Amitai Etzioni Notes

Bailout the people

Congress should instruct the US Treasury to issue to each American household a mortgage reduction voucher worth $7,500 dollars. There are about 100 million households in the USA. Hence the costs of such vouchers would be the same as those now being suggested to bail out Wall Street investors and banks. Because ultimately these vouchers can be cashed only by paying off mortgages, all these funds will end up greatly alleviating the financial crisis that has resulted from people being unable to make their payments. Thus these vouchers will help the banks by helping the people, rather than hoping that by saving the banks—the people will be bailed out. Think about it as trickling up, instead of down.

One may ask, why issue these vouchers to people who have no mortgage? For fairness’ sake. Given that that the Congressional bailout is using tax payers’ money, all tax payers should benefit from the program. People without mortgages could either use their vouchers as part of a down payment for a house, thus helping restore the housing market to good health and stopping the downward spiraling of the price of houses, one of the causes of the current crisis; or they could sell these vouchers to others who could use them to further reduce their mortgages. (That is, these vouchers should be tradable.)

Democrats should love these vouchers because they benefit all of us, and not primarily those who own shares in irresponsible banks or—their reckless management. Republicans should love these vouchers—as they are akin to the school vouchers libertarians have long favored on the ground that such vouchers leave the choice to each individual. Indeed, people can use these vouchers to pressure their banks to renegotiate their mortgages, to provide more favorable terms—lest they take their vouchers to another bank, get a better mortgage from it, and pay off the old, unfavorable one.

The main criticism against this idea will be that issuing such vouchers takes time, and the financial crisis is at the gate if not in the gate. However, like the 2008 stimulus checks, which were issued within a few weeks, mortgage reduction vouchers could be issued in a jiffy. Critics may also hold that, in this plan, so called toxic assets will remain toxic. However, increased payments from homeowners will make them less toxic and will provide those who hold the assets with major capital injections that will allow these institutions to continue to function until they unwind these assets. Moreover, the firm knowledge that $750 billion dollars are about to be injected into the system is likely to suffice to keep afloat the financial institutions.

And if this sum is not large enough, instead of increasing the bailout to the banks, let’s up the people’s mortgage reduction vouchers.

Amitai Etzioni is a University Professor at The George Washington University, and the author of The Moral Dimension: Toward a New Economics. He can be reached at comnet@gwu.edu

A Great Text for Reformers

Anyone who believes that the United State can march into a country, topple its regime, and build a prosperous democracy, ought to read, study and read again Imperial Life in the Emerald City. The book is a very close-quarter account of the first year of the American administration of Iraq. It does not lay out any development theory or make sociological generalizations. It does much better. It provides a detailed account of the numerous mistakes the US made, one on top of the other.

Some are peculiar to the Bush Administration and can be relatively readily corrected, in Iraq, in Afghanistan, and in any other place the US is engaged in “reconstruction.” Others are much more endemic and congenital. Together they agitate against any notion that if the “richest nation in the world” just put it mind to it, it could economically and politically develop any country as different from the US as the nations at issue.

Before I proceed, it is important to understand the way the book works. It provides, back-to-back, scores of brief case studies and lets readers draw their own conclusions. Here is one that will have to stand for all the others: Following the fall of Saddam Hussein, the Iraqi health care system was in a dire state. Hospitals—which were looted-- lacked the most basic medical equipment, they had no sterile instruments, and their pharmacies where bare.  The Americans assigned the process of rehabilitation  to the highly qualified Dr. Frederick Burkle, Jr., an expert in post-conflict health crises.  But a week after Baghdad’s liberation, he was replaced; the White House wanted a Republican “loyalist” to take the position.  The replacement was James Haveman, Jr., a man a community health director from Michigan with no medical degree and no post-conflict experience. 

In the time between Burkle’s dismissal and Haveman’s arrival, the job was handed Steve Browning, a Army Corps of Engineers specialist.  He drew up a list of urgent priorities: clean drinking water, getting needed drug and medical supplies, and finding ways to ship them to hospitals.  He ordered the purchase of new generators for every major hospital in Iraq. 

When Haveman arrived, he set his own priorities.  He approached health care in Iraq the way administrators do in America; he focused on preventative measures to reduce the need for hospital treatment, like starting an anti-smoking campaign, and dedicated almost all the Health Ministry funds renovating maternity hospitals and opening community clinics.  None of this addressed Iraq’s main public health challenge: injuries from insurgent attacks.
   
