The Age of the Nontroversy

“Americans are tired of partisan politics” is not only an empty (and hypocritical, when spouted by political partisans) platitude but an ignorant one. From the early days of the Federalist/Anti-Federalist divide, partisanship has been an American institution. We would not be who we are without debates and disagreements over the size, scope, character and authority of government. As such, the idea that we should come together “for the good of the country” is facile. However, this partisanship of ideas is quite a bit different from partisanship as it is often decried today. A more accurate description of what Americans are really tired of is point-jockeying: the concerted effort by Team Red and Team Blue to see which side can appear better – and make the opposition appear worse – in the eyes of the electorate. This mindless competition is a testament to the triumph of political ambition over political principle, and nothing seems to encapsulate it better than the nontroversy.


The nontroversy (as in “non-controversy”) occurs when a statement or action that shouldn’t be particularly controversial is granted controversial status by either ignoring context and past precedent or presuming malicious intent for nakedly political purpose. To a certain extent, the nontroversy is a product of public officials facing intense exposure and media scrutiny. When you live under a microscope, your sins are amplified for all to see. With this comes a certain loss of proportionality.


However, blaming the nontroversy on the media (who are supposed to hold the powerful accountable, after all) ignores the inherently manipulative – and inherently political – nature of the phenomena. After all, a nontroversy would not be a nontroversy were it not for a talking head or political hack raising a big stink to help spur coverage. Unsurprisingly, those who decry a “biased” or “sensational” media are often among the first to try to use it to their advantage.


The ascendancy of the nontroversy can be traced to two factors: time and speed. We are, as of this writing, fewer than two months away from a presidential election. With the stakes high, the pressure for candidates to eke out an advantage is immense. But we are also living in an increasingly interconnected, fast-paced world. Audio and video can be recorded, often sans context, and shared with lots and lots of people in a matter of seconds. When this happens, it is no surprise that deep understanding never develops: there isn’t time for it.


To see the nontroversy in full bloom, one needn’t look further than a pair of statements made within the past year by the two leading presidential candidates. On July 13, President Obama gave his now-notorious “You didn’t build that” speech in which he expressed the view that social institutions, not individual effort, were responsible for one’s successes. This, predictably, generated a firestorm of criticism from Obama’s opponents, with most common charge being that it revealed Obama’s hatred of capitalism and individualism. And while the president’s remarks do smack of a certain amount of annoying contempt for the idea of self-sufficiency, they qualify as a nontroversy for several reasons. First, Obama did not say anything particularly surprising. A belief in and preference for public institutions is keeping with his views and those of his party. To treat this outburst as sudden blasphemy is disingenuous. Second, many of the condemnations were issued by those whose views differed little from those of the president. Substitute “God” or “family” for “a teacher” in Obama’s remarks, and you have the conservative (though not the libertarian) creed in a nutshell. And yet, despite the exaggerated and largely meritless controversy, “You didn’t build that” continues to linger in the public imagination as all that is wrong with Obamaism.


Another example of a nontroversy can be found in Mitt Romney’s September 17 comments that the “47 percent” of Americans that support Obama are “dependent upon government” and “believe they are victims” who deserve entitlements. Just as predictably, this drew loud criticisms from Romney’s opponents, who were quick to brand him heartless and attempt to tie his remarks to voter suppression. And while Romney’s words were both poorly chosen and inaccurate, this too is a classic nontroversy. Prior to seeking office, Romney established himself as a businessman. As such, his denunciation of those who do not generate income and depend on government assistance for survival is in keeping with his perspective and that of his compatriots. Further, contempt for people who don’t support you is hardly native to Romney. The very same people who have criticized him for expressing such sentiments would do well to remember another nontroversy: Obama’s denunciation of “bitter” small-town voters who “cling to guns or religion…as a way to explain their frustrations.”


