Cabinet Making

With their talking over, the candidates have turned to the substance of governing, and speculation is rampant about who will end up in each man’s cabinet. Here is what a Romney cabinet might look like, in order of official rank. ▪   Secretary of State: Judging from last night’s debate, we don’t need one

▪   Secretary of the Treasury: Herman Cain, 9-9-9, Atlanta, Georgia

▪   Secretary of Defense (which will take back its traditional name, the Department of War): Erik Prince, founder of Blackwater, the world’s largest private army

▪   Attorney General: Rick Santorum, former senator from Pennsylvania; long-time resident of Great Falls, Virginia.

▪   Secretary of the Interior (now the Department of Oil): David Koch, philanthropist, Wichita, Kansas

▪   Secretary of Agriculture: Hugh Grant, Chairman and CEO, Monsanto

▪   Secretary of Commerce: The donor wishes to remain anonymous

▪   Secretary of Labor: Abolished

▪   Secretary of Health and Human Services: Todd Akin, Congressman, Wildwood, Missouri

▪   Secretary of Housing and Urban Development: Kerry Klinger, former CEO of the former Washington Mutual, Inc.

▪   Secretary of Transportation: Rex Tillerson, Chairman and CEO, ExxonMobil

▪   Secretary of Energy (now the Department of Gas): Charles Koch, philanthropist, Wichita, Kansas

▪   Secretary of Education (abolished along with the public school system)

▪   Secretary of Veterans Affairs: Newt Gingrich, Honorary Veteran, McLean, Virginia

▪   Secretary of Homeland Security: Joseph M. Arpaio, Sheriff, Maricopa County, Arizona

▪   Chair of the Council of Home Economics Advisors (chosen randomly from a binder): Ann Romney

▪   Administrator of the EPA (Economic Production Agency): Hon. James M. Inhofe (R), Tulsa, Oklahoma

▪   Ambassador (now Minister) to the United Nations: Terry Jones, Pastor, Gainesville, Florida

Tomorrow: Obama’s cabinet.

A Modest Proposal (Updated)

With tonight’s final presidential debate focused on foreign policy, here are two issues we haven’t heard much about: climate change and the world’s poor. As it happens, they are not not unconnected. Half the world’s poorest people live in India and China, while another quarter live in Pakistan, Nigeria and Indonesia. Coincidentally, perhaps, the five countries where climate change kills the most people are China, India, Nigeria, Pakistan and Indonesia: three million die annually, and another 420 million are negatively affected. Not one of the five is among the world’s poorest countries. In fact, all are growing rapidly, and at least three have nuclear weapons. But their most distressed people are increasingly the victims of both poverty and environmental devastation.

What will happen, I pondered, if the world does nothing, as the world seems bent on doing? And then it hit me . . . Laissez-faire! . . . or “Laissez les eaux furieux rouler” as they used to say in New Orleans, “Let the wild waters roll.” If we continue to deny the reality of climate change and ignore the plight of the poor, the bottom billion will disappear. There will be no need for the birth-control programs that so irritate Republicans, nor for huge transfer payments to the developing world. Global purchasing power will be little affected, while thousands of miles of new beachfront will open up. Not since Jonathan Swift’s modest proposal that the destitute Irish sell their children for food to the English gentry has a solution presented itself that so benefits rich and poor alike.

Stumble of the Week

• A123 Systems, the battery maker for electric cars, filed for bankruptcy this week. One of the Obama administration’s investments in alternative energy, A123 had also sought a huge infusion from China to prop it up. The lesson, I think, is that, while the federal government should support research and development of new technologies, it should not back individual companies.

• Clear Channel, a subsidiary of Bain Capital, is refusing to clarify who paid for hundreds of billboards against voter fraud that appeared in largely minority urban neighborhoods in Wisconsin and Ohio. A Clear Channel spokesman wrote NPR that, although anonymity violates company policy, the contract was signed “by mistake” and the billboards will stay up. No word on why the same “mistake” was made in 2010.

