(if I were the) King of the Forest

The perception and appreciation of analogy – of discerning the common characteristics that make two superficially dissimilar situations or events essentially similar, or the divergent characteristics that make two superficially similar situations or events essentially dissimilar – is one of the fundamental skills of human reasoning that allows us to learn from history, to avoid the mistakes of the past and to progress despite those mistakes. It has been my observation that in our modern approach to education we no longer emphasize the teaching or the learning of those skills – and that therefore those skills have atrophied in Western culture – or at least in American culture – to the point that we are in danger of losing their benefit entirely.

In the aftermath of the Iraqi election, as the new parliament worked through the political compromises and alliances required to form a stable government, The New York Times ran a “news analysis” describing the difficulties and dangers induced by the relative split among the various political constituencies in the vote – by the lack of a clear mandate for one group to rule.

Although the analysis itself was unobjectionable and even somewhat balanced – labeling something “analysis”, even in the news section, reduces the need for a veneer of objectivity – I found it objectionable because of the way it was labeled: the headline placed on the story communicated a clear and critical bias against the notion that the election had been successful that was not supported by the report itself.

The current debate over reform of the Social Security system has taken on all the qualities of an argument between 6-year-olds, reduced in essence to the intellectual content of the classic “Is not!”, “Is so!”.

A health-news story in The New York Times set me thinking about the kinds of biases working in the background that affect both reporting and headlines.

It occurs to me (and I am sure to others) that an effective approach to getting the most out of the current negotiating opportunity in the middle-east would be for the President to appoint a special envoy rather than to handle it through the Secretary of State and the State Department. That would not only leave the Secretary free to focus her attentions on the rest of the war on terror but would also give the negotiator both additional moral authority (as the personal appointment of the President and his personal representative) and less “official” baggage (as someone not actively engaged in other aspects of American foreign policy).

My nominee for the post: Bill Clinton.

There may be aspects of the new tax proposals that would shift tax burden from rich to poor, but the elimination of deductions for state and local taxes would not seem to be among them. Could it be that the primary outrage is not with the plan itself but with the fact that George Bush and the Republican Congress are the ones who get to propose it?

Here’s what the Democrats really need to acknowledge: “values” – whatever they may be – are a huge part of our “interests” and most of us are willing to sacrifice some (or even a lot) of economic advantage to have the “values” of society reflect our own – or at least to secure our freedom to live by our “values” without interference from people who think they know better than we.

Because of the way the last few presidential elections have turned out calls for abolishing the Electoral College have once again become popular. Unfortunately in the discussion of the Electoral College I rarely, if ever, hear a proper defense of the institution or of its historical reasons for being.

I listened to the debates in the 2004 presidential election hoping to hear that one of the candidates was not as pathetic as they appeared. I was disappointed.
During the “debate” on national security issues in particular not only was neither candidate personally reassuring, but there seemed to be almost no substance to the actual argument. That was particularly frustrating because the talking heads of the media, and all the news stories the following day, kept referring to the “substantive” discussion. I wondered if I’d somehow tuned in to the Cliff Notes version of the debate, or perhaps the “Debate for Dummies” channel.

Last summer Bernie Weinraub wrote an article in The New York Times on ratings problems at The West Wing, the popular television show about a fictional Democratic president and his administration. The article covered all the expected problems with a show late in its run, with characters and ideas getting stale and audiences tuning out in favor of more exciting and novel fare. But in the discussion of why ratings were suffering I thought he left out one critical frustration factor that affects my viewing more than any other.