Every few pages in the book contain another such an account which makes you want to scream in disbelief and deep regret, although some of the idiocies are so extreme that they give the reader some comic relief---as when the Iraqis got around absurd American orders by mistranslating them. Or when an American gained the cooperation of another recalcitrant American on the condition that he would be provided with a mirror so he could watch himself having sex with his Iraqi girl friend.

It is easier to correct mistakes –if the US is going to engage in forced regime change in the first place—and to try to develop a nation if one recruits staff that is qualified and experienced and not chosen—as was the case in Iraq-- on the basis of the role they played in Bush election campaign and their commitment to fundamentalist  religious values, especially opposition to abortion rights.

Never again should the US draw on a staff in which practically nobody speaks Arabic, and next to no one is familiar with the local culture and habits, or even understands the importance of such knowledge.

More difficult to correct is the fact that that various American agencies—especially the State Department, the Pentagon, and the CIA—regarded each other as competitors and interlopers, and would rather trip each other up than collaborate.

Above all, whatever help the US could have given to the economic  and political development of Iraq and other such nations was under cut by the foolish notion that the US could fix everything, from changing the traffic laws to the stock exchange, from the way welfare was provided to the way cars were sold, all while hastily redoing the hospitals, schools, courts and everything else that moved. In short, the book’s most important message is that we are best off promising much less, spinning off much less ambitious plans, and rebuilding our credibility by delivering for once more than what we promised.

Amitai Etzioni is a professor of international relations at The George Washington University.  For more discussion, see Security First (Yale 2007).  To contact him, write comnet@gwu.edu. www.securityfirstbook.com

Disclosure is not enough

There are few scholars I respect nearly as much as Richard Thaler (University of Chicago) and Cass Sunstein (Harvard), and none more. Their new book, Nudge, is chock-full of new ideas, and they pulled off quite a feat by winning the favor of both the Tories in the UK and of Obama in the US. However, even the best and brightest can get off on the wrong foot. Their claim, in a recent Wall Street Journal op-ed, that more and better disclosure is the best way to deal the current financial crisis, is wrong-headed.

Thaler and Sunstein suggest that those who sell mortgages, issue credit cards, and market cell-phone plans (among other goods) should be required to disclose in simple and digestible terms the true cost of the service in question, including late-fees and other surcharges likely to be incurred, as well as a pattern of the customer’s own previous consumption of the product at issue. They realize that consumers are likely to be unable to properly process such information on their own--a point they have helped prove beyond reasonable doubt in their contributions to a field of study referred to as behavioral economics.  Thaler and Sunstein however presume that websites will spring up to help people figure out what is what, thus ensuring that consumers avoid sub-prime mortgages they cannot possibly afford, credit cards that charge more than the Mafia, and other such traps which, together, are currently threatening the stability of the entire financial system.

The authors conclude that requiring disclosure might eventually make other regulations unnecessary, by making “consumers better shoppers, enabling them to be their own regulators.” Indeed, they dismiss current attempts by regulators to ban unscrupulous activities as a “whack-a-mole game.” But, Thaler and Sunstein disregard that whether disclosure works or not depends largely on exactly the kind of regulation they dismiss: penalties for violation of the rules, and serious enforcement efforts by the government.

The fact is that disclosure is readily manipulated. Corporations have long been required to issue audit statements, but unless you are an accountant and lawyer—and often even if you have these kinds of training—you cannot make heads or tails out of these statements, with their reservations hidden in footnotes and behind technical terms. Nor can one trust statements made even by the top management. Short days before Bear Stearns, Fannie Mae and Freddy Mac collapsed, their executives told the world that all was dandy. Without stiff penalties for manipulation of the information disclosed, the consumers are up a creek without a paddle.

The notion that consumers would be saved by private sector web pages that will spring up to make a buck by helping consumers to “read” their mortgage statements and the small print on their credit card statements and other such information, is rather naïve. First, how are consumers to tell which of these web pages are on the up and up, and which are themselves manipulative, serving the same people who issue misleading information in the first place? Nor do Thaler and Sunstein explain why such web pages would spring up to help consumers now when they failed to show up to protect people against corporations pushing sub-prime mortgages on those who could not possibly make the needed payments, or to protect people from signing up at a very low starting rate on a credit card only to find out that in the following months the rate is reset much higher.

