Fear Itself: Ukraine Edition

The single most important thing Barack Obama needs to do about Ukraine is not to panic. The single most important thing anyone else in the United States can do about Ukraine is not to panic Barack Obama. Developments in the Crimea are extremely dangerous, and that's exactly why everybody needs to calm down.

I have no idea whether or not Obama is handling this situation well or badly. Neither does anybody else who's not party to what he's telling other international leaders on private lines. How Obama is handling things is about what he's saying to people like Angela Merkel and about how those people responding. I don't think there will be any way to measure his success or failure for a while.

On the other hand, it's clear from the other side of the planet that Vladimir Putin has panicked and committed himself when he shouldn't have. There is virtually no endgame in which Russia doesn't lose more than this stupid adventure was worth. There are many endgames where things spiral out of control because Putin continues to panic or is too afraid of losing face to do what's in his own self-interest. He's dangerously unpredictable right now, and that is more than bad enough. What we really don't need right now is another nervous world leader scared to lose face. That's a recipe for a  spasm of pointless bloodshed that will leave scars on that region for a generation.

Of course, the American news media is essentially an industry of panic. So your TV is full of panicky or opportunistic people shouting loudly that Obama should panic right now. They're saying that Obama has to do something, by which they mean look like he's doing something. They complain that Obama is not tough enough, by which they mean that he does not act tough enough. Again, I have no idea how tough Obama is or isn't being behind closed doors. What I do know is that acting tough is seldom a sign of actually being tough. And acting tough because other people call you weak is absolutely a confession of weakness.

I don't know anything about the Ukraine situation. But some things are obvious:

1. There is not a military solution to this, and any military intervention will make things worse. The point is to keep the violence from expanding. And fighting a top-five military power on its own borders is not winnable; any "victory" would cost far more than it would be worth. It just can't be done.

Anyone demanding that Obama "get tough" by flexing military muscle needs to go to their quiet corner, get their binky, and soothe themselves for a while.

2. What's already happened cannot be reversed quickly.  Obviously, our preferred fantasy outcome is that the Russian troops just pack up and go back to Russia quietly, cleaning up their litter as they go. But that's just a fantasy. They may eventually leave peacefully. They will not immediately leave peacefully. Getting them out without bloodshed will take some time. Attempting to get them out by force won't be quick either, and there's no way to predict how it would go.

Anyone demanding, in essence, that Obama make this never have happened is simply freaking out, and should be disregarded.

3. No Russian leader is going to pull back an invasion force because the President of the United States tells him to. It doesn't matter who that President is. I mean, that's just crazy talk. This is not about us.

4. There is no workable solution to this that doesn't leave Russia access to its naval facilities in Crimea. Even if you, like me, know approximately zero about Russian history, you know that access to a warm-water port has been one of Russia's key strategic goals for centuries. That didn't change in the last six months, and it's not going to change in the next six months either. Putin's panicky invasion is at least partly a response to fear of losing key Black Sea bases, and that's a totally reasonable fear that he has acted on foolishly and unreasonably.

If this ends with the Russians backing out but keeping their naval bases, that is the best case scenario. Those bases are their only legitimate strategic goal. If you hear people complaining that Obama is "too soft" because this ends with the Russians keeping their main Crimean base, those people are out of their minds. If this ends with the Russians only in those naval bases, that would be the best outcome imaginable.

5. There is no military situation that panicking will not make worse.

Not panicking is not itself the solution. Obama can't turn this around simply through the force of his personal calm. But he can't do anything positive if he doesn't stay calm. This problem demands a cool head and a steady hand. Flipping out and getting emotional will only invite disaster.

cross-posted from Dagblog

Bain for Dummies

cross-posted from Dagblog

Over the past week much of our national media, especially the national pundit corps, was consumed with two questions: Was the attack about when Mitt Romney left Bain Capital fair? and Would Romney choose Condoleeza Rice as his running mate? These are both silly questions. The correct answers are, "Yup," and "Of course not." That part of the press corps took the second question seriously at all, even for one day, shows how disconnected they are from reality. Their chatter about the Bain question is just as clueless.

The question many pundits asked themselves was whether it was accurate to claim that Romney did not leave Bain Capital in 1999, just because he was listed in SEC filings as the company's  "CEO, Chairman, President and sole stockholder" for another three years? Pundits asked themselves this question because only pundits would not know the answer. Of course, they also asked a number of GOP sources, for balance's sake.