Of course, in heaping scorn on the nontroversy, one should also be wary of the opposite: the tendency to downplay something controversial for partisan reasons. Because the political environment is so toxic, charges of “They do it to!” will often stick. But when this approach is employed to mitigate something as inherently noxious as calling for the internment of Muslim-Americans during the War on Terror (ala Michelle Malkin), it is every bit as pernicious as blowing something out of proportion. (In other words, the fact that a Democratic administration oversaw mass internment during wartime doesn’t make it OK for a Republican to suggest that we do likewise).


Being that any emanation from betwixt a public figure’s lips will attract attention and invite interpretation, it is likely that the nontroversy is here to stay, a permanent reminder that politicians and their surrogates view us as simpletons with political amnesia who will be swayed by their phony outrage. But just because a stink is raised doesn’t mean that we must open our nostrils to it and breathe it in. In the words of the immortal Chuck D, don’t believe the hype.

The Disappointment Presidency

The Disappointment Presidency

            History does not unfold in a vacuum, and neither do presidential terms. Nearly four years have passed since Barack Obama was elected, and in order to evaluate his tenure in the Oval Office, one must examine the circumstances that led to that election. Unfortunately, this means revisiting the unhappy presidency of George W. Bush.

The Fail Guy

            The Bush years can best be described as the Failure Presidency. Though not the bumbling hayseed satirists made him out to be, the ineloquent, reductionist Bush was overmatched from the start. In all fairness, the September 11 attacks would have posed a huge challenge to any leader, and Bush did acquit himself quite well in the immediate aftermath. However, things were mostly downhill from there. A self-styled “compassionate conservative,” Bush oversaw huge increases in spending and government regulation. Under the aegis of spreading democracy and fighting terrorism, his foreign policy propelled America into two wars, alienated allies, and, paradoxically, incited Jihadists across the globe. From warrantless surveillance of American citizens to the botched federal response to Hurricane Katrina to outright kidnapping and torture, the Bush administration became synonymous with corruption, cronyism, abuse of power, and incompetence. By the time Bush left office, he had a 19% approval rating, and the country’s economic downturn was well underway.

            These are the circumstances upon which Obama capitalized to assume the presidency. At first glance, it would appear that he wouldn’t have had to do much to triumph over a Republican brand that was badly tarnished. But as John Kerry’s woeful 2004 campaign taught us, merely being the other guy is not enough. Fortunately for Obama, he was able to offer something new, even if that something was more stylistic than substantive.

Hope and Change

            “Hope and Change” were the buzzwords that steered the Obama 08 campaign, and while one would have to be naïve to have seen him as a transformational figure, there was certainly a kernel of truth to those words. Yes, Obama was inexperienced, but along with that inexperience came a (relative, and certainly by Chicago standards) lack of corruption. Moreover, Obama seemed to offer a conciliatory style and a broad-minded approach to governance. Whereas Bush filled cabinet positions by rewarding those who had served him well, Obama favored a “best and brightest” strategy, mixing Democratic stalwarts with recruits from the ranks of academia and Republican appointees. And as a multiracial man (then) under the age of 50, Obama revitalized the idea of America as a land of opportunity.

            From a policy perspective, the hope Obama represented was considerably more feint, albeit still present. On the negative side, his foreign policy inexperience and affinity for large public spending boondoggles (high-speed rail, anybody?) were apparent from the start. However, based on both his campaign and his Senate career, it was reasonable to expect that his presidency would offer a greater respect for civil liberties and a less trigger-happy approach to diplomacy. Furthermore, when was the last time a Democrat of his stature had good things to say about charter schools and merit pay for teachers?

            Both because he was not Bush and because he offered something more than not being Bush, Obama created a significant number of expectations, expectations which he abetted by vowing swift action within the first 100 days of his presidency. But after more than three years in office, he has fallen well short of achieving those goals. If the Bush administration represents the Failure Presidency, then the Obama administration, with its broken promises and inadequate governance, represents the Disappointment Presidency.

The Economy, Stupid!

