Tfgray’s Weblog

When my children were small, and wanted a friend to stay overnight, they would come to me and ask, “Will you call Jimmy’s mom and ask for an overnight, because, you know, you have the voice thing.”

They named it, but it’s a phenomena I’d noticed years before (and which really has nothing to do with the normal exchange of favors by grown-ups that got my kids the sleepovers they craved.)

Decades before I became a parent, I had a circle of friends that were a bit (well, a lot) to the Right of me. We’d sit and chat, telling stories and jokes, but I noticed that when one had something to say that he wanted to remain uncontested, he would use a certain tone of voice. It always worked, no matter who offered the opinion or what it was, although the most frequent practitioner was the son of an Air Force colonel. Years later, while driving cross-country, through a land of unfamiliar radio frequencies, I came across a station where the announcer talked in the same tone of voice. I had stumbled upon Right-wing talk radio, as I figured out after hearing one or two of the opinions the guy was spouting.

The Voice Thing.

I realized that some people are trained to respond to particular tones of voice. In some cases, it’s the gruff, confident tones of Right-wing talk radio, modeled, I suspect, on the vocal patterns of a military officer. “…well you know, Bob, those pointy-headed liberals want us to believe that we’ll be better off with clean water. Well, anybody with his head on straight knows that if you have a job you can buy all the bottled water you want, and if we have all those stupid regulations, nobody will have a job.” 

Others are attuned to the cadence of the preacher. “If you believe-uh, you will receive-uh.” Anything delivered in the proper tone of voice produces an unquestioning wave of bobble-headedness among authoritarian followers.

George Bush, neither father nor son, has the voice thing, although W can put on a pretty good imitation when he’s, say, talking about WMD at the UN. Dick Cheney has it. In spades. He’s got a picture-perfect example of the Right-wing radio voice, and when he speaks even I, who have done enough research to trust him less than half as far as I could hypothetically throw him, find myself doubting my senses. Nixon was a master of the form. Sarah Palin thinks she is. For a series of examples, click here.

John Kerry didn’t have it. Neither did Dukakis. Al Gore had the timbre, but not the phrasing. John McCain? Nowhere close. Bill Clinton and Barack Obama both have it, although not the right-wing variant. I recall reading some right-wing commentary during the election in which the poster was complaining, “How can we beat Obama when he sounds like a preacher?”

Teacher, more likely, yet another form of authority figure. Professor, actually, as he demonstrated in yesterday’s session with Republican members of Congress. Pay attention, class.

 They did.

So we need to pay attention. Are we listening to facts or letting things slide in under the radar because the delivery is one we have become attuned to? Can we use this technique, say, when talking to a right-wing friend or co-worker? Would their heads explode if they heard opinions they disagreed with in a vocal mode that they were programmed to accept unquestioningly? Would the alternative viewpoint sink in?

Has anyone else ever noticed this? Comments, please.

Well, if you’ve read my previous posts, you’ve probably figured out that I’m rooting for Obama, but contrary to my hopes, and John McCain’s pre-debate victory announcement (released even before he agreed to show up, can you believe it?) I’d have to call it  a draw. Obama looked relaxed and in control, as always. McCain flashed that shark-toothed grin on more than one occasion, and refused to look at his opponent. They both scored points.

I think Obama could have scored more.

• He could have pointed out more forcefully that McCain’s call for regulation on Wall Street comes only after the deregulation he championed for decades has nearly destroyed the banking system.
• When McCain went on about how well he would care for veterans, Obama could have mentioned McCain’s rating from the Disabled American Veterans (DAV), as compared to his own. McCain voted against bills favored by the DAV 16 times, with 11 votes in favor and 5 unrated. Obama voted against their positions once, in favor 17 times, with one vote unrated. However, veterans organizations are picking up that dropped stitch.
• When asked by Lehrer about spending cuts that would be forced by the bailout, Obama could have made a stronger case that the areas he wants to increase spending on are investments that will strengthen the economy and that the dangerous mismanagement of the past 8 years has jeopardised our ability to create a better future. He could also have mentioned that no one really knows if the bailout will actually cost $700B or $100B or even $1.8T,  or, after all the shouting is over actually turn a profit, and whether that profit will go to the taxpayers or into the pockets of a few corporations, as the details have not been hammered out. The end result, “too soon to tell” may have been the same, but it would have looked more reasoned and less evasive. McCain, of course, has no problem with cutting anything, ever, regardless of the consequenses.
• I think Obama tried to call foul on McCain’s support of nukes, given the senator’s consistent record of supporting nuclear power and waste disposal so long as it stays outside of Arizona, but McCain talked over him, a tried and true tactic of the Right.

The early polls, meanwhile, are showing a boost for Obama. Maybe I’m just too picky, (McCain neither lapsed into a bleepable tirade nor ran from the podium in tears) maybe the Republican psy-ops strategy of the “victory ad” hasn’t taken effect yet.

Or maybe you really can’t fool all the people all the time.

Stay tuned.

We have an agreement on the bailout! We’re saved!

No, we don’t. We’re dooooomed, well maybe not so much.

What’s up with that?

I’m sticking by my original intuition: it’s a scam. Amazingly, I am not alone in this opinion:

Paulson Bailout a Historic Swindle http://www.thenation.com/doc/20081006/greider

Stop the music, so to speak, instead of allowing individual financiers and traders to take opportunistic moves to save themselves at the expense of the system.