The "Is it fair?" question follows the earlier concern-troll version of the question, "Will attacks on Romney over Bain backfire?" (In fact, you still get some of that.) That question, too, defies and denies the obvious. Mitt Romney has run against a Democratic opponent in exactly two elections. The Democrat who hit him on Bain, hard and early, beat him comfortably. That isn't the whole story of either election. But what part of that record says going after the Romney's work at Bain is a bad strategy?

The argument for the "fairness" of the attacks is on a complete lack of perspective. It takes for granted that what is "fair" is what is considered normal within a tiny sliver of America: the wealthiest and most powerful sliver. Romney's Bain arrangements between 1999 and 2002 were within accepted business practices among high-flying financiers. They were vetted by lawyers, and involved legal fictions that have become standard in Romney's slice of the business and social worlds. And so to people who are accustomed to moving in those worlds questioning Romney's complicated but perfectly routine and legally-vetted relationship to Bain seems somewhere between impolite and outrageous.

But if you have reached the point where being "on leave," and CEO, and sole stockholder, and drawing a $100,000 salary, and having nothing to do with the operations of the business that pays you to be CEO, all seems normal to you, you are in the bubble. Part of the problem is that you have lost any sense of how most Americans would view these arrangements, and indeed any sense that the rest of the country does not share the perspective of private-equity managers or publishers of major newspapers. You have lost the basic understanding that your particular world view might not be shared by the whole universe.

Only someone in the bubble, for example, would think of Condi Rice as a great running mate. As hilarious as it would be to see Mitt Romney paired with someone stiffer and less natural on the campaign trail, it will never happen. There's a reason that Rice has always been appointed to office, and not elected. That reason is Condoleeza Rice. If you're used to seeing Rice on her home court, at Georgetown social events or government functions or press availabilities, you could lose sight of some basic things about her, like the stiffness. You might "realize", having spent more time around her, that she's not as stiff as she looks. But this "realization" is an illusion fostered by proximity, and only the tiny segment of the population that's spent a lot of time around Condoleeza Rice could fall prey to it. Seen from further away, Rice is revealed to be even stiffer than she initially looks, which is impressive. Also, seen from a greater distance, she looks uncannily like someone who downgraded the priority of fighting Al-Qaeda and then signed off on a disastrous and unpopular war, because that's who she is.  You can't send her to the Iowa State Fair and have her shake swing voters' hands. You also can't have her debate Joe Biden, who was in the War Room when bin Laden was killed. Either would be a disaster. If you can't see those things about her, the problem is that you're too close. You have lost perspective.

And once you lose touch with the fact that not everyone sees the world the way the people immediately around you do, you start to lose touch with basic reality. You can begin to accept absurd things as perfectly normal. You become unable to hear how silly, and how transparently dishonest, a phrase like "retired retroactively" sounds. Or, like Bob Woodward, you can go on Meet the Press and declare that "everyone knows that SEC filings are meaningless." That statement only makes any kind of sense at all if you have a very restricted sense of who "everyone" is. But the bigger problem is that if "everyone" knows SEC documents are just nonsense, then "everyone" has lost touch with basic moral realities. "Everyone" is corrupt and doesn't know it.

But once you get your head far enough outside the bubble to notice why saying "retroactively retired" insults other people's intelligence (if not your own), you might start to notice some other very strange things that are invisible inside the bubble.

For example, four years after crisis in the financial sector threw the country into this massive recession, the Republicans have nominated a guy from the financial sector for President. He claims that he can make everything okay again, by going back to the old policies from before 2008.

That may not sound odd to our investor class, or our politicians, or our mainstream journalists. But actually, it's really odd.

Not seeing why Bain is a problem is part of not seeing why nominating Romney was a problem in the first place. Not seeing why Romney is a problem is part of not seeing what's wrong with our financial class or our economy. And many influential people in our country are deeply committed to not seeing those things.

They are committed to not seeing why even modest new financial regulations are necessary. They are commttted to not seeing that the banking sector needs reform. They are committed to not understanding why Obama has been "so hard" on Wall Street, let alone seeing how soft Obama has actually been on Wall Street. They are committed, God help us, to not seeing why years of high unemployment would be bad for the economy. They are committed to not seeing even the most obvious solutions to America's economic problems, because they are passionately committed to not seeing the problems.

This election isn't just about America's future, and its economy, and basic questions of fairness and the American dream, although it's about all those things too. This election is about something even bigger than that: the reality principle. The next four months are going to be a bitter, dogged campaign to break down our ruling class's fundamental disconnection from real world. They aren't going to like it.  Not one bit. And that's why they're so upset over the Bain Capital attacks: because those attacks are true. And once this election begins to be about the truth, the truth is really, really going to start to hurt.