            If polls are any indication, no issue was more influential in determining the outcome of the 2008 presidential election than the economy. By the time of the election, the 2008 financial crisis was already underway. The causes of this crisis were many, but for sake of argument, let us accept the Democratic line that Republican mismanagement precipitated economic decline. Was that the case, then surely some time under Democratic governance would right America’s economic fortunes.

            The actual results of that governance, however, paint quite a different picture.  According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the national unemployment rate for January 2009 – the month Obama took office – was 7.8%. Throughout Obama’s term, that rate escalated as high as 10%. The most recent data puts it at 8.1% for August 2012. While the unemployment rate is not the sole indicator of economic health, these numbers nevertheless point to a failure to right the ship.

            It is a failure that is inexcusable for several reasons. First, Democrats, including Obama, have turned job creation and protecting the middle class into their mantra. For them to fail at this task is both bitterly ironic and a damning indictment of their competence. Second, this lackluster “recovery” follows a very costly stimulus package, strongly supported by Obama, that was pushed as being necessary to avoid precisely this outcome. Third, blame cannot be placed elsewhere. Democrats controlled both houses of Congress during Obama’s first two years in office, thereby ensuring passage of his favored programs. The idea that this can somehow be attributed to the Bush administration is laughable. After all, there came a point during the Bush years when neither the September 11 attacks nor Clinton-era policies could excuse the current administration’s failures. We have since reached a similar point under Obama.

The Song Remains the Same

            To his supporters, the image Obama projects as a statesman is one of cool-headed rationality. To his detractors, it’s one of kowtowing weakness. Unsurprisingly, his predecessor elicited a similarly divisive response. Depending on whom you asked, Bush was either a resolute leader with strong moral vision or a belligerent, myopic blowhard. What is surprising is that despite the differences in perception of the two leaders’ styles, their policy remains substantively unchanged in several areas.

            Like Obama’s domestic policy, the Bush Doctrine is best characterized by a drive toward massive action. Cloaked in the rhetoric of peace, freedom, and democracy, Bush and a complicit (lest anyone forget) Congress immersed America in two costly, bloody wars and raised the possibility of several others. Moreover, the Bush administration asserted, rather chillingly, that it had the right to detain American citizens indefinitely without charge vis-à-vis the troublingly broad “enemy combatant” designation. To be certain, this approach to foreign policy was not without positives: it contributed to the downfall of Saddam Hussein and the toppling of a theocratic Afghan regime. However, it also saddled the nation with political, moral, and economic costs that we are still paying for today.

            For critics of this doctrine, Obama was supposed to have represented the antidote. Unlike many wavering Democrats, Obama was never tainted by a senatorial vote in favor of authorizing a war. He explicitly campaigned on bringing an end to the War in Iraq and promised to close down the Guantanamo Bay detention camp. Within months of his inauguration, Obama was in Egypt promising “A New Beginning” in American-Middle Eastern relations.

            A few short years later, and the new beginning looks suspiciously like the old way of doing things. Guantanamo Bay remains open, a sad testament to Obama’s lack of political willpower. Troops have been withdrawn from Iraq, but they remain entangled in Afghanistan, and skirmishes in Pakistan have threatened to cause even more regional instability. Whereas the Bush administration was content to detain and possibly torture American citizens that had been dubbed enemy combatants, the Obama administration has outright targeted them for killing. Just as with the Bush Doctrine, there has been an upside to such an aggressive foreign policy approach. Osama bin Laden has finally been rooted out and exterminated, and, the troubling circumstances of his and his son’s deaths aside, Anwar al-Alwaki is presumably preaching his murderously anti-American vitriol in hell. The larger concern, however, remains the present and future costs of a course of action that Bush began and Obama betrayed supporters by enthusiastically co-opting.