• Sanctimony took a double hit, as the Boy Scouts, who have a long history of opposition to diversity, atheists and gay people, released 15,000 pages of documents that revealed decades of sexual abuse and thousands of victims; and Lance Armstrong was finally unmasked as a cheater. Both have done many good things, and yet the legacy of each is forever tarnished by arrogant secrecy.

• Koch Industries continued to push the limits of corporate hypocrisy by providing a ham-fisted list of approved candidates to all 50,000 employees, spending millions on political advertising, and requiring company approval for employees seeking public office.

• Finally, me. Apologies for my technical ineptitude that sent yesterday’s blog directly to many spam folders, which some of you have suggested is their proper destination, and then compounding the ineptitude by showering you with duplicates.

Oh, Canada

So far, no pundit has commented on a simple word change uttered more than once on Tuesday evening by Mitt Romney, who talked not about “American” energy independence, but about “North American” energy independence. This was no meaningless slip of the tongue. North America includes Canada and Mexico, and if I were Canada, I’d sit up and pay attention. Canada has the second highest proven oil reserves in the world. It is the world’s third-largest producer of natural gas and second-largest wheat exporter. It has large coal resources and is known as “the Saudi Arabia of fresh water.” Its tar sands, which Romney wants to connect forthwith to the Keystone pipeline, produce some of the world’s dirtiest fossil fuels. Canada has, in short, just about everything we need in terms of natural resources, and Mexico has long been a source of cheap labor . . . including in the Romneys' front yard.

I am not suggesting that Romney plans to invade Canada, as he will clearly have his hands full with Iran and China. But the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), which Romney supports, suggests the possibility that a signatory nation cannot restrict the extraction and exploitation of its natural resources of natural resources. This has become a huge issue with regard to water, as Canadian and U.S. political and corporate interests have developed wild schemes to divert Canada’s water flow from Hudson Bay to the Mississippi River.

Like junkies everywhere, we need a better way to address our addiction than getting our hands on more dirty needles.

The Third Rail

I was driving home last night after leading a program on environmental justice in Camden, New Jersey. The program’s heart is a film, Poet of Poverty, which portrays the 40-year crusade of Father Michael Doyle to bring dignity and a better life to the people of the nation’s poorest and most violent city. In a tour of his neighborhood, Father Doyle points to the regional sewage treatment plant, trash-to-steam garbage furnace, state prison, and huge mountains of scrap metal awaiting shipment to China. We are, he says, the recipients of all the waste and junk our throwaway society doesn’t want anymore. Sometimes I think patriotism means, “I love my lifestyle, not I love my country and my fellow man.” On the radio I listened to President Obama and Mitt Romney spar over energy policy, and I was stunned by their almost-schoolyard efforts to tout their devotion to extraction.

“I love oil more than you do.”

“I love oil, gas AND coal.”

“Do not.”

Do, too.”

At least, at the end of his litany of federal lands drilled, coal mines opened and natural gas produced, Obama did stress the importance of alternative energy sources. Whereas Romney talked giddily about how he would drill every inch of Alaska, line our coastlines with oil rigs, frack for gas, strip for coal . . . and build that toxic pipeline down from Canada.

The environment has become the “third rail” of this campaign. Touch it and you’re dead. Of course, if we don’t address it someday soon, we’ll all be dead.

Malala

On Sunday morning, September 15, 1963, four Ku Klux Klansmen put a box of dynamite under the steps of the 16^th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama. When it exploded, it took the lives of Addie Mae Collins, Carole Robertson and Cynthia Wesley, each of whom was 14 years old, and Denise McNair, who was 11. On Tuesday afternoon, October 9, 2012, gunmen stopped a school bus in Mingora, Pakistan, demanded the identity of Malala Yousafzai and shot her in the head. Malala survived, and yesterday she arrived at the Queen Elizabeth II Memorial Center in England, having been transported in darkness and in secrecy because the Taliban have vowed to shoot her again.

