Parsing the President’s Remarks

The Bob Brunton story brought a lot of visitors to this website.  It also prompted a lot of heated commentary in the comments box.  The reason I posted that story is because I felt the president was downplaying the contributions of entrepreneurs.  Now, the president is saying that he just meant that small businesspeople didn’t build roads and bridges.  I am convinced that he was implying more than that in the remarks he made.

Phil Klein has made the case well, but I’d like to echo his analysis and maybe add a bit of my own.  As Klein pointed out, there are two paragraphs that really matter here.  The second one is the one that has gotten all of the attention because of the “you didn’t build that” phrasing.  But the preceding paragraph is the one that bothers me.  Here it is:

There are a lot of wealthy, successful Americans who agree with me — because they want to give something back.  They know they didn’t — look, if you’ve been successful, you didn’t get there on your own.  You didn’t get there on your own.  I’m always struck by people who think, well, it must be because I was just so smart.  There are a lot of smart people out there.  It must be because I worked harder than everybody else.  Let me tell you something — there are a whole bunch of hardworking people out there.

With this bit of rhetoric, I think the president made a demagogic appeal to the masses.  In essence, he is arguing that there isn’t anything all that special about the people who build successful businesses.  There are a lot of people who are smart and who work hard, he is saying.  And they aren’t all successful.  In other words, the implication goes, things just worked out for the folks who think they made it on merit.  ”Why should they benefit from their success?  Things just worked out in their favor.”  This is a common appeal to the masses by the demagogue.  ”Those who have succeeded won their rewards through luck or some other sleight of hand.  Why do they deserve what they have???”  The subtext is obvious.  “Why shouldn’t you have some of what they have?”

The reason I wanted to highlight Bob Brunton is that I think he is typical of many small business owners.  He took risks with his own money, worked very hard for a long time, accepted the pressure of making payroll each week for his employees, contended with competition, and managed to earn a good living.  There is something special about someone who can do it.  I am especially sensitive to the contributions of these people because I’ve never had to stand in their shoes.  Every one of us who has been able to count on a paycheck for a week’s work should be grateful to the people who did what was necessary to give us the opportunity to have a job.

Sure, there are a lot of smart and hard-working people in the world.  Not all of them have built businesses.  The ones who have ARE special.  They had the drive, the vision, and the sheer grittiness to tough it out and see something through.  These people should not be viewed as some kind of honeypot from which we can extract revenues for income redistribution.  They should be honored, encouraged, and protected from excessive taxation and regulation.  If we kill the drive they have to build something from the ground up, we’ll kill our country.

President Obama and Bob Brunton the Small Businessman

In an attempt to cut down on the expense of college, I navigated the curriculum efficiently and managed to graduate in three and a half years.  As a result, about 20 years ago I went home to live with my parents for nine months before starting a graduate program in public administration.  Starting over with a new program meant that I needed to save up some money for an apartment deposit and other expenses.  For reasons I can’t recall, I visited a neighborhood drug store called the Brunton Drug Company.  The proprietor, Bob Brunton, hired me to make deliveries and work the cash register as needed.  

I almost quit the job before it began.  Bob showed me the truck I would use to make deliveries.  It was a Mitsubishi Mighty Max with a stick shift.  I did not know how to drive a stick shift.  I went home, downcast, planning to find a non-humiliating time to leave a note under the door explaining why I couldn’t start the job.  Instead, I talked with my dad.  He and I went out to a big parking lot at Point Mallard and worked on my technique.  I reported for work the next day.  It’s a good thing Bob didn’t ride along to see me driving his truck.  It wasn’t pretty.  But I learned and eventually became proficient at getting the job done.  

My job with the Brunton Drug Company lasted several months.  I worked right up until it was time to go to the University of Georgia.  It was a great experience.  I have always liked to ask questions of people with whom I work so I can learn.  Bob taught me a lot about his operation.  

When I heard President Obama’s comments about people who start businesses, how they didn’t do it by themselves, how they aren’t smarter, and how they don’t work harder, I thought about Bob Brunton.  When he started his drug store, Bob had to take all the financial risk of failure.  He had to stay open long hours each day and worked weekends, too, for years until he had a solid client base and could afford to work fewer hours.  But even when I was there, Bob was putting in a lot of time.  He didn’t take off for lunch.  He just heated a little container in the microwave and kept going.

