Zero sum politics

It has been observed that while economics is NOT a zero sum game, politics IS. Economics is built on the notion of mutual gain. This principle is embodied in the metaphors "all boats rise" and "expansion of the pie". But in politics, how can all boats rise? If one party wins, another party loses. There can only be one president. If you create a co-presidency, as in Kenya and Zimbabwe, each president has only half the power.

In theoretical physics, conserved quantities enjoy a central and esteemed role. The conservation of mass, energy, momentum, and charge empower the practitioner to comprehend and predict the subtleties of nature. But the conservation of political power has the potential to unleash bitterness and cynicism with fearsome force.

Such is the embattled political history of Pakistan, where political rivalries wreak a ferocious toll. Benazir Bhutto's first act on being elected Prime Minister was to nullify her opponent Nawaz Sharif's accession to the governorship of Punjab province. I like to say that the elected governments are, contrary to conventional wisdom, good at prosecuting corruption -- in the opposition party.

Another example is the jockeying for power by global powers. This has most notably been led by China against the Western dominated status quo. China's "multi-polar" world view is shared by most nations, and it is arguably a euphemism for obstructionism. Most recently China led a block of developing countries, the G77, in thwarting any significant result at Copenhagen.

But is the zero sum game really an accurate picture, or is it a race to the bottom in which everyone loses? While economics is built on the notion of mutual gain, politics sometimes looks like it is built on the edifice of mutual loss. The US Congress is notorious as one of the most unpopular public institutions, currently with an approval rating below 20%. How can its members desire this? Are public servants really as monochromatic as to live or die for party victory? The Republicans may fare well in the next election, but their members of Congress will still be reviled the next day. Which is why your Evan Bayh's and Chris Dodd's are dropping like flies. There is nothing them to be proud of.

Health Care Theater

What are the Party of Nope's ideas on health care reform? NPR's Julie Ravner wraps up the Blair House summit here. The heart of the discord she says is the following:

RAVNER: [There is a] fundamental philosophical disagreement about the role of government in the health care system. Democrats think that if whats broken is to be fixed it will take a lot more government involvement. Republicans think there should be less government involvement.

If this is accurate (i.e. ignoring the Waterloo and Rope-a-Nope talk), Republicans should take note of two things:

• Americans seem to want more government involvement, if the high approval ratings for the public option indicate anything. And the irony of their position is not lost; the Nopers, riding high on the Coakley debacle, have championed the lack of a majority public approval rating for the health bill as a reason for rejecting it.
  
• There are no advanced nations that have less government involvement in their health care systems than we do and there are plenty of advanced nations that have more government involvement. Of these, all of them have a lower cost health care system and many with equal or better quality. For the Republican realists out there, empirical evidence should mean something.
  

Further on as Ravner chats with the anchor, the following bit smacked of neutrality rather than objectivity:

RAVNER: President Obama and Senator Lamar Alexander of Tennessee got into an argument about whether the Democrats' bill would raise or lower insurance premiums. ... both point to the Congression Budget Office to make their case.

ANCHOR: Who would you say is right.

RAVNER: They both are sort of. It turns out that for most people premiums would go down slightly, because those people have group health insurance. For individuals who are a small minority... premiums would go up, but that's because the would get better coverage... they wouldn't pay more because the bill would give them help to pay those premiums. For the few people who wouldn't get help, the better coverage would probably mean they would pay less overall in total out of pocket costs for their medical bills.

ANCHOR: So the answer is its complicated.

RAVNER: Exactly.

Actually it's not so complicated and the last couple of editorial remarks were disingenuous. While Alexander was correct in a narrow construction, he is also off base. What matters is how much it costs per unit of health care, a number which the CBO says goes down. And who among those receiving subsidized individual coverage would complain about paying less for more? For more on this see Krugman's column.

The Republicans are failing their duty as an opposition party. They should be criticizing the lack of major cost controls, especially the watering down of the Cadillac tax.

'Misspoke' Is Not A Word

While it's true that English is an ever-changing language, strongly influenced by usage, 'misspoke' is unnecessary and should be radically excised before it gains a foothold in the lexicon. It should be taken out and shot by a firing line of sharpshooting librarians and hurled down the fiery volcano where it was ineffectually patched together out of toy-factory rejects.

If you would like to say that you were wrong or misinformed, received a false report, stammered, used the wrong word, tripped over your own tongue and came a nasty cropper in front of a battalion of White House reporters, just say it. Don't muck about.

Maybe you're afraid that somewhere in the world, someone giggled while watching a translation of what you said on a tiny black-and-white television with rabbit ears in his or her yurt, crumbling tenement, underground bunker, or marble palace. Just send the U.S. Army over there to clear up the confusion; don't mangle your own native tongue out of pansy-hearted cowardice.

Next time you make a mistake, and we all make them, feel free to admit it. Get it off your chest. Blame the Republicans. Lie if you have to. Tell us your momma drank and forgot to read to you, and your father was in 'France'. Say you thought they had WMDs at the time, or your wife asked you to, or you said it to intimidate the Soviets. But don't be ridiculous: don't tell us you misspoke, or we will never listen to another word you try to lay on us, squeeze into our ears, or butter us with. Anyone who uses a non-word such as 'misspoke' can't be trusted to wield the language with the least fluency, let alone represent us.

Mal-Asia

Malaysia seems from time to time to be a weird and delusional little corner of Asia. As a wealthier version of Indonesia, it is counter-intuitively more illiberal. One of the first things one notices is that most Malaysian women wear hijab while Indonesian women do not. That is all well and good, but there are deeper symptoms of tolerance issues such as the case of Lina Joy among others.

Take this week's flare up of the Allah Debate. Non-Muslim Malaysians can be jailed for using words like Allah, fatwa, imam or hajj, depending on the context. A Catholic newspaper's use of the word Allah is going through the courts. The law's aim is to impede missionaries from converting Muslims to their faith.

Malaysia has a multi-cultural society long reputed for its tolerance. But things have been bending in the wrong direction in the past few years. Recently "tensions escalated when churches were burned and the severed heads of wild boars, offensive to Muslims, were found in the compound of two mosques."

Pardon me but wouldn't severed heads of wild boars be offensive to anyone? Godfather fans will know what I am talking about.