;"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="size-full wp-image-27578" title="Hays, Michael L" src="http://www.nmpolitics.net/index/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/Hays-Michael-L.jpg?x36058" alt="" width="120" height="160" /></a><p class="wp-caption-text">Michael L. Hays</p></div>
<h3>Local counterparts</h3>
<p>Such conservative falsifiers have their local counterparts. Recently, Jim Harbison, a political activist in Las Cruces, recently forwarded an e-mail from one Richard Harper, of New Media Markets, to Debra White, who was recently defeated for a seat on the New Mexico House of Representatives. In turn, Debra forwarded it to others and me.</p>
<p>The e-mail contained a picture and commentary. <a href="http://hillphoto.photoshelter.com/gallery-image/Politics/G0000tJTGRx0YKCs/I0000EgpEpbsoDOE" target="_blank">The picture</a> showed legislators playing card games, reading Facebook, or getting sports scores during a floor debate. The commentary decried their failures on various issues, their short workweeks, and their large salaries:</p>
<blockquote><p>“This picture is worth a trillion $$ 

House Minority Leader Lawrence F. Cafero Jr., R-Norwalk, pictured standing, far 
right, speaks while colleagues Rep. Barbara Lambert, D-Milford and Rep. Jack F. Hennessy, D-Bridgeport, play solitaire Monday night as the House convened to 
vote on a new budget. (AP)
The guy sitting in the row in front of these two&#8230;.he’s on Facebook, and the guy behind Hennessy is checking out the baseball scores.
These are the folks that couldn’t get the budget out by Oct. 1, and are about to 
control your health care, cap and trade, and the list goes on and on. 
Should we buy them larger screen computers &#8211; or &#8211; a ticket home, permanently?
This is one of their 3-DAY WORK WEEKS that we all pay for (salary is about 
$179,000 per year).
KEEP THIS GOING! DON’T LET IT STOP WITH YOU!”</p></blockquote>
<p>A quick and easy check on the Internet disclosed the following information. These representatives serve in the state of Connecticut, not Washington, D.C. I doubt that they work only three days a week when the legislature is in session. They get paid $28,000 per year, not $179,000 (sic: $174,000). They do not vote on federal legislation. They do not vote on the federal budget, which starts on 1 October; health care; cap and trade; or anything else implied by “the list (which) goes on and on.”</p>
<p>Neither Harbison nor White checked the facts before spreading falsehoods compatible with their conservative inclinations. But they are not alone; others go farther, not just by repeating, but by deliberately misrepresenting, the facts to serve their political agenda.<span id="more-27577"></span></p>
<p>On the <a href="http://www.lcsun-news.com/" target="_blank">Las Cruces Sun-News website</a> on March 12, anonymous conservative commentator “DAV” selected parts of both the text and history of the Fourteenth Amendment to lie that it denies citizenship to children born to illegal immigrants. He omitted its first sentence: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.” He omitted subsequent court decisions that apply the amendment to all people born in this country.</p>
<p>Typically, conservative DAV follows the Constitution only so far as it suits him.</p>
<h3>The price of freedom</h3>
<p>I have not discovered a new truth; politicians often abuse truth. However, of late, conservatives are guilty of most distortions, most remarkably about American history and its constituent documents. The proofs of their ignorance of, indifference to, or perversion of the truth are repeated misrepresentations of fact and repeated refusals to admit them. Truth is one of the things that conservatives do not care to conserve.</p>
<p>American democracy is another. Conservative contempt for truth subverts – and, I think, is intended to subvert – it. Conservatives know – I worry that other Americans do not know or care – that a robust democracy requires the consent of a citizenry informed, not misinformed, in its political decision-making.</p>
<p>For, despite the conservatives assault on truth, far too many Americans no longer regard its abuse as a disqualification for public office. A shrug of the shoulders and a “whatever” presage the demise of democracy.</p>
<p>Thomas Jefferson declared, “The price of freedom is eternal vigilance.” That price citizens must pay, and, if they value democracy and its freedom, they must realize that that price is not cheap and easy.</p>
<p>They must realize that vigilance requires smarts more than strength. They must care more for the truth than do those who betray the truth and would betray their freedom. They must themselves respect truth and face the facts of the matters that affect their lives. And they must hold others accountable for their falsehoods by ensuring that they suffer Ford’s fate – rejection and defeat.</p>