Over time, he extended his business to include a local branch of the Roche medical labs.  Bob managed his drugstore and the medical lab at the same time.  Each day, some of the medical lab work would come over to the pharmacy and we’d stop and pitch in on labeling containers and sorting.  He was very shrewd that way.  He knew the big drug stores would continue to cut into his business and took steps to protect himself.

Bob Brunton worked hard.  Bob Brunton took financial risks.  And Bob Brunton was smart about the way he conducted his business.  I’m sorry to say that Bob didn’t live all that long after he retired.  He had given a lot of himself to his work.  

The president talked about how we can’t take credit because somebody helped us along the way.  I think he was thinking mostly about the state when he made the remark.  I can tell you that Bob Brunton helped me.  He made a big impression both in his work ethic and in how he treated me.  On my final day, it was time to close the store.  Bob and I were the only people still on the premises.  He gave me my final paycheck.  Then, he pulled out a second check.  Before he gave it to me, he said, “This is not a gift.  This is not a loan.  This is an obligation.  When you are successful someday and you can help a young person, I expect you to do it.”  He handed me a check for an additional $500.  At that time, my pay for the part-time job was $120.  

The president can build up the role of government all he wants.  I concede that it is important.  But he really should not downplay the contribution of the small businessmen and women who do so much to make our country great.  But if that is the case the president wants to make, he’s got a long way to go to convince me, because I worked for Bob Brunton of Decatur, Alabama who ran a drug store.

Call It the New Primitivism

From the ages of about 16 to about 25, guys are incredibly brave, but not terribly smart.  This explains why so many of them are voluntarily having giant holes punched in their ear lobes so they can wear plastic hoops in them.  Somewhere, an evil man is enjoying himself immensely at their expense.

The New Christian Consumerism

Young people everywhere are attracted to the idea of doing good as they consume products and services.  Tom’s Shoes appear on the feet of students all over my campus.  The shoes come with a promise that a pair will be distributed in the underdeveloped world each time a pair is purchased.  The same is true of Warby Parker glasses.  I own a pair, though I bought them for affordability and quality rather than because I wanted to see a pair distributed.  Young people are also busy buying “fair trade” coffee, t-shirts, and other goods.  The idea is that through our buying habits, we can achieve a greater good than the one that comes from a straightforward exchange of money for products and services.  

This concern for those who are less well-off or who live at a disadvantage to ourselves is, of course, nothing new.  Certainly, the desire to aid the poor, the widow, and the orphan is a core element of the Judeo-Christian tradition.  In my own generation (and really a generation or two before me), Francis Schaeffer criticized Americans (comfortable Christians included) for their addiction to “personal peace and affluence” and their “noncompassionate use of wealth.”  

The buying practices I have mentioned are aimed at curbing the tendency of well-off westerners to consume too casually and perhaps too enthusiastically.  There is an attempt to encourage thoughtfulness about the way one acquires consumer items.  Buy the shoe that results in a pair being delivered to a poor person in Africa at the same time.  Purchase the goods that have been produced in a more humane fashion than the ones that belch forth from a sweatshop.  Good ideas.  

However, I would suggest another consideration in the way we consume.  Instead of merely thinking more carefully about things like the production ethics of things we purchase, maybe we should reconsider our list of things we buy.  At any given time, we may have items such as tablet computer, smartphone, new car, bigger flatscreen television, new pair of shoes that accomodates each toe separately, new earphones, new trendy jacket, etc. on our list of wants.  What if we reconceived our list to include such things as helping someone pay for their car to be repaired, paying money into a scholarship fund for needy families at a local private school or college, giving a Target or Walmart gift card to a young single mother whom you know is having trouble with her bills, assisting a family with the costs of an adoption, and giving a used car to someone who could really use it instead of trading the car in?  The list could be as long as one’s imagination, but the point is really to be sensitive to the opportunities as they occur.

The picture I am trying to paint here is one of a new model for consuming.  Rather than thinking about the things we would like to buy (even the ones that will be replicated through a buy one, give one model), why not expand the list to include buying things that other people need?  In the same way that one saves up money to purchase an iPod, it would be possible to save up a couple hundred dollars and then to ask the Lord to show you what to do with it.  I think that this way of living, call it a new Christian consumerism, would go far in building up the church, the spiritual strength of the people in it, and the bonds of friendship between people.

