An Unlikely Mentor

Freddie & Me:   A Book Review  

A good friend recently gave me a very entertaining and inspiring book entitled Freddie & Me.   The book is about a black man who became the unlikely mentor for a young white boy who was the son of a well-respected doctor and who lived in an affluent neighborhood in Augusta, Georgia.  The book’s author is Tripp Bowden, who wrote the book in remembrance and in honor of his friend and mentor Freddie Bennett.    

Freddie was the long-time and legendary Caddie Master at the exclusive and world-famous Augusta National Golf Club, which is the home of the Masters Golf Tournament.   Tripp’s father, Dr. Joe Bowden, was Freddie’s doctor and friend.   

One day, when Tripp was ten years old, Freddie stopped by the Bowden home for a brief visit with Dr. Bowden.   Freddie asked Tripp if he would like to go fishing, and Tripp accepted the invitation.   The first fishing trip was the beginning of a close relationship that continued until Freddie’s death many years later.  

Freddie & Me is a fun and easy book to read, but it is also an important book because it reveals the wisdom that an older black man was able to share with his young white friend.   Freddie believed in hard work, personal responsibility and respect for others regardless of age, race or social standing.    Young Tripp soaked up everything that Freddie said and in the process learned many valuable life lessons.   

When Tripp was 14, Freddie offered him his first job as a “forecaddy” at the Masters Golf Tournament.   A forecaddy’s job is to fix a player’s ball marks and sweep sand off the green with a fiberglass pole.   Later, after Tripp had graduated from college, he didn’t know what to do with his life.  He didn’t want to be a teacher, but he didn’t feel qualified to do anything else after majoring in English and philosophy.   Freddie came to Tripp’s rescue by offering him a position as a caddy at the Augusta National Golf Course.  Tripp became the first full-time white caddy in the history of the private club.    His fellow black caddies referred to him as “White Boy” or “Little Doc.”  

Freddie continued to take care of Tripp by giving him advice about how to do his job and about life in general.    He told Tripp he would have the opportunity to meet some of the most powerful men in the world and encouraged him to develop relationships with the men who were using him as a caddy.    Freddie repeatedly reminded Tripp he couldn’t caddy forever and needed to make plans for the rest of his life.   “What’cha gonna do with your life, man?   Can’t caddy forever, you know.”  

Freddie had the unique ability to communicate his homespun wisdom to Tripp with snappy simple phrases.  Tripp refers to Freddie’s favorite sayings as Freddie-isms.   Some of my favorites include the following:  “Ever wonder why a dog chases a car when he knows he can’t drive it.”  “Seen a lot of things in my day, but I ain’t never seen no hearse with a luggage rack.”   “You ain’t gonna change the future if you don’t know the past.”    “A little tip goes a long way, but a big tip goes forever.  And forever is a mighty long time.”   “No matter the situation, there is always going to be somebody better off than you, and always somebody worse off.”  “Don’t ever tell anybody to lay up on the chance of a lifetime.”    “Even the best golfer in the world isn’t as perfect as he might appear.  You ain’t gotta be perfect to succeed.”   “Not all history is in books, you know.”    

Of all the things Freddie taught Tripp, which ones were the most important?   Tripp’s answer is contained near the end of Freddie & Me.    “It’s never too late to show your appreciation, never to late to make a wrong situation right.  It’s never too late to say ‘thank you.’”  

As Freddie planned, the opportunity to caddy at Augusta National led to opportunities for Tripp.   Ultimately, an advertising executive who Tripp met on the golf course offered him a position with a large advertising firm on Madison Avenue in New York City.    After spending some time in New York, Tripp joined a public relations firm in Atlanta.   He now owns his own advertising company and lives in Augusta.  

Freddie was Tripp’s unlikely mentor.   A mentor is a trusted friend, counselor, or teacher who provides advice and guidance to someone who generally is younger and less experienced.   My dictionary defines a mentor as “a trusted counselor or guide” and as a “tutor” or “coach.”   The word mentor comes from a character named Mentor in Homer’s story The Odyssey.   According to the story, when Odysseus, the King of Ithaca, left home to fight the Trojan War, he asked his friend, Mentor, to care for his son while he was away.   The word mentor has been used ever since to refer generally to anyone who provides advice and guidance to another over an extended period of time.   

A good mentor is had to find.   The world would be a better place if more young people had someone like Freddie Bennett to help guide them along the way.   

Freddie & Me is well worth the time it takes to read it if for no other reason than to enjoy the Freddie-isms and to think about the wisdom behind them.    I am not a golfer, but you don’t have to be a golfer to enjoy Freddie & Me.   I recommend it for anyone who needs both inspiration and entertainment combined with a heavy dose of good old common sense, which seems to be in short supply these days.    

