Thomas P.M. Barnett :: Weblog

Ron Brownstein's excellent point about politics in the Boomer age: deeply divided (primarily over social issues, I would note, since my 18 years in national security finds me finding little real difference there between Dems and Republicans--despite the magnificent hoopla) but closely matched (thus the frustration over stalemates galore and asinine political competition that seems neatly divorced from all reality that truly matters).

You watch CNN and Fox cover the recent convention (I would expect the same to hold true next week) and it's like they're from different planets--really odd. It reminds me of watching old Soviet TV: so stunningly predictable, but at least we get it from both sides.

Though technically a Boomer, I make a poor one in political terms. I lack that sense of end times that so many people have today when they contemplate the "others" winning. Frankly I am baffled by it.

I work with Steve and he's a pretty solid Republican and I'm a pretty solid Democrat and I enjoy the differences when we collaborate--more so than when I collaborate with more like-minded people (in political terms), so the overwrought angst I get from some readers when I say I like people from one side or the other, or when I endorse a Democrat like Obama, is somewhat puzzling to me.

I can't imagine being disappointed that someone I knew didn't vote the same way I did. I would explain my vote, because I love talking about myself and my rationales, but I'm hard-pressed to remember ever feeling bad because someone voted another way. I may get amused when a relative votes 3rd party out of unhappiness over the choice (I'm not big on protest votes for the same reason I don't gamble), but that's about it for me. Usually, I'm just glad, as a political scientist, to hear they feel strongly enough to vote, since so many don't bother. But that sense of zero-sumness (we've won or we've lost), I just don't get so much.

To me, politics isn't like sports. Every choice is a compromise among competing alternatives, and there's always competing alternatives.

I also don't get endorsements, to be honest. I can't imagine voting some way because someone else said they were going that way. I mean, an endorsement from a fellow politician is almost completely meaningless in my mind--celebrities even more useless. Perhaps that's why I'm not the best Catholic. I guess I'd have a hard time taking the same advice regarding sin, just because someone more authoritative made the call. My sense is more, you're shaped by beliefs and you can certainly get them from participation and example and study and contemplation, and those beliefs make clear to you what you know to be good or bad, or--in the vast majority of cases--just simply a better choice or compromise.

Then we add up all those decisions and collectively define them as custom or faith or political philosophy or a law, and we use them as markers and guideposts, but not as some mindless fence against thought or activity. There are a lot of bad things I don't do in my life, not because they're illegal or because I'd fear getting caught, but because I would have a hard time living with myself if I did those things. You lose that, and it's a short trip to the end for most people.

I didn't know that when I was younger, but I am quite certain of it now.

Maybe that's why I tend to trust people more--not their actions but their intentions. I find it's best to expect people to be exactly who they are and nothing else.

So I look at Obama and I look at McCain and I expect them to be who they are, and then I make a choice, and I honestly don't worry about it much. I guess because I find politics so peripheral to most of what I recognize as reality, which I guess I bundle up better--mentally and conceptually--in terms of economics and faith (circumstances and coping--respectively) more than I do pol-mil affairs, which I find highly reflective and thus shiny, but not nearly as causal in human history.

I guess that's where I locate my relationship and intellectual/business partnership with Steve: we see the world in the same basic way--certain realities and certain strategies for coping with those realities, and then their reflection in how we choose peace or war. But in the end, the only thing that matters--in terms of human progress--is creation, the true opposite of war (as a great Broadway lyricist once penned).

And I locate that reality better in economics (which I find highly creative) than politics (which I find highly manipulated) or security (which "works" only when it protects the economics that in turn allows the politics to emerge).

So I guess I find my self evolving as I get older. When I was young I found the security the most thrilling subject, then I got more interested in the political, then I got interested in the economics.

So when I look at the labeling now with parties, to me it all seems backwards. Republican presidents seem to be associated with huge deficits and more radical foreign policies, while Dem presidents seem to be associated with more frugality and more conservative national security policies.

I tend to make my pick largely on foreign policy, and the reason why I would take Obama over McCain is because I think Obama will be a more cautious, conservative national security leader than McCain, who I expect to be more bold and radical--much like Bush. I just don't think America can afford four more years of that. I said that in 2004 and feel much vindicated in that judgment. You only get to perturb a complex system--like the one we've set in motion with our international liberal trade order-cum-globalization--so much or so many times before the feedback or resistance gets too nasty. You can only "yang" so much before you need some "yin" to chill it out. Otherwise, the blowback will cause a domestic reaction that you won't want--namely, a pull-back from the world.