Malala is 14 years old. Her crime is not just that she wants to go to school but that she had the courage to say so in public. “She has become a symbol of Western culture in the area,” a Talabani spokesman said. “She was openly propagating it. Let this be a lesson.”

The terrorists knew exactly what they were doing. The demand for women’s rights and public education is as great a threat to the state they seek to impose, as was the moral courage of the Baptist churches to the Klan’s way of life.

It is difficult to be anything but speechless in the face of such evil. But silence and submission are exactly what those who kill children seek.

Malala is not a symbol of Western culture. She is a symbol of courage that is rare, dangerous and universal. May she live to inspire us again.

Sharing the Pie

For me the world’s beacon of hope over the last 20 years has not been the United States, which has dissipated its leadership role in a series of wars and sought to impose its agenda in the name of freedom, but South Africa, which came out of the long ugly era of apartheid intent on facing both its past and its future with candor. South Africans have tried to grapple with their divisions of race and economic inequality through the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (despite it Orwellian name), while we have spent much of the last 40 years sweeping those issues under the rug. Because of the amazing figure of Nelson Mandela, who emerged from years of solitary confinement with a smile and an embrace, rather than a grimace and a gun, South Africa held out hope that people could move beyond their awful history and live together peacefully.

So I was saddened to read of the crisis that grips South Africa, as much as anything because it is a crisis that grips so much of the world. Launched with a combination of hope and pragmatism from a past of oppression and violence, South Africa raised expectations – among its own people and a watching world – which it could not satisfy. It is a nation of great natural wealth and enormous human poverty, and in an era of global recession and environmental limits, the response of the political and corporate leaders has not been to share the pie more equitably but to take bigger pieces for themselves.

The Bipartisan Fable

One of the ironies of the campaign is how the Republican ticket has assigned itself the role of bipartisan compromisers and painted its opponents as shrill ideologues trying to push a big-government agenda down the throats of a resistant people. This message was reinforced by last night’s debate, as Joe Biden, eager to rescue his party from the charges of lethargy leveled by angry Democrats, came out with his eyeballs rolling. His aim was to pump some vigor back into the base and to establish clear differences between the two platforms.

But this image of Democratic intransigence and Republican bipartisanship simply defies recent history. Bill Clinton may now be the GOP’s favorite Democrat, but Republican lawmakers reviled him during his presidency. Indeed, they impeached him. Clinton’s great sin in their eyes was that he effectively adopted some of their positions, including demanding a balanced budget, pushing for free trade, and declaring, “the era of big government is over.” Yet the budget that set it all rolling was passed by one vote – and Marjorie Margolies-Mezvinsky, who cast that vote, was turned out with 33 other Democrats in the Republican landslide the following year.

It was George Bush and, particularly, Dick Cheney who declared that bipartisanship was for wimps and minorities were losers. In 2008, Barack Obama’s plea to Americans to come together across the old partisan, racial and economic divides was the defining message of his candidacy. Republicans have not only fought him every step of the way, they have made “principled” intransigence their signature issue.

Or at least they had until Tip O’Neill became their second-favorite Democrat.

The Limits of Ideology

“The hearing never established what it might have taken to repel the Sept. 11 attack on the compound in Benghazi that killed Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens and three other Americans” (The New York Times, Oct. 11, 2012). “[Abigail] Fisher’s lawyer, Bert Rein, told the court Fisher suffered “constitutional injury” because of her denial to the college of her first choice” (New York Daily News, Oct. 11, 2012).

I admire those who hold strong views, defend them vigorously, and listen to others who disagree. It is the third piece that is missing these days, and two of yesterday’s big news stories reveal how badly we have become derailed. It is not just that we can’t have a civil conversation with our foes. We can’t even appear to waffle among ourselves, lest that give aid to the enemy.

Something went terribly wrong in Benghazi the night that Chris Stevens and three others were killed. It is important to know what happened, how it happened and how it can be prevented from happening again. Sometimes adversarial hearings can help get there, but not, as yesterday, when their purpose is to score political points, where one side simply attacks and the other cannot admit mistakes. Have we reached the point where we can no longer say, let’s work together to get to the bottom of this?