Conservative Grief at the End of Federalism

Since the Supreme Court ruled 5-4 in favor of the constitutionality of the president’s health care plan, conservatives have been alternatively angry and despondent.  To many observers, this reaction may appear to have its roots in hatred of the president, racism, an inability to understand the constitution, a lack of compassion, or excessive partisanship.  None of those reasons explain the depth of the feelings of protest that exist and appear to be building.

The United States constitution sets out a unique form of government.  In the wake of revolution, the former British colonies became classic states with inherent power to govern with the consent of the people.  The United States of America emerged in the form we know as a new and special type of entity.  This national government would only have certain powers the states deemed necessary.  Thus, this national government would be a limited government of delegated powers.  This distinction helps explain why it has been uncontroversial for the states to require people to buy auto insurance, while it is a very big deal to see the national government attempting to act in the same way.  The United States government is acting as though it is a government of inherent powers rather than one of delegated powers.

Now, for many people this transformation of the national government from limited to omni-capable makes perfect sense.  In the modern age, they believe, a central government must have wide authority to act.  It must be able to tackle big problems.  Conservatives, they charge, are attached to an antiquated system.

But conservatives do not approve the federal system merely because it is old.  There are older systems.  Power under one head is older.  Conservatives approve the system of states with broad power to govern and a central government with limited, delegated powers because it guarantees that most of the laws one lives under will be laws enacted close to home.  Under a truly federal system, government is predominantly local.  People who live in our states and in our communities should be the ones to work out the laws under which we live because of their familiarity with our local strengths, resources, traditions, threats, and challenges.

People may be surprised to hear the news that Justice Kennedy worked unceasingly for a month to try to keep Justice Roberts from siding with the liberals, but his position on the case should not have been a surprise.  Justice Kennedy has written clearly about his admiration for federalism as the great American contribution to governing.  When he has gone against it, it has been to protect personal liberties he deemed of vital importance.  In this case, the question was whether we would continue to have a truly federal system.  It was perfectly in character for him to try to maintain our special contribution.

For decades, conservatives have waited to see the Supreme Court cut back on the broad license of power granted to the central government as part of the New Deal (under the threat of court-packing).  There have been signs that power was being cut back (such as the Lopez decision in 1995).  We believed this case would finally end the ultra-expansive view of the commerce power and would restore a sense of limits to the central government’s power.  Our hopes were sharply disappointed because the court ruled that we were correct about the commerce power, but then extended the power of the United States government through a broad construction of its power to tax.  If this power to tax is as broad as the court says it is, then it is difficult to see where the reach of the central government ends.

From the conservative viewpoint, we have lost federalism.  Most people don’t know what federalism is and don’t care.  But we do.  The loss of government close to home is a great loss, indeed.  It means the individual is more at the mercy of the mass than ever.  It also means that the best means of limiting the power of the central government is gone.

Every American student of civics is taught that the constitution has checks and balances in which the legislative, executive, and judicial branches rein each other in.  What they have learned too rarely is that the best limit on the power of national governments is for some powers not to be granted to them at all.  Article I, Section 8 of the constitution lists out the powers of the United States government.  That was once a clear guide to what the government could and could not do.  After the court’s ruling, one wonders why the framers of the document felt the need to include a list at all as it is apparently superfluous.

What Are the Expectations of a College Education?

In the process of trying to follow the conversation about higher education and its potential transformation, I came across a discussion between Walt Mossberg of the Wall Street Journal, Sal Khan of Khan Academy, and John Hennessy, the president of Stanford University.  One of the interesting moments was when Khan (if memory serves) said something about students coming to college to learn a skill or to prepare for a job.  John Hennessy immediately jumped in and said that what the universities offer is “an enriching experience” that is greater than just professional training.  Khan quickly countered that parents and students should understand what is really being offered.  Mossberg noted the disconnect in expectations.  

The discussion goes to the core of the crisis we are in.  The price of education is high.  As it has grown, the customers are getting cagier about asking, “Just what exactly am I getting here?”  In the process, the people who work in admissions emphasize the great jobs students will get and the salaries they will be paid.  The overall impression tilts more to the side of professional training and less to the side of an enriching experience.  This situation helps explain why we are having trouble maintaining strong core curricula in our schools.  Every professional training program wants to claim more hours.  And their students expect mostly to learn from their professional programs.  The broader sense of the college is being lost.  

So, let me take a shot at arguing for “the enriching experience” of college rather than the professional training aspect.  I’ll use the core curriculum as the foundation of my argument.  