I know that sort of thinking perplexes a lot of people. They say, in effect, "How can you be for "new rules" and purposeful "system perturbations" and America leading the way in one book only to speak more about accommodation or even self-realignment toward the larger system itself in later books? Isn't that flip-flopping? You're for "hegemony" at one point and then "surrender" the next?"

And I really find that sort of response kind of dumb--to put it mildly. Everywhere I look in this world, my life, nature, etc., it's always about pushing some and then backing off some. That's just the way it works, otherwise you burn out or blow up or simply go off the cliff.

That's really the genius of our system: that ability to self-regulate and swap out one direction for another.

But other countries, even those not up to our standards for democracy, are going to exhibit that back-and-forth all the time, so no linear projections, please, much less feigned shock when the reflections (pol-mil) flicker so intensely even as the underlying economics proceeds. Humans are social creatures. They love to freak out. It's how we cope with big changes in circumstances.

I don't consider such swings a turn for the better or the worse, but merely a turn that's gotta happen, so when I consider political shifts in parties here in the States, I find them unremarkable, like a heart rate that simply needs to rise or fall as required. Getting all tortured about it seems silly to me, like you're chasing your tail. It's just so slow, in causal terms--like Duh! What did you think was going to happen when you did it like that for such a long time? Of course it hurts after a while! So stop doing it!

But it is good theater, I do admit--like watching an entire society reach a point of self-awareness that it's been too much of this, so now we need some of that. Collectively we need to have such angst over the shift--such a sense of betrayal and anger and whatnot. But in reality, economic determinist that I am, it's all such a showy conclusion to a plot long-earlier decided--so again, the theater of it all strikes me as so over-the-top, like we need it to cover our collective "shame" or something.

BFD, I say. You "yanged" for a while and now you need to "yin"--or the other way around. Why all the sturm-und-drang just to shift gears?

I guess I now get Mario Cuomo better. You reach a point and it just doesn't do it for you anymore--all the theatricality. Not that I'm against the emotion or showmanship. Hell, I love that stuff. I just don't find it in politics and I guess I never did.

I can't imagine trading this life in for politics or letting politics shape this life, and in that way I get the post-Tiananmen Chinese completely. It would feel like cashing out when there's so much work to be done. I mean, there's nothing like getting all giggly with Steve when we dream about getting it all done--I mean, really planet-wide--and then have a good day when we really move the ball some. I'm just not ready to run off the field to the sidelines. So that sense of, "You must believe this or pursue it in this political way or you're lost!" just strikes me as obtuse--like you're happy in the Matrix.

And I say, God be with you and keep you safe, but step to the side so the adults can get something done in the meantime. Yes, some bad chunks still exist, but fretting over those trees while the forest thickens up so nicely everywhere else just strikes me as painfully myopic. Sure, if you want to freak out next over the over-growth, that's a better discussion, but even there, let's calm down and trust that maybe--just maybe--a post-Caucasian world doesn't have to be a post-American one and that all our new friends/competition just might be smart enough to pull it off--and us collectively back from the brink.

Wonderful things, human brains.

And I think that view is very much in tune with global reality today. I think we live in amazingly economic times, thanks to the political vision displayed by others in past times clearly dominated by low-order affairs--meaning the destruction of conflict (mil) and the attendant coping mechanisms (pol). While I grew up envying those times, their "creativity"--such as it was--was miniscule compared to what we've got going on now. So I thank them for their "greatest generation," but I'm ecstatic to move on to what happens now and what comes next.

The Great Divergence of West and East that dominated the last two centuries ends in this one--the Great Convergence. That is the amazing reality of the world we live in today--a world impossible without America's efforts and experimentation.

It is such a precious thing--this supreme act of creation. It simply cannot be wasted for foolish pursuits and backwards mindsets that spot reality in reflection and mere reflection in reality. You have to know the dog (economics) from the tail (pol-mil), much as sometimes you might have to wag that tail vigorously for effect.

So I want my conservative national leader now. Not because he's the "right answer" but because it's the "right time."