It is the same with affirmative action. I wish my children had known they had suffered “constitutional injury” during the awful process of college admissions. They didn’t even know they had a constitutional right at stake.

The whole concept of affirmative action demands open and honest discussion. What does it mean in a nation with as much diversity, at both the societal and the individual level, as America? I believe that affirmative has done great good and its job is not yet finished. But does that mean it will never be finished, that it is not a process toward justice but an entitlement?

These are critical questions for all of us to ask. But I wonder at times if anyone is listening?

Momentum

Most people believe that Mitt Romney clobbered Barack Obama in last week’s debate. That number includes all those who didn’t watch the debate, as well as many who did. Most important, the people of the press, of all persuasions, reported on a focused and more accessible challenger and a dispirited and uninspiring president. As a result, the momentum has changed. It is particularly notable in the words we read in headlines. Romney is now described as energized, forceful, accessible, whereas Obama has become listless, a loner, tired. All the words add up to the new presumption that one man has fire in his belly and the other does not.

Momentum feeds on itself. The words we read and hear do affect our views of the candidates’ personalities and their performances. Momentum has a way of fulfilling itself.

And yet, what really has changed? The issues that have made the campaign so divisive have not changed. This is still an election in which we are asked to choose between two contrasting views of America’s character and its future, and as such it remains one of the most important elections of our lifetimes.

Momentum is not about changing minds. It is about exciting your base and depressing your opponent’s. And that is what is happening here. This election will be decided, not by attracting new voters, but by which party gets its people to the polls in a few swing states.

That . . . and the huge amounts of SuperPAC money about to be unleashed.

Doctors, No

The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania recently collected almost $200 million in fees from companies engaged in “fracking” across the state. The industry lobby simultaneously congratulated itself for its benevolence and complained about a burden that was “staggering by any measure.” When it became law in February, Pennsylvania’s Act 13 was touted for bringing order to a chaotic field in a state where fracking was out of control and the energy companies resisted paying any fees for their infant industry. (For the record, Chesapeake Energy, one of the largest drillers, has a market capitalization of $13 trillion.)

Of course, if Act 13 were that simple, it wouldn’t need to be 174 pages long, passed with only 2 Democratic votes, and had parts of it already declared unconstitutional.

For despite the industry yelping, its fingerprints are all over this bill, as Sandra Steingraber noted in a recent Orion article.

It simply dispensed with zoning, forbidding municipalities to ban drilling even in residential areas, a provision the Commonwealth Court struck down by a 4-3 vote (with Robert Simpson of Voter ID fame a dissenter).

It requires health professionals to justify their medical need to know and to sign a confidentiality agreement before getting access to a list of trade-secret chemicals to help them treat patients.

And it exempts such chemicals from Pennsylvania’s Right-to-Know law.

In the name of economic progress, Act 13 runs roughshod over communities and puts corporate profits before public health.

Since 2000, nine Pennsylvania legislators have been convicted of crimes against the public trust. The body appears to have many slow learners. Perhaps it’s something in the water.

Satirony

My daughter Annie told me I should have labeled Friday’s post as satire, lest people think that Mitt Romney had actually said all the things I attributed to him. Because I clearly need to polish my ironic tone – or “satirony” as George Bush famously might have said – let me clarify. All Romney’s quotes from the past were verbatim, while those in the present tense, he has not said . . . at least not yet, for Mitt Romney shifts his positions radically and unapologetically to appeal to the audience of the moment. In 1994, when he ran for the United States Senate against Ted Kennedy, he denied any connection to the Reagan and Bush presidencies and took enough positions on social issues that Kennedy said, “I am pro-choice. My opponent is multiple choice.”

In 2004, as governor of Massachusetts, Romney declared: “Deadly assault weapons . . . are not made for recreation or self-defense. They are instruments of destruction with the sole purpose of hunting down and killing people.” Two years later he became a life member of the NRA.