There are few areas in which one can learn better how inadequate disclosure per se is than the requirements of political election campaigns to list the sources of contributions. Political Action Committees (PACs), composed by special interest groups, regularly adopt names that very effectively conceal whom they are pushing for. For instance, try to guess with which political party the following PACs are affiliated: “All America,” “America’s Foundation,” “American Dream,” “America Works,” and “American Leadership Council.” (Answers: D, R, R, D, R). The “Competitive Enterprise Institute”? It represents the major oil companies, and so on.  Moreover, when disclosure laws are said to be violated by a political campaign, the matter goes before the deadlocked, minimally staffed, under-funded Federal Election Commission. If the commission does manage to find a grossly misleading disclosure, it is often months too late, well after the election is over.

If disclosure is to work, there must be clear requirements to ensure that disclosed information is digestible by people who have only elementary education and that a jury would not find it deliberately deceptive; significant penalties for those who deliberately provide false or misleading information; and well-staffed and funded agencies to enforce these requirements. Better yet, we need some of the old-fashioned kinds of regulation that will ban nefarious practices such as investing funds entrusted to financial institutions for safe keeping in highly risky assets, will separate commercial and investment banking, and will require that all financial institutions maintain a solid level of capital. There is room for disagreement about the details. However, to rely on disclosure per se-- and on private sector web pages to back it up--is as naïve as it is insufficient. Disclosure requires backbone, and the financial crisis shows that there is fair range of business practices that are best banned.

“The Social Animal” Revisited

In his September 12th column in the New York Times, David Brooks put the communitarian thesis into better chosen, fewer words than any of his predecessors. His excellent overview follows very closely on the key points and even the text of the Communitarian Platform (link) and The Spirit of Community.

Brooks writes that the “…individualist description of human nature seems to be wrong. Over the past 30 years, there has been a tide of research in many fields, all underlining one old truth — that we are intensely social creatures, deeply interconnected with one another and the idea of the lone individual rationally and willfully steering his own life course is often an illusion.”

Brooks lists the findings of many social sciences, stating: “Psychologists have shown that we are organized by our attachments. Sociologists have shown the power of social networks to affect individual behavior.”

Brooks concludes that “[w]hat emerges is not a picture of self-creating individuals gloriously free from one another, but of autonomous creatures deeply interconnected with one another.”

And finally “That language of community, institutions and social fabric has been lost, and now we hear only distant echoes — when social conservatives talk about family bonds or when John McCain talks at a forum about national service.”

Brooks, who is entrusted with being the conservative voice in the New York Times, calls for the GOP to embrace the communitarian message. He writes that Republicans are “ …probably going to have to follow the route the British Conservatives have already trod and project a conservatism that emphasizes society as well as individuals, security as well as freedom, a social revival and not just an economic one and the community as opposed to the state.”

However, no one owns the message. Democrats—Obama more than any—have already made the rebuilding of community their mantra. The GOP is welcome to join.

Please review the communitarian platform (here), compare notes, and considering endorsing it.  For more discussion see The Spirit of Community and The New Golden Rule.

How Terrorism Ends...

The RAND Corporation dug into its own funds to produce an unusual report. It seeks to determine how terrorists groups end. It found that in the best cases, they turn into political parties (like the Resistencia Nacional Mozambicana in Mozambique did). When force must be used to end terrorism, a combination of policing and use of intelligence is much more effective than committing conventional armies. The RAND report provides more ammunition to those who reject the metaphor of a “war” against terrorism and all that it evokes. At the same time the report points out that Al Qaeda is especially unlikely to agree to a political settlement, given its ambitions, goals, and religious fundamentalism. To learn more, go here.

Because the report draws mainly on data about groups that functioned in countries in which they had no realistic chance of gaining control of nuclear weapons, such as Columbia and El Salvador, the report does not deal with what practically all experts consider by far the greatest threat to security, what is referred to as massive or catastrophic terrorism-- by those who employ nuclear weapons.

This grave threat is directly tied to the question of what is the best way to curb terrorism. Some hold that terrorists should be treated like other criminals. However, the criminal system focuses on prosecution. That is, bringing offenders to trial and deterring future crime by punishing those that have already committed crimes. In contrast, to counter terrorism, prevention is much more important. We seek to ensure that such attacks will not occur, rather than go after the perpetrators after the fact. Moreover, given that many of them commit suicide during their attacks, they fear not the prosecution that might follow, as they will be unavailable to face trial.

Last but not least, in the criminal justice system those charged with a crime have a right to face those who bear witness against them, and the state must disclose to the defense all the relevant information it has. This would mean, for instance, that if the US found a collaborator or planted an agent among bin Laden’s close associates—he or she would have to be appear in court! And if the US succeeded in planting a microphone in Iran’s command and control center, this source would have to be disclosed.