<p><em>Michael L. Hays (Ph.D., English) is a retired consultant in defense, energy and environment; former high school and college teacher; and continuing civic activist. His bi-monthly Saturday column appears in the <a href="http://www.lcsun-news.com/" target="_blank">Las Cruces Sun-News</a>; his bi-monthly blog, First Impressions &amp; Second Thoughts, appears on the intervening Saturdays at <a href="http://firstimpressionssecondthoughts.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">firstimpressionssecondthoughts.blogspot.com</a>.</em></p>
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		<title>Critical thinking about public education</title>
		<link>https://nmpolitics.net/index/2011/02/critical-thinking-about-public-education/</link>
					<comments>https://nmpolitics.net/index/2011/02/critical-thinking-about-public-education/#comments</comments>
		
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Michael L. Hays]]></dc:creator>
		<pubDate>Wed, 16 Feb 2011 15:54:40 +0000</pubDate>
				<category><![CDATA[Commentary]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Guest columns]]></category>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.nmpolitics.net/index/?p=26129</guid>

					<description><![CDATA[Well-meaning New Mexico educators focus on an array of bad proposals to fix public education, while Gov. Susana Martinez intends to debilitate or dismantle the system, starting with her plan to stigmatize public schools with letter grades.]]></description>
										<content:encoded><![CDATA[<div id="attachment_26131"  class="wp-caption module image alignright" style="max-width: 270px;"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="size-full wp-image-26131 " title="Failing" src="http://www.nmpolitics.net/index/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/Failing.jpg?x36058" alt="" width="270" height="197" /></a><p class="wp-caption-text">Photo by amboo who?/flickr.com</p></div>
<h4>Well-meaning New Mexico educators focus on an array of bad proposals to fix public education, while Gov. Susana Martinez intends to debilitate or dismantle the system</h4>
<p>Critical thinking about public education in New Mexico is not really necessary. In New Mexico, as elsewhere, everyone is an expert on education and, in particular, public education. Everyone has the experience of attending school, though some have more, some less, experience because of the number of years in attendance.</p>
<p>Of course, everyone has a right to an opinion, but everyone is wrong to believe that a right to an opinion makes any opinion right.</p>
<p>Since moving to New Mexico nearly four years ago, I have continued as a civic activist and columnist, with a paramount interest reflecting my background in public education. I have read articles and reports on New Mexico public education, discussed education issues with elected and appointed local and state officials, attended school board meetings, and served on two ad-hoc school-board committees.</p>
<p>I have found everyone to appear well meaning; I have found no one to have a “signature” achievement or a significant commitment to a goal likely to make a difference in the education of public school students.</p>
<p>Worse, as in other places, I have found no one with official responsibility in the field of public education who gives evidence of independent and insightful thinking about the issues. I have not found one who qualifies as an educator or an educational manager.</p>
<p>Instead, invariably, each addresses currently fashionable topics in currently fashionable terms. The topics range from accountability, test scores, higher standards, qualified teachers, merit or performance-based pay, dropouts or dropout rates, graduation rates, smaller or charter schools – the list goes on.</p>
<div id="attachment_26130"  class="wp-caption module image alignright" style="max-width: 120px;"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="size-full wp-image-26130" title="Hays, Michael L" src="http://www.nmpolitics.net/index/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/Hays-Michael-L.jpg?x36058" alt="" width="120" height="160" /></a><p class="wp-caption-text">Michael L. Hays</p></div>
<h3>An array of bad proposals</h3>
<p>This conventional wisdom, or received opinion, offers an array of proposals that can do little or nothing at great expense, have failed elsewhere and cannot succeed here, and deflect critical thinking from approaches which are less costly but more likely to improve public education. (Of these, I shall write in another column.)</p>
<p>For example, merit pay or performance-based pay is a recurrent proposal which, despite various incarnations, determined advocates, and dedicated millions and millions, seems to recommend itself as a promise of success with every failed performance elsewhere.</p>
