Letter from America

Dear Ern,


I would love to hear your views, especially given the result in your state of Virginia.

I have blogged about it but what do you think is more important to me working here in China ?

The new President if he makes it to office has a Democratic Congress and an opposition to which he owes little in that the Republican successes seem to be in the Bible Belt and redneck country to which he owes no allegiance.

Could he be as close to absolute power as a US President can get ? He has a strongly Democrat Congress but not the Supreme Court.

What's your call on it all ? Is there not future real mileage in the result for Moderate GOP.com given that the fundamentalists have so clearly lost out ?

Brian



Hello Brian!

Great to hear from you. I do not offer good news. Even ignoring what you are breathing, you are in peril.

I'll proceed from your last question first. The religious fundamentalists you refer to were deeply convinced in 2000 that the Christian God had His hand on George W. Bush's shoulder. But eight years later either that hand has not helped, or else it was disdainfully removed if it was ever there at all. I trow this as a believing Christian.

Moderate Republicans, few as we presently are, have the best chance of anyone to bring the GOP and the country back out of the wilderness and into pragmatic reality once more.

I'm enclosing my draft article submitted to a law review appraising in cybernetic terms the G. W. Bush Administration's radical adventures in Constitutional interpretation. The Constitution and laws flowing from it are supposed to govern without regard to religious tenets. The Supreme Court has as yet exercised but little constraint upon the outgoing regime, though not as little as is attributed to the Supreme Being. There is more litigation in the pipeline which will not be concluded in the Supreme Court until Bush is well out of office.

Democrats currently have a numeric majority in both houses. Those people will have an impact between the November General Election and January 4th. More economic legislation is due and expected before then. Those majorities will swell after January 4th. Yet those legislative majorities can be relied upon to exercise a braking influence upon President-elect Obama before and after his taking over January 20th, even though they share his party affiliation.

Here is why Obama can't even get close to absolute power. There are several constraining reasons, due to the nature of Congress and the expectations of his prevailing voters.

For example, Black people comprise 16% of this country's entire population. They are extra-dependent upon government. The very best thing they could do for their champion is make no special demands upon him. But they are Hell-bent to gain more preferential changes in their distinct favor. It was Booker T. Washington in the early 20th Century who wrote that any capable Black man must carry this most trouble-prone segment of our citizenry upon his back.

Democrats in Congress have a severe propensity to overreach whenever given the chance. That dubious opportunity is now at hand. Furthermore they never perform as a group in as disciplined a manner as Republicans do. Restraint seems to be absent from Democrats' DNA; they are datable but not marriageable. It is ironic that their "man on a white horse" who has run away with their spirits is Black.

Even the Caucasian Democrats have sky-high expectations. This comes at a time, before Obama is even sworn in, where economic and military conditions are in a trough. Any improvements sure to come will be attributed to Obama even before he is sworn in. This effect will extend, amplify and swell widespread expectations even further.

In his most gracious and mature concession speech John McCain made clear that all of us really need Obama to succeed in a big way. It is critical that voter support be translated into imparting what sanity we can to the Democrats in Congress. In their euphoria and tumult they are institutionally deaf, and that artificial inebriation can be expected to persist for months and perhaps years.

Saying that Obama seems personally more sensible than most of his fellow Democrats is not saying very much. On principle they all are keen to violate every tenet of cybernetics.

Democrats' inherent baked-in problem (their original sin) becomes glaringly evident at the Why stage. Their bred-in-the-bone tendency to overreach limits and compromises the likelihood of getting the three transitions from one level of logic to another anywhere close to right.

By the way, Republicans' baked-in problem (our original sin) occurs further along, at the tactical levels, where we are too cautious about going far enough. Possessing a deeper respect for history, realism and the constraints of human nature than do Democrats, we Republicans are potentially better cyberneticians.

These cybernetic insights operate much like engineering solutions. The engineer must rearrange the structure and sequence sufficient to allow the calculus when deployed through the nested rearrangement to fully do its work.

I just stated the algorithm and heuristic for what the incoming President must do. The inflated expectations of his own Majority Party are his greatest obstacle to achievement. What is needed most is competence, not inspiration. To paraphrase his amateur would-be genito-urinary surgeon Jesse Jackson, "keep hope alive" with deeds instead of words.

It is competence that is most needed to silence his critics in the Bible Belt and redneck country. They already see through him (and his wife Michelle) as clearly as if they were panes of glass. The anodyne liberal nostrums the recent winners have so fetchingly spoken and published are about to collide with reality and human nature. VP-elect Biden offers no more realistic a prospect than does Obama. Both Biden and Obama offered few specifics when campaigning, just remarkably resonant rhetoric.

For example, Obama and his Democrats carried Virginia for the first time Presidentially in 44 years. A repeat in 2012 or even the 2009 gubernatorial contest is unlikely. The Virginia Democrats managed to raise voter registration to 5 million from 4.5 million, and to achieve the zenith of voter turnout here, especially among young people 18-29. This feat has been a thoroughly good thing for little-d democracy.

But until competence overcomes and surpasses mere rhetoric, a disabling letdown from current bloated expectations is inevitable, and shortly to arrive. It's analogous to but not the same as the predictable result of excessive hubris. Having overpromised we can fully expect under-delivery. Disillusionment will set in sooner rather than later. When it arrives and the hot air balloon loses altitude with a crashing finality, the picture will not be pretty.

Projecting from Virginia's parochial example to the international scene in which you are embedded, here's what I think is more important to you. Keep a close eye on what the Obama-Biden Administration does at levels A and B. Because things are going to get rough and unattractive at levels C and D for those of you inside China. You are very vulnerable where you are to any lack of competence emerging from the political leadership here in the United States.

The further away from Washington one gets the more obvious will be C and D level inadequacies. It reminds me of the children's game Crack the Whip. You are living at the extremity where the forces accelerate. Obama and his Democrats-in-Majority simply do not grasp the Conant-Ashby Theorem (revealing that any competent regulator of a system must contain a model of the thing to be regulated). Their own version of lacking technical variety occurs at levels A and B.

Here in Virginia, L. Douglas Wilder became the nation's first elected Black Governor, and in this Southern state and ex-Capitol of the Confederacy. He served from 1990-94, but no person of his race has managed a statewide nomination to any office ever since. The high point of his career (which later included a barely remembered Presidential run) was simply winning the Governor's office, not what he accomplished there.

Given Obama's indecisiveness in the Illinois State Senate I am not hopeful about his leadership. He was so afraid to fail that he voted present 129 times in eight years. Obama's constituents got the same result 129 times as if he had been absent. We know his Presidential election has been the high point of his accomplishments to date. Let's hope that he can achieve more than Doug Wilder.

Obama