Our mind is big enough to accommodate more than two options. The image of a war against terrorism is clearly a wrong one, if only because the other side will not abide by the few rules that wars have, especially wearing a uniform or some other insignia so one can tell fighters from civilians. (One should though note that Bob Woodward’s new book, The War Within, shows that what is working in Iraq is a combination of better methods of collecting intelligence and better use of special and conventional forces--that is better use of the military.) Policing is the wrong model for reasons just indicated. The RAND report uses the term counterterrorism to imply a third approach. As I see it, a third approach would grant terrorists basic human rights (e.g. they cannot be tortured, and they cannot be held indefinitely without being charged) but not the full list of rights a citizen of the United States (or whatever nation is involved) commands. Thus, terrorists should be required to choose a lawyer from among those that have security clearances. They will not be able to see sources and methods, and can be held for longer than 48 hours—say 21 days—before they have to be charged, to allow time to roll up their cells, trace their phone calls, and decipher their computer files.

Finally, we need another RAND report on the best ways to win over the sympathizers of the terrorists, on which they draw for funding, supplies, and intelligence. In that sense, the fight against Al Qaeda is an ideological confrontation. The best way to proceed is to ally ourselves with the majority of Muslims who abhor violence, who make reliable Partners in Peace, against the violent minority. [for more on this point, go here]

All in all, thanks is due to RAND (and especially to Seth G. Jones and Martin C. Libicki, the authors of the report) for a work that lifts the deliberations about how to end terrorism to a new level. It is at this level that we must find new ways to fight terrorism.

 

Amitai Etzioni is Professor of International Relations at The George Washington University and author of Security First (Yale 2007). www.securityfirstbook.com  email: comnet@gwu.edu

Cost benefit foreign policy?

One might disregard that the New York Times published a savage review of a well-meaning book. However, one cannot ignore — especially as we about to face a changing of the guards — a call for a foreign policy that ignores moral considerations and is built on costs and benefits. Killing people is very often much more efficient than helping them build a life for themselves, but helping people is clearly the right course, and happens to be what the book at issue calls for.

The book is A Path Out of the Desert by Kenneth M Pollack, the head of research of the center for Middle East policy at Brookings. Granted, Pollack’s record is not without blemishes. His previous book made a case for invading Iraq, which by now most agree was at best the right war in the wrong country. And his current book is sociologically naïve to the nth  degree. Pollack believes that a sort of Marshal Plan for the Middle East could provide jobs, education, and political reforms for the region, which in turn would drain the swamp in which terrorism breeds. However, the record shows that the conditions in the Middle East make such efforts much more difficult to advance than they were in Germany and Japan after WWII. In addition, terrorists and their supporters are more numerous in nations that have a higher level of income and education than in those with low ones. I do believe that we should provide help to nations for humanitarian reasons,  although the Middle East is swimming in oil revenue and hardly needs our cash. However, to expect that such foreign aid will stop terrorism is simply a profoundly mistaken notion.

None of this, however, justifies the kind of abusive barrages Max Rodenbeck, a reporter for The Economist, unleashes on the book and on its author. Among the nicest things Rodenbeck has to say about the book is that it’s full of errors and “outdated generalizations,” and that it’s “disingenuous” and offers false or misleading assertions.  Pollack is said to have “a shaky grasp of history”; he is “oddly unaware of history’s motivating forces,” and makes “absurdly cockeyed assertions.”

Only in the last lines of the review does Max Rodenbeck himself become clear about that which troubles him—what he labels the United States’ “strategically burdensome” support of Israel which is “driven by the passion of several domestic constituencies” rather then “cold cost-benefit geopolitics.” Even if one accepts for a moment the notion that there is such a thing as “cold cost-benefit” foreign policy, it would suggest that abandoning Israel, after decades of close alliance, would undermine the already shaken confidence of whatever allies the US has left. The US just demonstrated in Georgia how meaningless its declarations of support for are. The Bush Administration repeatedly declared that “we shall stand with Georgia” but in effect has shown itself to be powerless to do anything meaningful about protecting it. (I am not arguing that the US should have rushed to Georgia’s defense, only that it should not promise support which it cannot back up with action). If Israel would be left to the same fate, it is hard to see that Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Taiwan, or any other nation would still consider the US a viable ally.