<p>Many who know that public education is in trouble also believe either that they know who the culprits are or that they know what the problem is and what the solution to it is. Usually, they believe both: Identify the culprit, specify the one problem above all others, and stipulate the corrective action.</p>
<p>For example, many believe that teachers are the culprit; ergo, they blame them for everything and seek to make them follow detailed and inflexible lesson plans, to freeze their pay, to eliminate job security, or to weaken their unions. Despite this daily dose of abuse and degradation, many also profess to want to attract the best and the brightest to the teaching profession. The contradiction is a sure sign of the absence of critical thinking.</p>
<h3>The new administration’s political ideology</h3>
<p>For some – and now we come to the new administration – all of the problems have solutions according to an approach defined by political ideology, not educational sense. Thus, Governor Martinez, who demonstrated a total lack of understanding of education in her campaign, indicated her attraction to a politically inspired approach, which, since her election, she is adopting.</p>
<p>This approach, which in its application in Florida is creating havoc there, will create the same havoc in New Mexico. But that result is the point: The purpose of this approach is to debilitate, if not dismantle, public education.<span id="more-26129"></span></p>
<p>The implementation in New Mexico begins with Martinez’s appointment of <a href="http://www.nmpolitics.net/index/2010/12/martinez-picks-florida-reformer-to-be-education-secretary/" target="_blank">Hanna Skandera</a> as state secretary of education. Skandera, a tropical import from Florida, has no professional experience in or with schools as an educator, but she has strong political connections to the Bush brothers, George and Jeb, and No Child Left Behind legislation and the “Florida Plan,” respectively.</p>
<p>The “Florida Plan” focuses its efforts on privatizing public schools by building small schools, developing a charter school system, and using vouchers to enable state tax dollars to follow students into religious or private schools.</p>
<p>Here, Skandera’s first effort to advance these objectives is to <a href="http://www.governor.state.nm.us/uploads/FileLinks/20e5f2e740f34a2297a940e2bacdfcce/110215_1.pdf" target="_blank">stigmatize public schools by letter grades</a>, regardless of effects on students, parents, or teachers – not to mention the education provided. Who, with decency or sense, thinks that putting a pejorative label on an individual, a group, or an institution serves any constructive purpose?</p>
<p>But advocates argue that grading schools enables parents to choose to send their children to better schools. Assuming that parents would, only the half living in larger cities would have a feasible opportunity to do so; the other half would have to send their children on one- or two-hour bus rides each way. Even so, since most schools operate at full capacity, they have no room for more than a very few transfers.</p>
<p>The proposal is a sham. The concomitant dedication of more money to the better schools means that the better off get better off and the rest get left farther behind. This proposal redistributes economic benefits to those who need them less and increases educational inequity.</p>
<h3>No stake in the state</h3>
<p>In anticipation of her needs to transform public education, Skandera is contracting for the services, perhaps short-term, of eight, out-of-state advisors, mostly Floridians, who share her ideology and are committed to her agenda. Many New Mexicans have already noted that none of these eight people has professional experience as educators, that <a href="http://www.nmdemocrats.org/content/release-not-one-new-mexican-martinez-education-advisory-team-0" target="_blank">none has experience in New Mexico</a>, and that Skandera’s uniform choice of outsiders insults presumably qualified personnel in New Mexico.</p>
<p>These criticisms are true, but they miss the point. Only outsiders have no stake in the state, can act with reckless disregard of the consequences of their actions, and will depart as quickly as they arrive, when their advice on enervating or vandalizing public education has greased the skids.</p>
<p>As an aside, a consultant’s defense of this influx of consultants is, of course, self-serving, and it is lame. She says that public education in New Mexico needs a “fresh look.” However, the one thing ideologues cannot do is give any situation a “fresh look.” In their eyes, one size fits all. Moreover, although non-ideologues can take “a fresh look,” they often can see without understanding what they see.</p>
<p>It is worth noting, also, that such ideologues are also focusing their attention, not only on Florida, but also on Washington, D. C. – both jurisdictions like New Mexico, in which many residents are poor and minorities. By contrast, ideologues are not trying to inveigle their plans into states like Massachusetts that are economically and educationally better off, and largely white.</p>
