A Tale of Two Lists

I think it's a close-run thing as to which list is more unpersuasive: Fareed Zakaria's leading indicators of American decline (we no longer have the world's biggest casino, the world's largest shopping mall, or the world's tallest Ferris Wheel, among other portents of doom), or Newt Gingrich's "nine acts of real change" that could save the GOP from disaster in '08, which include making campaigns against card-check and earmarks central to the GOP agenda, overhauling the census (now there's a game-changer), and implementing "a space-based, GPS-style air traffic control system."

I suppose I have to give the nod to Newt, since Zakaria at least admits that his list is "arbitrary and a bit silly." And to be fair, both pieces have something to recommend them: The Gingrich recommendations are absurd, but the Gingrich analysis of the GOP's predicament should be required reading for Pollyanish conservatives, while Zakaria, as usual, has various sane and measured things to say about the state of the world. But that makes it all the more disappointing to see him lapse into Friedmanesque blather about the casino and ferris wheel gap, and the necessity of demonstrating our commitment to the global order by joining the metric system, and the risk that having succeeded in our "great, historical mission—globalizing the world," the U.S. might forget "to globalize ourselves." (I'm not sure what that means, but I'm pretty sure I'm against it.) Maybe he's making a bid for Friedmanesque book sales - but if so, he should remember that it profits a pundit nothing to gain the whole world if he ends up stuck arguing that it's flat.

Comments

(I'm not sure what that means, but I'm pretty sure I'm against it.)

Coincidentally, that's also the motto for know-nothing, religious right, Bush Republicans all across this great land. What are the odds?

Posted by ed | May 7, 2008 11:59 AM

Not that it changes the substance of your post, but Newt is exactly right about our current air traffic control system. The rest of the world has gone to the much more efficient and sane GPS system, while we still use a system of way points designed from the era of the birth of mass aviation, which pilots at night relied on a series of light-house like check points.

Also, Newt's point about the air traffic control system becomes all the more important when you consider that the current infrastructure requires planes to take longer trips (thus increasing fuel consumption and increasing GHG emissions).

Posted by szr | May 7, 2008 12:25 PM

Ed,

Speaking as a know-nothing, religious right, Bush Republican... that was pretty funny.

Posted by Joe Marier | May 7, 2008 12:44 PM

Not that it changes the substance of your post, but Newt is exactly right about our current air traffic control system. The rest of the world has gone to the much more efficient and sane GPS system, while we still use a system of way points designed from the era of the birth of mass aviation, which pilots at night relied on a series of light-house like check points

We should update our system, but we should still keep the navaids as plan B. It's nice to have VORs around when the GPS on your plane quits, especially when your a 1/2 mile from the final approach fix on a GPS approach. Nevermind the possibility of an enemy shooting down those GPS satellites.

Posted by guineapigfury | May 7, 2008 12:47 PM

"...it profits a pundit nothing to gain the whole world if he ends up stuck arguing that it's flat"

Nicely put.

Posted by LaFollette Progressive | May 7, 2008 1:10 PM

Uh, Newt? There's this little thing called the war in Iraq? And you heard that President Bush is now less popular than Nixon at his lowest? Do you really think the Census and air traffic control are going to do it?

Interestingly enough, what this reminds me of is Bill Clinton's small-bore policies: the V chip, school uniforms and the like.

Posted by Dave | May 7, 2008 1:32 PM

When in doubt, the natural GOP instinct is to appeal to ignorant racist yahoos - or, as Lee Atwater and Saint Reagan and Dick Nixon called them, "the base." Gingrich's "English as the official language" suggestion is just that sort of move - and it's probably one McCain will grab.

I have another one - all Repiglicans should dye their hair red, white, and blue and get the words "god bless America" tattooed on their pasty white asses.

Posted by MoeLarryAndJesus | May 7, 2008 2:32 PM

I don't think the GOP has to go any farther than "MoeLarryAndJesus" to find an ignorant racist yahoo, if it wants to find any.