Help Wanted

Help Wanted:    A major financial organization is seeking an experienced executive to serve as chief executive officer.    The ideal candidate will have extensive experience and a proven record of success in the financial industry, will be willing to accept a salary and benefit package that will be substantially less than the compensation and benefit packages normally provided to chief executive officers of similar companies, will have limited authority to develop and implement the short- and long-term strategies for the organization, and will be willing to testify in televised hearings before Committees of the United States Congress and accept blame for policies forced upon the organization by the executive or legislative branches of the United States Government.    All persons wishing to apply for this position should send their resumes to President Barak Obama, 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, Washington, D.C. 

If you had the qualifications and experience for the position described above, would you be interested in applying for it?   If your answer is no, then you are not alone.  Even at a time when many experienced financial executives have lost their jobs, it seems that candidates are not lining up outside the White House to apply for positions with the various financial organizations now owned or controlled by the United States Government. 

Let’s take the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corp., which is better known as Freddie Mac.  Freddie Mac is one of the financial institutions taken over by the government.   The current Chairman of Freddie Mac is John Koskinen, who is also serving as the interim chief executive office and the interim chief financial officer because both of those positions are vacant.   The position of chief operating officer is also vacant.   Mr Koskinen has a very difficult job.   His most difficult assignment is finding qualified candidates who are willing to serve as chief executive officer, chief operating officer, and chief financial officer.   Mr. Koskinen is being paid $290,000 a year for serving as Chairman of Freddie Mac, but he is not receiving any extra compensation for serving on an interim basis as chief executive officer and chief financial officer.    

The Wall Street Journal this week cited several reasons why the vacant positions at Freddie Mac are difficult to fill.   One reason is that the pay will be “comparatively modest.”    Another is that federal regulators “now have veto rights over major decisions.”   One former Wall Street executive told The Wall Street Journal that he was approached about the CEO position at Freddie Mac but declined because he envisioned working for minimal pay while getting “raked over the coals” by lawmakers for matters beyond his control.   Another experienced executive declined the position because he felt he couldn’t “move the dial” at the company in the face of significant government intervention.  

Mr. Koskinen agreed to become Chairman of Freddie Mac last year out of a sense of civic responsibility.    He became interim CEO in March of this year when the then CEO, David Moffett, resigned after only six months on the job because of his frustration with government control.   He became the interim CFO in April when the then CFO, David Kellermann, tragically committed suicide after serving in the CFO position for approximately eight months.   Of course, it is impossible to know why someone chooses to commit suicide.   In an article published on April 22, 2009, The New York Times reported that Mr. Kellermann had been working nonstop and had told friends “it seemed impossible to appease everyone—regulators, lawmakers, investors and other executives—given their competing demands.”   Mr. Kellerman was also despondent because he and others had become the focus of intense scrutiny over bonuses that had been promised to them.   The New York Times reported that reporters and camera crews had descended on Mr. Kellermann’s house in an affluent suburb of Washington, D.C. in their effort to get a story about Mr. Kellermann’s bonus.   Mr. Kellermann’s wife reportedly was concerned about her safety as a result of the unwanted attention her husband was receiving. 

Similar problems have surfaced at other financial institutions owned or controlled by the government.   The Federal National Mortgage Association, which is better known as Fannie Mae, has had three CEOs since the government took control of the company last September.   After taking control, the government immediately replaced Daniel H. Mudd, who had served as CEO since 2005.   Then Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson persuaded Herbert M. Allison, Jr., who had previously retired after a distinguished career as a financial executive, to become the new CEO of Fannie Mae.  Like Mr. Koskinen with Freddie Mac, Mr. Allison accepted the position as Fannie Mae’s CEO out of sense of civic responsibility.   A few months later, Mr. Allison was moved to the Treasury Department to run the government’s financial bailout efforts.   The government then named Michael J. Williams as the third CEO of Fannie Mae in less than a year.   Mr. Williams, who had been employed by Fannie Mae since 1991, did not get a pay raise upon his promotion to CEO.   He does not have the authority to make any major decisions without the government’s approval.  

CEOWORLD Magazine asked Mr. Mudd, the former CEO, if he made any mistakes while running Fannie Mae.   Mr. Mudd responded, “I wish I’d said no to more of the things the company was asked to do.  We were asked—or required—to expand lending, to conserve capital while providing liquidity, to meet housing goals for the underserved, to serve shareholders and homeowners alike. … I wish I had gone to the government and gotten a clear answer to the question:  What do you want: more capital or more lending?”