The Worst in All of Us

            At the dawn of Obama’s election, many of those who feared what Obama represented politically nevertheless had praise for him personally. His willingness to confront the complexities of race drew plaudits from Republicans from Peggy Noonan to Mike Huckabee, and his smooth rhetorical style offered an appealing contrast for conservatives to the increasingly-embarrassing outbursts of Bush and Sarah Palin. Obama’s character, temperament, and eloquence thus inspired some hope that the debates regarding his governance could, at least for a while, be limited to the policies rather than the man behind him.

            Of course, this was not meant to be. Like many presidents of recent vintage (Bush and Clinton in particular come to mind), Obama came to inspire unshakable gut-level antipathy among his detractors. Though perhaps at its fiercest among the “Birthers,” this sort of irrational distaste has not been limited to the lunatic fringe. Newt Gingrich, a man Republicans have considered presidential material from time to time, condemned Obama for failing to bomb and then for bombing Libya within a span of a few short weeks. Obama opponents have variously tried to depict him as a godless secularist, a secret Muslim, and a disciple of Jeremiah Wright. The glaring lack of logical coherency common to these criticisms suggests that if the president switched wholesale to the Ronald Reagan playbook, Obamaphobes would lambast him for being unoriginal.

            But if a sizeable swath of Obama opponents are divorced from reality, so too are a number of Obama supporters. Witness the spectacle of those who elected an anti-war president defending that president’s war-mongering as evidence that he isn’t spineless. Grimace as every critical observation is, conspiratorially, tagged with racist intent. Or, simply laugh as Obama sycophants like Tim Kaine praise him for “putting results ahead of ideology” while simultaneously ignoring a good many of those results.

            To be fair, blame for the rabid rhetoric (pro and con) that Obama has inspired cannot be laid solely at his feet. While a more partisan, gloves-off Obama has emerged over the last few years, he has yet to fan the flames to as great an extent as his predecessors. From a rhetorical standpoint, the disappointment of the Obama presidency isn’t sinking down into the muck as much as it is no longer giving us reason to believe we can do better.

            In a mere matter of weeks, the Disappointment Presidency will either receive a second chance or meet its fateful end. Undoubtedly, what one thinks of the alternatives to another Obama term will influence one’s decision to support or reject it. But an examination of broken promises, changing positions, and a failure to deliver should make one thing clear: in 2012, the answer to “Yes We Can” is “No, You Probably Won’t.”

Harold Ballard and the Lessons of the Market

For better or for worse, we have a predisposition toward action. We perceive doing something as better than doing nothing at all, even if that “something” may be detrimental in the long run. Unfortunately, this bias contributes to a distrust of the free market and allowing things to simply run their course. It is as if we would rather crash the plane into the side of the mountain ourselves than trust the autopilot.


Of course, this distrust of the market is also fueled by some negative misconceptions of capitalism. In the minds of many, the very word raises the specter of greed and oppression. This stems from a fundamental misunderstanding of capitalism’s aims. The profit motive is inherently amoral, which means that it can (though not by design) be a force for good. However, too many are willing to conflate amoral and immoral (that is, inherently wicked), and in an effort to right capitalism’s perceived wrongs, leave us with something far worse: the tyranny of good intentions. Why tyranny, you ask? The market, left to its own devices, generates winners and losers. While it would be naïve to deny the existence of dishonest competitive practices, a free market at least maintains some semblance of a correlation between effort (a quality product, an unbeatable price, an innovation not found among the competition) and outcome. When the state intervenes, winners and losers are declared by fiat, often with disastrous results.

One great illustrator of this concept is the mismanaged sports franchise. There are plenty of failing (or should-be-failing) businesses out there, but due to their high media visibility, when a sports franchise is run into the ground, people tend to actually notice. And while sports franchises can fail for a variety of reasons (wrong market for the sport, for instance), the blame can sometimes be placed squarely at the top with the owner.