More profoundly, public life at home and overseas cannot be disassociated from moral considerations. People are not willing to die for whatever cost-benefit analyses determine should be paid for. They are willing to sacrifice their lives for the promotion of human rights and democratic freedoms, to stop an ethnic cleansing in Kosovo because it is morally reprehensible, even if it does not have oil or serve any other strategic interest of the US. The US saved Europe from the Nazis at huge human costs, although it could quite readily have retreated behind its borders.  I am not saying that nations do not or should not pay mind to their narrowly defined interests. I am merely suggesting, as have many others, that in this day and age doing what is right also plays a key role in shaping a nation’s foreign policy. Anybody who does not understand this most basic fact of contemporary international life should not call others ignorant.   

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Micro-blogging
Rodenbeck is not alone. Don Wycliff refers, in the May 23, 2008 issue of Commonweal, to a "daily diet of images of [Israeli] soldiers shooting at [Palestinian] rock-throwers and of homes being bulldozed." Actually such confrontations have become extremely rare. Better yet, Hamas has stopped attacking Israel with missiles for now and Israel has ceased killing militants in Gaza.

Bush’s legacy: a new mess

Bush is reported to be in the legacy building phase. Having ignored the Israeli-Palestinian conflict for most of his administration, the President wants a quickie peace deal as part of his legacy. It is not going to happen. Instead he has generated a new, major mess in Georgia that he will leave on the doorstep of the next administration.

Bush started by allowing the transfer of huge amounts of wealth to Russia and other oil exporting countries by not doing anything meaningful to promote energy independence. Russia used these billons of dollars to fix some of what ailed its economy and to start rebuilding its military. Then Bush provoked Russia by calling for Georgia to be invited to become a member of NATO. Russia has been obsessed for hundreds of years with the countries on its borders. (The US would not have been too keen to have Cuba and Mexico join the Russia dominated Warsaw Pact either.) And that is the least of it.

Being the one-move chess player that he is (a club of those who make a move without considering what their opponent will next do, or how they are going to deal with that response), President Bush sacrificed major American priorities for nothing. The US has a very keen interest in curbing the nuclear arming of Iran. Russian cooperation is essential if Iran is going to be swayed. After the Georgian provocation, forget it. Also forget about meaningful sanctions being imposed on Iran, as Russia will no longer play ball. And it is now extremely unlikely that it will even support UN resolutions that might encourage Iran (maybe) to resolve this matter amicably. Maybe most troubling is that the confrontation may make it more difficult to accelerate the Nunn-Lugar projects that ensure that fissile material, from which nukes can be made, will be blended down or better secured.

Wait, the administration, which is so good at starting conflicts but has no clue how to finish them, is still not done. It also had to demonstrate to the world what a paper tiger the US—with its overstretched, exhausted military—has become. So Bush, Cheney, Rice and McCain all mounted soap boxes to declare that the US “will stand with Georgia” and that “Russian aggression must not go unanswered” and that Russia must retreat. But Russia largely ignored all these proclamations as it is all too obvious that there is precious little the US can do about making them stick.

Various neocons have suggested that the US kick Russia out of the G8 or block its entry to the WTO, or that the US should boycott the 2014 Winter Olympics—moves that would hurt the US at least as much as Russia, and most of which are unlikely to be implemented and clearly trouble Russia much less than finding NATO forces on its borders.

About the only rationale one can conjure up for this piece of the Bush legacy is the misbegotten neocon theory that the US ought to democratize the world because democracies do not attack each other, and hence they are the only reliable partners in peace. Georgia is a democracy and hence deserves our defense, they say. Well, it turns out that there is not much we can do to help Georgia. And our basic security matters most, and this is tied to preventing terrorists from getting their hands on nukes. Thus, in the vain pursuit of an elusive goal we are undermining one that can be achieved, as Russia has no deep reason to object to enhanced nuclear safety.

In short, here is the last chapter of the Bush legacy, as if we did not have enough: Another front which most likely will continue to fester well after he is gone; an increased threat of the spread of nuclear arms; another demonstration of the reduced US status and credibility as a superpower.
Let’s pray that Bush is done and not seeking to add still more notches to his tattered belt.

Amitai Etzioni is Professor of International Relations at The George Washington University. For more discussion, see his book: Security First (Yale, 2007) or www.securityfirstbook.com  email: comnet@gwu.edu

Green the Public Square

The next president should include in his agenda the greening of all public facilities within 3 years. Such greening should be required of all federal facilities (from office buildings to prisons, from courts to military bases), and of all corporations that receive substantial amounts of federal funds in grants or contracts (e.g., Halliburton and Boeing). The same should be strongly urged for all state and local government facilities, for other public agencies (e.g., the nation’s 35,000 school boards), and for the hundreds of thousands of not-for-profit organizations, such as the Gates, Ford, and Rockefeller foundations.