Let’s say we have a student who just wants to study corporate finance and can’t understand why he needs to take courses in English, history, social science, biology, and other fields.  What is the value of that first couple of years of courses other than to extract extra tuition from him and his parents?  

My answer is that the courses in the core curriculum are extremely useful in developing the knowledge and abilities of the student.  The courses in English composition and literature, alone, have the potential to make or break a career.  Writing is the engine of the expression of learning.  It is how we communicate.  Even when we speak, we are essentially writing.  The reason these courses are perceived to be of low value is because our non-English major student tends to view them as mere requirements that must be satisfied.  Students think they must bow before some idol they do not understand in order to please bearded professors who are caught up in old rituals.  The truth is that excellence in courses in English contributes greatly to further success.  How many times have I read term papers and wished that the student had retained anything useful from his/her English classes?  The same will be true of some corporate boss up the line.  The organizational superior will read a white paper or a research memo and wonder why the staff member couldn’t communicate more efficiently, effectively, and persuasively.  

We could work our way through similar examples in other disciplines to great effect.  Actually taking the time to become a well-educated person and gaining mastery of at least entry level knowledge in a variety of fundamental areas will improve one’s ability to identify problems, analyze them, compare analogous situations, and apply useful context in the course of determining a solution.  Studying history seems like a useless exercise in studying irrelevant and dead civilizations.  In truth, it is the next best thing to first hand experience.  

We need to decide whether or not we expect our colleges to become something more like trade schools for the white collar set.  If we do make that decision, I think we will have lost something important and become poorer as a result.  The first step in avoiding that outcome will be to figure out how to convince students that they need to flourish in the core rather than merely outlasting it.

Speaking to Your ENTIRE Audience

I am sitting at one of about fifty large, round tables covered with a white tablecloth.  We have carved our way through the obligatory chicken, mixed grill, or what have you.  Our speaker is declaiming from the lectern placed on the dais.  The speaker is saying things most attenders will find agreeable.  Otherwise, we would not be at the banquet.  We are there both to indicate our support and to give or help get money for the organization and its mission.

In time, though, I find myself squirming through the address.  Why?  Because it is another one of those events in which the speaker is only thinking about the people who are totally convinced.  But the convinced are not the total audience.  Some of the people in the crowd are there because they are married to the true believer.  Or perhaps the true believer has brought a friend who is partially convinced.  We have to fill tables, you know.  Lots of people get pulled in.  And what of the people in the room the speaker almost never thinks about?  I am thinking of the table servers and other employees of the hotel, caterer, etc.

When a speaker goes on a harsh tirade against THE LEFT, THE LIBERALS, THE PRO-ABORTS, or whomever the target might be, I can’t help but be disappointed at the opportunity that is being missed.  Instead of making allies or at least showing people we have a good case, we deliver addresses that confirm them in their beliefs about our anger, extremism, insensitivity, and/or unfairness.  The speech that resorts liberally to labels, stereotypes, attribution of false motives, demonization, and tribal attitudes does a great job of earning the esteem of those who already agree with you.

The speech with a chance to win converts or at least generate thoughtfulness need not be morally compromised or weak.  It need merely put a premium on civility and accuracy.  If we do that, then we have a chance to connect with the listeners who might matter most.

Audacious Ideas? The Sexual Intercourse Age Limit

I have recently become a listener to the Harvard Business Review Ideacast.  In one recent episode, the hosts focused on a list of 12 “audacious ideas” with the potential to change the world.  One of the ideas featured was by the columnist Ellen Goodman.  She proposed that everyone (really, everyone) be sure to talk with a loved one about their wishes regarding health care as they approach death.  By so doing, she suggested, we could create a greater sense of trust and make better decisions at the end of life.

The idea is a fine one, but what struck me was that creating a social norm could make the list of audacious ideas.  Henceforth, I will propose a new social norm of my own.  I admit it is a bit retro.  We should create a social expectation that no one will have sexual intercourse outside of marriage before the age of 21.

Let’s think this through.  Is it not true that if the government, social elites, the media, and public schools were to get behind this new norm, we could probably radically reduce unwed pregnancy, numbers of children without present fathers, sexually transmitted diseases, and abortions?

Let me be clear (to use the president’s favorite phrase), I am not proposing a law to be enforced by the police.  I am simply arguing that it would be highly prudent and compassionate to create a social norm around the idea that intercourse is for adults.  We have an age at which young people can drive.  Why not have an age (a higher one) at which they can/should engage in another activity that can be far more consequential?