Of all the terrible sports owners (I’m looking at you, Ted Stepien), perhaps none combined incompetence and sheer malevolence more potently than the late Harold Ballard, owner of the NHL’s Toronto Maple Leafs for three decades. Though he had charitable moments, Ballard was, by many accounts, a miserable human being. Bigoted and misogynistic even by the standards of his day, Ballard regularly denigrated European players and once told a female journalist, “Women are best in one position – on their backs.” He served a prison sentence (which, fortuitously, allowed the team to sign Swedish star Borje Salming) for siphoning funds from the Leafs’ ownership group for personal use and proved himself to be a notorious skinflint. His other exploits, as per Wikipedia, include:

- Intentionally delaying a Beatles concert, turning up the heat in Maple Leaf Gardens, and selling soft drinks at an outrageous markup.

- Telling longtime Leaf and team captain Dave Keon that he had no place on the team, then demanding high compensation from any team who tried to sign him, effectively blacklisting Keon from the league.

- Continuously undermining Keon’s successor as captain, Darryl Sittler. This culminated in trading Sittler’s close friend Lanny McDonald to last-place Colorado out of spite.

- Hiring back aging Punch Imlach, a man noted for his autocratic style, as general manager in order to soften his own image. When Imlach suffered a heart attack, Ballard forced him from his job.

In short, Ballard embodied the characteristics – greed, ruthlessness, etc. – that capitalism’s critics say are endemic to a market system. If ever there seemed a likely candidate for intervention into how a franchise was run, Ballard’s Leafs were it. And while the league stepping in might have benefited the Leafs in the short-term, the long-term, unintended consequences would have been a net negative for the NHL. Consider the following:

- Though Toronto was talented in the late 70s and early 80s, it is unlikely that the Leafs would have overcome the dominant Montreal Canadiens and New York Islanders even if Ballard and Imlach hadn’t stripped the roster.

- Had the league vetoed Ballard’s trades or even tried to force him to sell, other owners would likely have taken umbrage to the intrusion. The NHL could have risked turning its most loathsome owner into a martyr.

- Had the league attempted to buy the team outright (and later sell to a willing buyer a la the NBA’s New Orleans Hornets), this would have directly lined Ballard’s pockets, literally at the expense of the other teams.

- In many cases, the players that Ballard underpaid or spitefully sent away flourished elsewhere. Both McDonald and Bernie Parent went on to win the Stanley Cup with other franchises and were elected to the Hall of Fame.

- In other cases, when the WHA scooped up Ballard’s former players, small-market franchises were given their first taste of star power.

Had the NHL intervened during Ballard’s reign, the unforeseen benefits of his calamity would have been forsaken and several negative consequences would have come to bear in their stead. Though a “Save the Leafs” campaign would have been well-intentioned, its authors likely would have done more harm than good.

Now, compare Ballard’s Leafs to another failing company, such as an auto manufacturer. Their antipathy for executive compensation aside, critics of capitalism would likely regard a car company as something worth saving due to all the blue-collar jobs on the line if the company goes under. Thus, the intention may be noble, but here again, refusing to let the market run its course has unintended results. Bailouts insulate automotive executives from the consequences of their mismanagement. Competitive pressure, on the other hand, forces them to change their losing ways. Furthermore, the money intended to bolster the workers who are at risk for losing their jobs may be absorbed by the corporate bureaucracy and find its way into the pockets of those very same overpaid, underperforming executives. Lastly, since bailouts are taxpayer funded, a rift is created between those whose jobs are deemed worth bailing out and those who received no such assistance. Thus, while unpleasant to countenance, the outcomes made possible by “heartless” capitalism can easily be far more benign than those created by “compassionate” intervention.

In the end, the rationality of the free market is undermined by our desire to do good and our belief that we know what is best for others. A little humility would allow us to see that we can’t reliably predict what are good intentions will eventually amount to, but this is something we seem loath to accept, especially when the Harold Ballards of the world make for such inviting targets. Still, history has taught us that when a man seems intent on burning down his house, sometimes the best thing to do is not to hand him a house but to embrace what arises from the ashes.