In the Republican presidential primary, all the other candidates attacked Romney as a closet moderate, prompting him to insist, “I was a seriously conservative Republican governor” in one of the rare times he mentioned his relationship to Massachusetts.

In last week’s debate he wrapped himself in the mantle of bipartisan effectiveness for passing universal health coverage with a legislature that was 87% Democratic, Ted Kennedy’s help, and the requirement of an individual mandate.

Stumble of the Week

Breaking news: “I am pro-choice,” says Romney. Mitt Romney announced yesterday that it’s time for the federal government to be less involved in our personal lives. “As I said 10 years ago, ‘the choice to have an abortion is a deeply personal one. Women should be free to choose based on their own beliefs, not the government's.’ All the government adds is red tape.”

Pressed by reporters on his “evolving positions on abortion, guns and health care,” Romney said, “Heck, that Massachusetts gig is going over a lot better with voters these days than it did with Rick, Newt and Michelle. Talk about reaching across the aisle – 85% of the Massachusetts legislators I dealt with were Democrats! I barely knew half their names – I called the other 47% ‘fella.’ But we got Romneycare done . . . although I had to work like heck to push the personal mandate through. Thank goodness Teddy Kennedy helped me twist some arms. It was Ronald Reagan and Tip O’Neill all over again.”

Asked about the seeming discrepancies, Romney said, “What discrepancies? Completely different situations require completely different approaches. In 2002 I was running for governor of Massachusetts. Last fall I was seeking the Republican nomination. Now I want to be president. Totally different.”

Asked if he planned to release more tax returns, he replied, “Honestly, fellas, I’d like to. But I have said no, and I need to be consistent.”

Romney’s aides ended the interview when a reporter shouted out a question about Massachusetts’ assault weapons ban.

The Gentleman from Massachusetts

I am beginning to worry I may be biased. The pundits seem unanimous in their agreement that Mitt Romney cleaned Barack Obama’s clock in last night’s debate. The challenger looked presidential and talked forcefully, while the president let pass the distortions and untruths of his opponent. Perhaps. But I had a hard time warming to the supercilious half-smile/half-sneer with which Romney ended each of his lectures.

As for the non-body language, Obama missed a huge opportunity to remind people of the 47% Romney had dismissed, especially as the latter waxed prosaic about his sympathy for the middle class. Nor did the president adequately respond to Romney’s false charge that he would restore the $716 billion the administration had cut from Medicare.

For me, though, the debate was defined by the absence of two critical domestic issues: the assault on the environment and the abandonment of the poor.

It is one thing to canonize the middle class. It is another not to even mention the country’s most vulnerable and marginalized people.

And the closest we came to an environmental discussion was Romney’s statement, “I like coal . . .  and oil and gas” and his mockery of Obama’s green energy subsidies. Obama failed to counter that any national policy that dismisses all alternatives to extraction, destruction and pollution is derelict.

And Romney, the vigorous defender of Medicare, the populist opponent of big banks, and the representative of bipartisan politics in Massachusetts . . . well, that is a Romney we had not seen in the Republican debates.

Legislating from the Bench

Robert Simpson is yet one more example of why electing judges is a horrible idea. Simpson, elected as a Republican to the Pennsylvania Commonwealth Court, initially upheld the legislation requiring voters to produce photo identification at the polls. The law, which passed without a single Democratic vote, had one aim: It's “gonna allow Governor Romney to win the state of Pennsylvania,” said Mike Turzai, the Republican floor leader.

When Simpson’s decision was challenged in Pennsylvania’s Supreme Court, lawyers could not produce a single instance of in-person voter fraud in the state. But they did show that the law disproportionately affected – indeed, appeared to be aimed at – four groups: the elderly, the poor, minorities and students. They have two things in common: they are less likely than others to have the required document and they are more likely to vote for Barack Obama.