And here’s an article by James K. Galbraith, who doesn’t state things as baldly but offers a more reasoned analysis of the plan. Cliff notes: The bailout is badly thought out and largely unnecessary.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/09/24/AR2008092403033.html?nav=slate

Galbraith points out that the basic problem is that the mortgage market became totally corrupted and the problem lies within the mortgages themselves. The notion that these “vehicles” are “too complicated” to unravel is nonsense. People make their mortgage payments and somehow those payments make their way to the correct investors. The notion that the whole thing can’t be unwound and the soundness of each mortgage determined is just not going to fly.

No, the solution lies, like the solution to so many other scandals these past eight years, in old-fashioned law enforcement. Were there abuses? You betcha! From the liar’s loans on the wrong sides of so many tracks to the speculators leveraged up the wazoo, playing Monopoly with real houses, right up to the boardroom, with plenty of retirees looking for safe investments getting schnookered in the process. The notion that the problem can be solved by bailing out the top of the food chain and sweeping the rest of the mess under the carpet is pure gobbledygook. For a more technical analysis, see  Martin Wolf’s article in the Financial Times.

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/a09b317e-898d-11dd-8371-0000779fd18c.html?nclick_check=1

But let’s look into the political fallout. In the face of this economic disaster, John McCain’s response began with denial, then partial acceptance, then a desire to jump into the middle of it coincidental to finding an excuse for a bailout of his own, bailing out of Friday’s debate. I tend not to go for economic or political analysis on these things, but look for the underlying psychological logic.

The whole basis of NeoCon thought lies in the concept of short-term gain. At Harvard, back in the 50s, when the concept of the Masters of Business Administration was first hatched, one early research finding was that steering by short-term considerations (such as measuring your success by each quarter’s earnings report) would be more profitable than employing a long-term strategy. Basically, your profits would compound faster. Another tenet of the MBA religion is that you need to privatize your profit and externalize your risk.

This is the thinking that led to Paulson’s plan. Profit is retained for the giant brokerage houses and the risk offloaded to the taxpayers. This is also McCain’s logic. Campaign’s in the doldrums. Hey! Let’s nominate that hot babe from Alaska! Ooops! She doesn’t just look like a Barbie doll…Quick, Robin! The Batmobile to Washington! Then he plots to seize the high moral ground by “suspending his campaign” without actually stopping anyone from campaigning on his behalf. I can imagine the debate, if he does actually show up. “Oh, look Barack! A bird just buzzed your head!” McCain specializes in short-term strategies to leapfrog himself from crisis to crisis. As the editor of The Nation said on Countdown tonight, “McCain’s gone all in, betting on the stupidity of the American people.”

Don’t laugh. Rupert Murdoch’s been betting on that for years and winning billions.

There’s a traditional name for short-term thinking. It’s called “cleverness.” Remember that the next time you hear the phrase “the smartest guys in the room.”

There’s a traditional name for long-term thinking, as well. It’s called “wisdom.” We could use a few wise men and women. I’ve had it with the wise guys.

In just one day we have McCain trying to bail not only himself out of debating Obama but Palin out of debating Biden, his lying to David Letterman in order to go down the street to talk to Katie Couric (after telling Letterman he was canceling in order to go to Washington to deal with the mortgage thingie), and suspending his campaign on the high-minded pretext of needing to focus on the TARP bill right after he launched a week’s worth of slanderous mud at Obama that leaves him wide open to a retrospective on the Keating 5.

Surely, this marks the end of his presidential ambitions, right? Not quite, according to Jonathan Chait, writing in today’s The New Republic:

Last February, political scientists Brendan Nyhan of Duke and Jason Reifler of Georgia State published the results of an experiment designed to test the effects of political untruths. The results would unsettle any idealist. The first conclusion they found was that lies work. When subjects were confronted with an untrue political claim (President Bush banned stem-cell research; weapons of mass destruction were found in Iraq) respondents naturally moved toward those positions. When the lie was corrected, however, the effect of the untruth in moving opinions largely remained. The truth, in other words, is no antidote for a lie.

Their second conclusion was even more disturbing. Subjects who identified as politically conservative were not only immune to the effects of having a lie corrected, the correction made them even more likely to believe a lie. So, for instance, one group of conservative subjects was presented with a news story that depicted President Bush claiming weapons of mass destruction had been found in Iraq. A second group of conservatives was presented with the same thing, along with a paragraph noting that Bush’s statement was untrue. The second group was more likely than the first to believe that Iraq possessed WMDs. The very fact of the press challenging their beliefs seems to have made conservatives more likely to embrace them. If this finding is broadly correct, then the media’s newfound willingness to fact-check McCain will only succeed in rallying the GOP base to his side.

http://www.tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=71756e51-a09c-4b7d-b270-c6327191b341

If you read my earlier post, What Gives Neo-cons Their Power? you’ll recognize the Authoritarian mentality at work here. According to Bob Altemeyer, who did 40 years research on the subject, about 25% of us are subject to such thinking. Perhaps you’ve noticed that in the past few elections, only about 50% of eligible voters showed up at the polls, and the Right left no stone unturned making sure that the Authoritarian 25% made up half of that total. Add in the 1% or so that actually benefit from Republican policies and you have a recipe for squeaker victories for the Right.

Obama’s got the right strategy. Get out the vote.

Hoo, boy! John McCain appears to be running a parody of a political campaign. Here’s my prediction: within two years there will be a comedy film about it. It will consist of actual campaign footage intercut with dramatized scenes of the backstage workings of the campaign. Tina Fey will, of course, play Governor Palin. Richard Dreyfus would be my pick for the top of the ticket, with Morgan Fairchild as his lovely wife. The campaign advisors will be played by Cheech and Chong.

You read it here first, and I want royalties.