<p>I wonder whether the discrepancy does not reflect a desire to experiment on the disadvantaged, use them to advance a political agenda which does not benefit them, and perhaps even keep them disadvantaged.</p>
<p>Except for resorting to data manipulated to prove unprecedented success in raising test scores and closing the achievement gap between whites and minorities, nothing else about the “Florida Plan” suggests its transferability to New Mexico. Hispanics in Florida have been traditionally Cuban and predominantly urban and middle-class; those in New Mexico are predominantly Mexican, rural and lower-class. So cultural, geographical, and economic differences suggest obstacles to easy adaptation of a plan developed for one population, not another.</p>
<p>Nevertheless, imported ideologues claim that the “Florida Plan” rapidly and dramatically improved minority achievement in elementary grades and can do so in New Mexico. I take reports and promises of such success with a grain of salt. Our state legislators should do likewise but seem gulled by glibness and graphs.</p>
<p>The author and presumed authority on the “Florida Plan” and the perpetrator of its manipulated data is Rio Grande Foundation sponsored scholar Dr. Matthew Ladner. He has recently received <a href="http://nepc.colorado.edu/newsletter/2011/02/us-department-education-big-winner-2010-bunkum-awards" target="_blank">one of the 2010 Bunkum Awards</a> given by the National Education Policy Center for “his spurious claim that a series of Florida reforms, including tax vouchers and grade retention, “caused” racial achievement gaps to narrow in the Sunshine State.”</p>
<h3>An exit to a national stage?</h3>
<p>How are New Mexicans to explain the governor’s commitment to an ideological program and ideologues to implement it? My guess – only a guess – is that Martinez is anticipating her exit to a national stage.</p>
<p>By aligning herself with “the Florida Plan,” advocating it, and appointing or contracting with associates of Jeb Bush, she is currying favor with a nationally powerful political figure in the Republican Party and sacrificing a state in need of a truly reformed public school system to a soon-to-be-ruined one.</p>
<p>Worse, New Mexicans who identify themselves as Democrats, progressives, or staffers of “independent think tanks,” who know no better and who are eager to give the new governor and her nominee for secretary of education the benefit of the doubt, are enabling ideologues by giving them time to discredit and dismantle public education in New Mexico.</p>
<p>Perhaps they should consider the nomination more closely than they have.</p>
<p><em>Michael L. Hays (Ph.D., English) is a retired consultant in defense, energy and environment; former high school and college teacher; and continuing civic activist. His bi-monthly Saturday column appears in the <a href="http://www.lcsun-news.com/" target="_blank">Las Cruces Sun-News</a>; his bi-monthly blog, First Impressions &amp; Second Thoughts, appears on the intervening Saturdays at <a href="http://firstimpressionssecondthoughts.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">firstimpressionssecondthoughts.blogspot.com</a>.</em></p>
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		<title>Obama has irretrievably failed</title>
		<link>https://nmpolitics.net/index/2010/12/obama-has-irretrievably-failed/</link>
					<comments>https://nmpolitics.net/index/2010/12/obama-has-irretrievably-failed/#comments</comments>
		
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Michael L. Hays]]></dc:creator>
		<pubDate>Tue, 07 Dec 2010 20:46:32 +0000</pubDate>
				<category><![CDATA[Commentary]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Guest columns]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Hays Columns]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Washington]]></category>
		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.nmpolitics.net/index/?p=24119</guid>

					<description><![CDATA[Increasingly, Democrats, liberals, progressives hope and pray that Obama will assert leadership on this or that issue. Sorry, my friends on the left, give it up. It ain’t gonna happen.]]></description>
										<content:encoded><![CDATA[<div id="attachment_23154"  class="wp-caption module image alignleft" style="max-width: 270px;"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="size-full wp-image-23154 " title="Obama, Barack" src="http://www.nmpolitics.net/index/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/Obama-Barack.jpeg?x36058" alt="" width="270" height="204" /></a><p class="wp-caption-text">Photo by Pete Souza/The White House</p></div>