The Supreme Court returned the case to Simpson, instructing him to account for its practical impact at the polls. Yesterday Simpson delayed implementation of the law in a decision in which he, unlike King Solomon, actually tried to cut the baby in half.

Poll workers, said the judge, have every right to ask for the identification, but if you don’t have it, you can still vote. Out with fraud, in with intimidation, which has a far uglier history in American politics. How can someone demand to see something that has no bearing on my right to vote? What’s next – a poll tax that is refundable when I produce the required papers?

Either the law is valid or it is wrong. This law is wrong.

Of Human Life

It’s astonishing how far America’s social and cultural conversation has shifted to the right, almost without notice, because partisans have manipulated the language without changing the subject. Take contraception, which I believe most people think is a good thing, and one long settled in the public arena. It has been 44 years since Pope Paul VI issued his encyclical against birth control, Humanae Vitae, which even then seemed a last gasp to hold back the secular world. In 1968 both the women’s and environmental movements were stressing the perils of unwanted births, and soaring birth rates threatened the economies, environments and the liberation of women in the developing world.

Realizing that contraception was a settled matter, Republicans redefined the issue as “religious freedom” – just as they redefined the removal of the economic safety net as an issue of personal freedom. And so in 2012, when Barack Obama sought to require hospitals to provide patients the option of birth control, the backlash was so ferocious that even Democrats jumped ship in droves. Senator Mario Rubio introduced a bill called the Religious Freedom Restoration Act; Rush Limbaugh, who only looks pregnant, called the law student who testified for birth control a slut; and Rick Santorum called contraception “a license to do things in a sexual realm that is counter to how things are supposed to be."

This is about freedom: freedom from them and their efforts to restrain the human spirit. On this issue, at least, Mullah Omar, the pope and the Republican Party have more in common with each other than they do with me.

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Rich States, Poor States

Nine of the 10 states with the highest median household incomes in America voted for Barack Obama in 2008. (The exception was Alaska, whose governor was the Republican candidate for vice president.) That trend holds this year (except Virginia and New Hampshire are currently toss-ups). Nine of the 10 poorest states are solidly Republican – both in 2008 and today. New Mexico is the sole blue exception. The other nine are rural, southern states. All 10 states receive far more in federal payments than they pay in federal taxes.

But why do poor states overwhelmingly support candidates whose policies favor economic inequality, while rich states vote for higher taxes and more government?

False consciousness? Karl Marx wrote that, because the powerful control the public conversation, they can induce the working class to vote against its own interests. But that doesn’t explain the behavior of the rich states.

The help? Are servants outvoting their employers in Greenwich and Palm Springs? But the domestic vote isn’t what it used to be.

I think the explanation is historical: With the break-up of the New Deal coalition came the rise of third-party movements (Strom Thurmond in 1948, George Wallace in 1968) that led white southerners out of the Democratic party. Nixon’s “southern strategy,” and “Reagan Democrats” realigned the parties around social and cultural issues: abortion, guns, evolution, environmentalism – and, let’s be candid, race.

Far from the distractions people try to make them, these are the issues over which this election is being contested.

Richest States         1968 Vote                           Poorest States         1968 Vote

10. California                 DEM                                    10. Oklahoma               GOP

9. Delaware                    DEM                                    9. South Carolina          GOP

8. Hawaii                        DEM                                    8. New Mexico              DEM

7. Virginia                       DEM                                    7. Louisiana                  GOP

6. New Hampshire        DEM                                    6. Tennessee                 GOP

5. Massachusetts           DEM                                    5. Alabama                    GOP

4. Connecticut                DEM                                    4. Kentucky                    GOP

3. New Jersey                 DEM                                    3. Arkansas                   GOP

2. Alaska                          GOP                                    2. West Virginia           GOP

1. Maryland                    DEM                                    1. Mississippi                GOP

Stumble of the Week (Q &A)

