Finland Diary

Robert Kaiser is touring Finland to write pieces for the Washington Post. The first one focuses on education:

"Finland finishes first in the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) exams that test 15-year-olds in all of the world's industrial democracies. Finland also finishes at or near the top in many global comparisons of economic competitiveness: Internet usage, environmental practices and more. Finland, where the modern cell phone was largely invented, has more cell phones per capita than any other nation -- nearly 85 per 100 citizens.

As recently as the 1970s, Finland required that children attend school for just six years and the education system here was nothing special. But new laws supported by substantial government spending created, in barely 20 years, a system that graduates nearly every young person from vocational or high school, and sends nearly half of them on to higher education. At every level, the schooling is rigorous, and free."

H-Net Review: Jonathan Beard on Overconfidence and War: The Havoc and Glory of Positive Illusions

This sounds like an interesting book--review from H-Net Review: Jonathan Beard on Overconfidence and War: The Havoc and Glory of Positive Illusions:

"[the book] begins with a short examination of optimism's roots in human evolution and psychology. It is both useful and pervasive, Johnson argues. During much of human history, people have been prey, and during the last few thousand years, warfare has been a significant factory in our lives. Optimism and (unwarranted) confidence aid survival under such conditions. Psychological testing has found, over and over, that almost everyone rates themselves as above average, and they underestimate their chances of getting sick or having accidents. Leaders, he suggests, are almost sure to incarnate both optimism and high self-esteem. Confidence combined with faulty information frequently leads to miscalculation."

Beard is a political scientist who reviews leaders' decisions: World War I; the Munich Crisis of 1938; the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962; the choice by five American presidents to continue engagement in Vietnam; and the decision to invade Iraq in 2003.

Certainly we don't like leaders who are pessimistic--remember Jimmy Carter's "malaise" speech? Yet some leaders go far by demonizing their opponennts. Emotions, including optimism, enable us to overcome the inertia to which humanity is subject.

Achenbach on George Washington

Joel Achenbach of the Post, and a blogger, gets a good review from the academy for his book:
The Grand Idea: George Washington's Potomac and the Race to the West:

"the story of George Washington and the Potomac River, which has often been told before, has never been told so well, in large part because the reader comes away with an impression of the man as well as the river. Since the 1980s, historians and the Mount Vernon Ladies Association of the Union have struggled to present Americans with 'the man' rather than 'the monument,' often too consciously. In The Grand Idea Achenbach skillfully presents the man as a bold, geographically-obsessed, ambitious visionary. "

Although the review dates back to January, it was just circulated on the American Studies list from H-Net, the site for humanities and social sciences.

Legislative Process Changes Make a Difference

A sharp observation from Mark Schmitt at The Decembrist:

"I believe that one reason -- not the only reason, but an important one -- that this particular fight [the "nuclear option"] has become so bitter and so polarizing is exactly that fact, that so much of the Senate's business is now run through the rubber-stamp, party-line process of budget reconciliation. (Including pure policy decisions whose budget impact is incidental, such as opening the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling.) Much of the rest is pushed through using the bizarre technique of rewriting legislation from scratch in small, tightly controlled conference committees, and then forcing the Senate to pass it or not, without amendment."

If my memory serves, budget reconciliation originated with David Stockman, Reagan's OMB director. A lot of Reagan's program of tax cuts and program cuts was wrapped up in one package. The one package idea provides cover for some--by combining disparate provisions you can do your logrolling in one vote. It may also reflect Theodore Lowi's "interest group" liberalism, the idea that politics has been taken over by narrowly focused groups.

How Big Is Government?

One of the illusions of political discussion is the definition of the federal government as "big". It's not. Or rather, bigness is relative to who you are. If you are an ordinary citizen, you have little direct contact with the federal government besides the IRS. Where the government becomes most visible and most onerous is for small business, those who employ people and who may impact the environment. That fact partially accounts, I think, for the division between Democrats and Republicans; they simply experience the government differently.

Planning, or Lack Thereof

Liberals need to remember we humans can't predict the future well, nor plan too far ahead. Timothy Noah at Slate had the bright idea of doing a poll of readers to see how they rated the New York Times op-ed stable. Unfortunately:

"The poll was a stunning success—and that, I'm afraid, created a problem here in the Chatterbox War Room. Even though I limited the voting time to roughly four and a half hours, I ended up with about 1,000 entries. That was roughly 10 times as many as what I imagined to be a likely upper limit. Each entry, remember, contained eight numbers for me to enter into a spreadsheet. And devoted though I may be to my readers, there was no way I was going to enter 8,000 numbers into my Microsoft Excel program. (Memo to the several hundred people who have continued to vote since the deadline three days ago: Please stop.)"

Going Up, Going Down, CSI and Rap

Today's Washington Post has an article along this theme:

"Prosecutors say jurors are telling them they expect forensic evidence in criminal cases, just like on their favorite television shows, including 'CSI: Crime Scene Investigation.' In real life, forensic evidence is not collected at every crime scene, either because criminals clean up after themselves or because of a shortage in resources. Yet, increasingly, jurors are reluctant to convict someone without it, a phenomenon the criminal justice community is calling the 'CSI effect.'"

It seems a case study in the flow of culture (ideas/info/norms) down the classes (see NY Times series). Consider: well paid scriptwriters in Hollywood come up with story ideas for CSI and similar series. They're aired and the ideas/information about DNA and other forensic science get spread around. Jurors take their cues from what they've seen. Even assuming that many criminals don't watch CSI, defense attorneys learn to focus on the holes in the prosecutor's cases. Any success will get incorporated into the folklore of the "criminal street." That changes behavior.

In contrast, consider the flow of rap from the criminal street up to the top of the entertainment industry. It's certainly not the first instance of obscenity rising from its roots to become modish--I remember the reaction to rock in the 1950's. I think you can go back further to vaudeville and other entertainments that rose up.

Query--if class mobility has declined recently, can we say culture is flowing up and down more rapidly these days?

Bureaucrat's Dictionary

This is intended as an ongoing list:

blogger: n. (1) A person who sees ignorance as empowering

On Organizational Culture

Joel Achenbach in the chatroom followup to his good piece on space exploration in the Washington Post Magazine: To Infinity and Beyond says (referring to NASA): "

Joel Achenbach: I'm always skeptical when I hear people talk about 'internal cultural change,' because let's face it, most organizations have a culture that rises organically from below, rather than imposed dictatorially from above (though I should check with someone smart, like Malcolm Gladwell, about that). "

I'd modify that. In my view an organization often reflects the founder (think FBI and J. Edgar Hoover, IBM and Tom Watson, etc.). If the organization is able to survive, it and its culture become almost the same thing, so new leaders have great difficulty in changing the culture (which is what Achenbach is getting at). Some change is possible, as in the differences between Secretaries Rice and Powell at State, but major change is very difficult. (Look at all the old blue-chip companies that have either gone under or lost their former eminence.) But sometimes what people call "culture" is really the interlocked networks of stakeholders, of customers and suppliers. See the Innovator's Dilemma by Christenson.

True Conservatives, As Defined by a Liberal

A true conservative is one who not only believes Stephen Decatur's words: "our country, right or wrong", but also knows who Decatur was.