Posted by chaos | May 7, 2008 3:42 PM

I retired in 2003 after having served many years as a professor in an applied science department at a good American research university. Starting in the late 60's or early 70's, every year we attracted fewer and fewer American graduate students. Our European graduate students - British, French, Italian, German, and more recently Russian - almost always returned to their native countries after receiving their PhD's, but our Chinese and Indian students usually managed to stay in the US. Now, more and more, they're also going home. I haven't studied the statistics on this matter, but I wonder where the scientists and researchers in our universities and technological industries are going to come from. I wonder if we're going to suffer the same fate as Great Britain's in the early twentieth century, that is, forgetting the source of our prosperity by neglecting our technological base and squandering our wealth in pointless imperialistic ventures.

Posted by Stan | May 7, 2008 5:44 PM

Let me just say, I'm at least as embarrassed to have "MoeLarryandJesus" on the Democratic side as Republicans are embarrassed of people like Fred Phelps.

Posted by moqui | May 7, 2008 6:14 PM

'Repiglicans' - Now that is funny! It combines Republicans with Pig to make a new insulting name for Republicans.

Posted by MohammedLuLuandGaia | May 7, 2008 7:22 PM

Moqui said, "Let me just say, I'm at least as embarrassed to have "MoeLarryandJesus" on the Democratic side as Republicans are embarrassed of people like Fred Phelps."

Fred Phelps is a democrat. So are you doubly embarrassed, Moqui?

Posted by Peter H. | May 7, 2008 10:25 PM

What's with all the knuckleheads in the comments spitting out insults? Is KOS shut down? Huffington Post shutting down comments again? It never fails - allow anyone to say what they want and the leftosphere starts foaming at the mouth.

That's a fine pithy summation of Zakaria's book, but I'll read it anyway. The doomsday scenario is boilerplate leftist material, and I want to see what they have in mind for us...

Posted by Shane | May 7, 2008 10:47 PM

Three Predictions:

1. During the Obama Administration, Democratic-leaning blogs are going to become just as mean and spiteful in defense of the Administration as they were during the long years out of power. "Repiglican" will become the new "Rethuglican".

2. MoeLarryandJesus will get his own Diary on Daily Kos.

3. The New York Times will do intellectual backflips defending the Obama Administration's decision to keep 60-90,000 troops in Iraq through 2012.

Posted by section9 | May 7, 2008 10:52 PM

section9 tries: "1. During the Obama Administration, Democratic-leaning blogs are going to become just as mean and spiteful in defense of the Administration as they were during the long years out of power. "Repiglican" will become the new "Rethuglican".

2. MoeLarryandJesus will get his own Diary on Daily Kos.

3. The New York Times will do intellectual backflips defending the Obama Administration's decision to keep 60-90,000 troops in Iraq through 2012."

1. No matter how mean the Dems get, arch-asshole Rush Limbaugh and uber-prick Michael Savage will be meaner, and Repiglicans will still love them.

2. Though I appreciate what the Kos site does, I prefer bringing the discussion directly to Repiglicans. It's so cute when they whine.

3. The New York Times gobbled Bushpig unit in the lead-up to the pointless Iraq war and it continues to support the war via the words crapped out of Bloody Billy Kristol's asshole. Only a complete moron could continue to pretend that the NYT has been against this war at any time.

Oh, and fuck Bush. And fuck Cheney, too!

Posted by MoeLarryAndJesus | May 8, 2008 12:25 AM

Having read Zakaria's piece in Foreign Affairs but not Newsweek, it sounds like Newsweek dumbed it waaaay down. Zakaria argues that America is NOT in decline per the hand-wringing pessimists but also not necessarily best positioned to compete in a more competitive world.

Posted by nice strategy | May 8, 2008 12:34 AM

Moqui, Fred Phelps is beyond conventional politics and I doubt very much that he's a Republican. He, like Bin Laden, pick up the far left, anti-globalist, anti-American talking points very easily. So, you're left with being embarassed to have Larrymoeandjesus on your side as a Democrat.

The Democrats think they are so much smarter than everyone else and there are more than a couple commenters here that reflect this. In your fevered imaginations, Bush and the Republicans are trying to install a fundamentalist theocracy on America. This is stupid, stupid, ludicrously stupid for the Smart Party. You're believing your own propaganda. Bush has been in office over 7 years, where and how has he tried to impose the theocracy?

Posted by JabbaTheTutt | May 8, 2008 6:30 AM

Bush has been in office over 7 years, where and how has he tried to impose the theocracy?

I agree that this would be giving Bush the benefit of the courage of his convictions; and he is clearly lacking in any real convictions.