Question: Why don’t candidates want to release their tax returns? Answer: Take Massachusetts’ 6th Congressional District as an example. Republican challenger Richard Tisei’s last 10 returns show that twice he paid no taxes at all. Tisei, who spends much time running for office, is not a rich man, and his real estate business faltered in the Bush recession (2006 and 2008). His returns are straightforward, and none of this would have been a problem . . .  if only Mitt Romney hadn’t made that comment about the 47 percent. Meanwhile, John Tierney, the 8-term Democratic incumbent, finally released his returns yesterday morning after vigorous prodding from The Boston Globe. They were clean . . . some argue too clean, as they make no mention of the $223,000 prosecutors say his wife received from her brother’s illegal offshore gambling operation. John and Patrice Tierney say those funds were gifts from family members that needed neither to be taxed nor even reported. The congressman’s lawyer has threated libel, the brother remains on the lam in Antigua, Patrice Tierney served a month in jail, and the notion of public service has taken another hit.

Question: Do you think Obama will carry Kansas?

Answer: No. But at least he will be on the ballot after a birther withdrew a petition to have him removed. The petition had enabled GOP Secretary of State Kris Kobach to demand Obama’s birth certificate once again and to raise doubts about the eligibility of a man who has been president for four years.

Question: Was Independence really declared in 1976 as you wrote yesterday?

Answer: Um. No. Next question.

Consensus and Vision

OneMaine is one of several groups that have arisen to combat America’s toxic political conversation. Its purpose is to support candidates across a broad spectrum who reject hyperpartisanship, represent their constituents not special interests, and seek principled compromise on behalf of the whole community. Clearly we are at the limit of strident discourse and unbending gridlock. We need more civility, more thoughtfulness, more effort to understand, rather than react to, each other. But is compromise the way out of this mess?

Compromise has worked best during times of prosperity, as the 1950s, or national consensus, as the “era of good feelings”, or one-party dominance, as the New Deal.

It has not worked when there has been a crisis of vision. In 1776 the colonies issued a declaration, not a joint agreement. All the compromises that tried to resolve the slavery issue only put off the day of reckoning – and ensured it would be horrendous when it came. Those who rejected compromise – William Lloyd Garrison, Robert Barnwell Rhett – were condemned as fanatics. But they knew what Lincoln learned, that a house divided cannot stand.

Perhaps the one exception is the much-maligned 1960s, when the nation seemed bent on tearing itself apart. There was much ugliness: 50,000 dead in Vietnam; federal troops in our city’s streets; the Cuyahoga River bursting into flames; vigilante violence in the South. But out of those times came a new vision and some of the most important civil rights and environmental legislation in history.

Once again, two visions are competing for America’s soul. We do need more civil conversation, but I believe that one vision must triumph before consensus is possible.

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Conversion and Conversation

“Working with the private sector, the program will identify the barriers to investment and trade and entrepreneurialism in developing nations. In exchange for removing those barriers and opening their markets to U.S. investment and trade, developing nations will receive U.S. assistance packages focused on developing the institutions of liberty, the rule of law, and property rights.”             Mitt Romney, Clinton Global Initiative, Sept. 25, 2012 “I would like to begin today by telling you about an American named Chris Stevens. . . . .As a diplomat, he was known for walking the streets of the cities where he worked, tasting the local food, meeting as many people as he could, speaking Arabic, listening with a broad smile."            Barack Obama, United Nations, Sept. 25, 2012

Each excerpt represents an approach to foreign policy. Mitt Romney lays out the traditional American position of opening markets and removing obstacles to private investment in developing countries. This approach, which has been used by administrations of both parties, rewards compliant nations with aid packages meant to strengthen the institutions that capitalism requires. One new wrinkle is the emphasis on microfinance and entrepreneurship, which has a large following across the political spectrum and is also the policy of the World Bank.

The policy epitomized by the late Chris Stevens starts from a place of respect for the culture of others – walking their streets, tasting their food, speaking their language and, above all, listening to them.

Perhaps it is the difference between a Peace Corps volunteer and a missionary, but imposing our values hasn’t worked. It is time to understand theirs.