<p>Increasingly, Democrats, liberals, progressives hope and pray that Obama will assert leadership on this or that issue. Sorry, my friends on the left, give it up. It ain’t gonna happen. This Prince Hamlet decides and does nothing; instead, he dithers and dodges.</p>
<p>Two years ago, I opposed McCain more than I approved Obama. I rightly credited Obama as informed, intelligent, articulate and reasonable; and with mostly sensible policies. I wrongly assumed that his personal qualities and his political policies and experience would translate into smart but strong leadership.</p>
<p>But I quickly recovered, and quickly discovered that Obama is not so smart or so strong as I had expected. As a man and as the president, he is so conflict-averse that his preferred personal and political strategies are bob-and-weave, cringe-and-cower, and duck-and-run.</p>
<p>Even as I have criticized Obama, to the disappointment or disparagement of some family and friends on the left since the election, I have defended him against Tea Party and Republican rampages of indecent personal and baseless political attacks.</p>
<p>If right-side troglodytes had not gone after his birth certificate; spread lies about his country of origin, religion and economic or political orientation; and distorted or lied about his policies, they might have done two constructive things. They might have enabled a useful debate on important national issues, and they might not have forced left-side supporters to defend the problematic as well as the practical.</p>
<h3>Avoiding confrontation and controversy</h3>
<p>Playing to a public wanting results, Obama has advocated bipartisanship. But, in its name, his concessions in advance, or instead, of negotiations camouflage his desire to avoid confrontation or controversy. Ironically, his strategy obviates bipartisanship; Republicans need not negotiate in any kind of faith since they can get what they want by being partisan and unpleasant.</p>
<div id="attachment_24120"  class="wp-caption module image alignright" style="max-width: 120px;"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="size-full wp-image-24120" title="Hays, Michael L" src="http://www.nmpolitics.net/index/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/Hays-Michael-L2.jpg?x36058" alt="" width="120" height="160" /></a><p class="wp-caption-text">Michael L. Hays</p></div>
<p>Looking back, I ask myself, how did he not learn in Chicago, in Illinois, in Congress, and in the campaign that politics is a contact sport?</p>
<p>First, Obama ducked controversy by discounting likely violations of international and national law (torture); disregarding obligations under treaties and laws, and precedents for legal action; and discouraging their investigation. Despite his special expertise in constitutional and civil rights law, he established precedents for later administrations to justify future encroachment on, or erosion of, laws, liberties and democracy itself.</p>
<p>Thus, he has squandered the goodwill and respect that foreign governments granted him as one different from his predecessor in international affairs. America’s reputation is now tarnished by its choice to disregard treaties – a tactic that will come back to haunt this country’s efforts to work with other countries. For leadership in a multi-polar world must be by the example of moral leadership and mutual respect.</p>
<p>Second, Obama dodged conflict by accepting a face-saving but empty promise by Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu to slow down, not halt, as Obama requested, further construction in the West Bank. Foreign leaders realized that Obama lacked backbone. Result: No influence with Iran’s Ahmadinejad, little with Afghanistan’s Karzai, and less and less with other foreign leaders on international issues.</p>
<p>Third, Obama deflected contention with the financial industry by appointing some of its members to his administration, and by bailing out bankers and brokers before bailing out the bankrupt and the broke, who are still not bailed out. By first loaning them hundreds of billions without securing their agreement to terms and conditions effecting reforms, he later enabled the financial industry to resist reforms and made it difficult to enact them.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, to avoid conflict with Republicans, Obama rejected nearly unanimous advice from most economists, who urged a stimulus package of nearly $2 trillion. Instead, he proposed a stimulus package about half that size, just large enough to save some jobs and prevent a depression, but not large enough to reverse the recession from which the country has yet to recover.</p>
<p>Fourth, whatever one thinks of him or his positions, no one can deny that he gives no problem his clear and uncompromised support for any solution, including those that he himself has advocated. He let health care reform, his signature issue, become and remain a muddle because, without indicating that he had any convictions on the subject, he let Democratic congressional leaders take 15 months to produce a piece of legislation, the making of which discredited or disgraced just about everyone involved in either party, no matter what position or positions he or she took.<span id="more-24119"></span></p>