Granted, some public agencies already participate in some greening measures, but it’s sporadic and not on a national level.

The greening of the public square should apply to all new facilities and tools (e.g., all new buildings should be required to meet basic green standards, all new vehicles to meet higher and rising CAFE standards, etc.) as well as to the retrofitting of old ones (through improved insulation, green roofs and so on). It should encompass both conservation (e.g., by turning off computers at night and on weekends and holidays) and requirements to purchase power from alternative, renewable sources (say, electricity produced by windmills rather than oil).
   
The greening of the public square would be self-financing. The initial outlays would be provided by special bonds to be issued by a new greening authority. Those who receive the funds will be required to pay them back with interest by turning over half the savings they gain as a result of greening, until the funds and interest due have been repaid.

Such greening is for the common good to the fifth degree. Environmentalists have already pointed out (albeit not in these exact words) that green acts are winners to the fourth degree. They reduce our dependence on foreign oil; generate jobs at home; improve the climate; and stimulate our research and development, a major engine of a strong economy that is especially well-suited for the American place in the global economy. I add only that the greening of the public square also creates a powerful and reliable demand for new or improved green products by securing a mass market for them. Take the example of vehicles that are much more energy efficient than existing ones. To develop such vehicles requires a major outlay. If there is no secure and sizable market for such vehicles, car manufacturers and investors will be reluctant to make such investments. If, however, they knew that all new vehicles purchased by millions of public entities in the future would be required to meet ever higher CAFE standards, such investments would become much less risky. Moreover, such an ensured mass market would reduce the unit cost for the private sector.

Most discussions of greening focus on the private sector. However, the public sector is the best place to rush greening forward. It is much more amenable to national guidance than the private sector.

In short, there is much to be gained from greening the public square. The main losers would be the adversaries who are confronting us from Latin America to Eastern Europe, drawing on the funds and political leverage sky-high oil prices have granted them. That is, such greening provides yet another “win”: more funds in our pockets, less in the hands of those who do not particularly love us.

Hispanics went missing in Denver

Hispanics now outnumber blacks in the USA, but they were practically invisible during the Democratic Convention in Denver.  Only one speaker during the primetime slots was Hispanic, and he did not speak to Hispanic issues.  Otherwise, though the convention started slowly, it kept improving and by the end, it soared. The Obama campaign may well have some good explanation for this neglect of Hispanics.  Hence, it may not need to say “sorry,” but it had better make amends. 

In recent days, new census findings further document what social scientists have known for years- that minorities are rapidly becoming the majority. The Census Bureau calculates that by 2042, Americans who identify themselves as Hispanic, black, Asian, American Indian, Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander will together outnumber non-Hispanic whites. However, lost in this summary overview is that one group has accounted for much of this population growth in the recent past and will do even more so in the future. By 2050, Hispanics will account for 30% of Americans, compared to 15% today.  In comparison, blacks will increase only from 13% to 15%, and Asians will increase from 5% to 9%. 

In political terms, African Americans have been mobilized for decades.  They had, and currently have, a large number and variety of leaders of national presence, culminating in the nomination of Barack Obama.  Hispanics are just beginning to find their political legs.  Many of them are still new to this country, and like many first generation immigrants, they focus on finding their way and on local affairs. However, with each election their votes have become more important.  Moreover, while most African Americans tend to vote Democratic, and surely will do so this year, Hispanics must be won over if more of them are to vote for Obama. 

During the Democratic Convention in Denver, only one Hispanic person, Governor Richardson, was given a prime spot.  (Gov. Kaine of Virginia threw in two lines in Spanish).  Other speakers courted the unions, spoke of Israel, expressed concern for gay rights, and so on, but little voice was given to the issues that trouble Hispanics.  This is especially regrettable, as the relationship between African Americans and Latinos is, let’s just say, complex. 

The Obama campaign may well say that the large number of African American speakers, introducers, and endorsers was due to the special nature of the day-- the 45th anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.s “I Have a Dream” speech -- and that they were speaking for all Americans and not just for their race.  Fair enough. But the convention was mindful of special concerns of other groups, and hence the campaign should make amends. 

Let’s have one or more occasions in which we hear from a variety of Hispanics on what their version of the American dream is.