But I think that for a country like ours, which proudly features in a huge constituency of low-information, xenophobic solipsists deterinming the outcome of elections, the real and present danger lies with these rank incompetents getting power and incompetently eroding our democracy by degrees, for petty political ends -- as opposed to some overtly diabolical execution of a master plan, theocratic or otherwise. IOW, it's the shortsightedness and lack of vision that's gonna kill us in the end.

Posted by Bill | May 8, 2008 7:00 AM

I really should proofread. "Proudly features a huge constituency" minus the word "in."

Posted by Bill | May 8, 2008 7:02 AM

Study the decline of France during its Vietnam (Indochina) war; then the Soviet decline during its Afghan (i.e., Vietnam); and the decline of the United States during its Afghan/Iraq war. The pattern is the same in each of these three cases that changed the course of history. De Gaulle in France; Gorbachev in the Soviet Union; Obama in the US?
AdB, DC

Posted by Arnaud de Borchgrave | May 8, 2008 9:12 AM

I'd have to say that France was more wiped out by WWII than the Indochina war. Also, Gorbachev presided over the end of the Soviet Union.
What's this saying about Obama?

Posted by Taddie Bell | May 8, 2008 12:31 PM

The point is that we are NOT declining but everyone else is simply catching up. Since life is not a zero sum game, that is very, very good news.

As for engineers returning to their home countries, why not? There are going to be opportunities in more countries now than there were before, as freedom spreads, so this is a good thing.

While I wan America to do well, I won't be picky if the medical device that saves my life was invented in Russia and built in China.

Posted by Aaron | May 8, 2008 1:22 PM

3 countries in the world do not use the metric system. The United States, Myanmar/Burma, and Liberia. It really is stupid to hold out. Worse - it is backward.

Posted by Chuck | May 8, 2008 2:30 PM

I previously wrote:
"Having read Zakaria's piece in Foreign Affairs but not Newsweek, it sounds like Newsweek dumbed it waaaay down."

Correction: Ross has just been a colossal bonehead. Reading both excerpts, the Newsweek slice tries to survey too much territory without enough of the language that ties things back to the thesis, but no matter. Zakaria doesn't bemoan the Ferris Wheel gap, he simply points out that many Americans are stuck in a 1990s hegemony mindset in which people assume that we are #1 in everything, when in reality things are getting more competitive. His vehicle for making this point is Friedman-esque lame but that doesn't make it any less true. The exact timing of the "rise of the rest" is irrelevant to the main points of Zakaria's analysis.

Zakaria argues that we would be better served to embrace a post-American world of shared prosperity than to resist it, but he also debunks the naysayers who are itching to revive Paul Kennedy's Rise and Fall of the Great Powers, arguing instead that we are very well positioned to expand our economic leadership of the world.

"Globalizing ourselves" means being willing and able to learn from other cultures the way the rest of the world has adapted to the US model. We won the contest of big ideas, but that's not good enough in the long run, once everyone else has caught up.

Basically, its good reading for people who are blind nationalists still too high on the American Century to see that it's ending, and that this is a good thing.

Ross, you get an F. You may raise your grade if you come in for extra help, but first try reading the whole article with an open mind.

Posted by nicestrategy | May 8, 2008 3:36 PM

MoeLarryAndJesus be careful if your parents read your posts they will wash your mouth out with soap and take away your Xbox for a week.

Posted by Crackerquiddick | May 8, 2008 10:16 PM

Don't worry, the U.S. already uses the metric system: the inch is defined in terms of meters, etc. Anyone who needs to use metric units already does. To turn the surface measures into native metric, you just need to find a marketable handle for it, e.g. more years ago than I can remember some marketeer at 7up came with "just a liter bit bigger", now all the big bottles are 2 liters instead of 64 ounces. You can't find wine or liquor in quarts or fifths any more, and nobody cares. The next opportunity: change the speed limit to 100 (Kph) rather than repealing the gasoline tax. But football fields will be 100 yards long forever, just like horse races will be measured in furlongs.

More likely, we will be burdened with two measurement systems indefinitely, just like China will never give up its two writing systems (ideographs and pinyin) and Japan will never give up its three systems (kanji, katakana, and hiragana). Doesn't seem to have slowed them down much...

Posted by Jeff | May 9, 2008 11:11 PM