<p>Likewise, Obama cannot reconcile his strenuous campaign promises and current positions on extending all or only some of the Bush tax cuts. The House, which must initiate tax legislation, has voted to extend them for individuals making up to $200,000 and for couples making up to $250,000. But Obama is undermining that legislation approved by a large majority of House Democrats with a face-saving surrender to Senate Republicans standing firm on extending the tax cuts to all.</p>
<p>Obama has turned away from the trigger of the continuing meltdown, the collapse of the housing market, as millions of foreclosures continue to occur. Because he has allowed too-big-too-fail financial corporations to grow even bigger, the damage to the economy threatened from this sector dwarfs the damage just done by it.</p>
<p>So the economy continues to stagnate, and Obama is not using his office – who can associate something like the “bully pulpit” with him? – to rally the nation to transform the economy, including deficit reduction and tax reform. Instead, he takes the bold, creative, and decisive action – not – to create a commission.</p>
<p>Obama has abandoned most of his campaign issues. Guantanamo is still open for business, with detainee trials still deferred and discredited. Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell and the Defense of Marriage Act remain laws of the land and likely to remain so because he is taking the path of least resistance and least right to protect or expand civil rights. Education reform under the “Race to the Top” is “No Child Left Behind” with money and smiles, and not more than one whit better. Green industry initiatives have flagged. Cap-and-trade has failed.</p>
<p>Republicans are responsible for their obstructionism, but Obama is responsible for its duration and intensity. He refuses to repudiate personal attacks on his birthright and beliefs; he refuses to rebut distortions of, and falsehoods about, his policies. Obama’s tolerance of persistent personal and political abuse indicates a serious personality defect and grave moral weakness. His desire for peace at any price has costs.</p>
<h3>Loss of respect</h3>
<p>The biggest cost is Obama’s loss of peoples’ respect, even among supporters. Regardless of what they believe, regardless of what place they occupy on the political spectrum, Americans follow with respect, if not without reservations, a leader who fights for the right as he sees it or even someone who is strong but wrong. But they do not follow someone cringing and craven, however right he may be.</p>
<p>The sad fact is that, good and decent as is, Obama is temperamentally incapable of getting it back; getting it back would require what Obama lacks: courage, which is an essential element of convictions, and, in his case, convictions that are Democratic ones. He will not get it back by re-runs of his belief in bipartisanship and public relations activities: speeches, photo ops, interviews and TV appearances.</p>
<p>By tolerating abuse, Obama has made personal disrespect and political disregard painless. By contrast, imagine Mitch McConnell or John Boehner or any of the other pipsqueaks-in-opposition talking or walking as they do if Lyndon Johnson were in office. He would have a glass bowl full of their soft body parts prominently displayed on his Oval Office desk.</p>
<p>Democrats, liberals, progressives hope and pray that mid-term Democratic losses will give Obama the grit to fight. But they have already witnessed his self-abasing backdown: He blamed himself for not talking enough with Republicans, who have talked only “no.” Cajoling or scolding him by turns, the left has wanted him to succeed and has worked for his success, but the reality no longer deniable is that Obama has irretrievably failed.</p>
<p>So, my friends on the left, get over hoping and praying for anything but a Democrat who can replace him before he takes down all those who have hoped and prayed for him for two years. Find yourselves a real Democrat, man or woman, smart and strong enough for the presidency.</p>
<p><em>Michael L. Hays (Ph.D., English) is a retired consultant in defense, energy and environment; former high school and college teacher; and continuing civic activist. His bi-monthly Saturday column appears in the <a href="http://www.lcsun-news.com/">Las Cruces Sun-News</a>; his bi-monthly blog, First Impressions &amp; Second Thoughts, appears on the intervening Saturdays at <a href="http://firstimpressionssecondthoughts.blogspot.com/">firstimpressionssecondthoughts.blogspot.com</a>.</em></p>
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