Then there is American International Group, Inc., or AIG, which is also now owned and controlled by the government.   Edward M. Liddy, another experienced financial executive, was drafted last year to serve as CEO of AIG after the government took control of AIG.   He agreed to take the job for $1 per year.  Mr. Liddy now wants out, and the sooner the better.    He has submitted his resignation to be effective as soon as his successor can be found, which won’t be easy.   In an article dated May 22, 2009, The New York Times said, “Mr. Liddy took the job of chairman and chief executive of the insurer as a form of public service, but he ended up being castigated by members of Congress who seemed unable to separate him from the financial turmoil he was brought in to calm.”    In an interview with The Wall Street Journal, Mr. Liddy discussed his testimony before Congress regarding the payment of bonuses that had been promised by AIG before Mr. Liddy became CEO.    Mr. Liddy said, “Except for the day my mother died four or five years ago, it was probably the worst day of my life.” 

Do you see a pattern here?   No good deed goes unpunished.   The government brings in a civic-minded executive who is willing to work for little or no pay to clean up a mess caused in part by government policies.    Members of Congress then publicly castigate the civic-minded executive while refusing to take any responsibility for their role in creating the problems the executive is trying to solve. 

Is it any wonder that ten large banks this week couldn’t wait to repay $68 billion of federal bailout funds?     The ten banks repaid the government bailout loans in order to get out from under the government’s thumb.    Many of the banks had been forced to accept the government loans against their will.    Ironically, during the same week the banks repaid the bailout funds, the Obama Administration announced extensive new regulations to which the banks will be subject in the future.    President Obama’s “compensation czar” will also be keeping an eye on the banks even though they have repaid the government loans.  

There is no doubt some financial companies have made serious mistakes that have contributed to the current financial crisis.   There also is no doubt many of these same companies paid excessive and even obscene compensation to their senior executives.   For me, however, I would have more confidence about the future if the government would allow these companies to fix their own problems rather than subjecting them to increased government control.   When the government gets involved, bureaucrats and politicians who have never run so much as a hotdog stand are doomed to make every mistake possible. 

Many years ago, I read an article entitled “Hire People You Can’t Afford.”   The article, which was written by John Malmo, Chairman of Archer-Malmo Advertising, Inc., was designed to provide advice to new entrepreneurs.   Mr. Malmo wrote, “The very first time you have to hire somebody to help, you hire cheap.  Because you’re probably poor.  So you hire the only people you think you can afford.  It takes a year or two to find out you can’t afford the people you could afford.  You’re working harder with them than you were without them, because you’re doing your job and their jobs, and you’re paying them, to boot. …. You have to do this at least twice before you realize that the only people you can afford are the people you didn’t think you could afford.”    Mr. Malmo added that a sure road to success for an entrepreneur “is to make it a point to always try to hire only people you think are better than you are, or at least have the potential to be better than you.”   He could have added that after hiring these people you should give them the freedom to do the job you hired them to do. 

Successful businesses are not run by politicians or by people who are hired by politicians to do whatever the politicians want them to do.   Mr. Malmo in his article observed, “It’s hard to remember a company chock full of talented, smart and motivated people that failed.”     Unfortunately, many “talented, smart and motivated people” are not willing to work for a business owned or controlled by the government.   Our recent history shows it does not take long for a talented person who agrees to work for a business owned or controlled by the government to get frustrated and resign.    

A Letter to President Obama

Occasionally, I like to share with readers of my blog an article, letter, or story written by someone else.    Today is one of those days.    A friend sent me a copy of a letter written to President Obama by Louis A. Pritchett, who is a former Vice President of Procter & Gamble Co.   Mr. Pritchett worked for Proctor & Gamble for 36 years before retiring in 1989.   He is a motivational speaker and the author of a business book published in 1995 entitled Stop Paddling & Start Rocking the Boat:  Business Lessons from the School of Hard Knocks.   The book jacket describes the book as being “about learning from your mistakes and savoring your triumphs, mastering your weaknesses and fortifying your strengths.  It’s about initiating and sustaining a ‘love affair’ with your customers and your own employees.”   

Here is the text of Mr. Pritchett’s open letter to President Obama: 

Dear President Obama: 

You are the thirteenth President under whom I have lived and unlike any of the others, you truly scare me. 

You scare me because after months of exposure, I know nothing about you. 

You scare me because I do not know how you paid for your expensive Ivy League education and your upscale lifestyle and housing with no visible signs of support. 

You scare me because you did not spend the formative years of youth growing up in America and culturally you are not an American. 

You scare me because you have never run a company or met a payroll. 

You scare me because you have never had military experience, thus don't understand it at its core. 

You scare me because you lack humility and 'class', always blaming others. 

You scare me because for over half your life you have aligned yourself with radical extremists who hate America and you refuse to publicly denounce these radicals who wish to see America fail. 

You scare me because you are a cheerleader for the 'blame America' crowd and deliver this message abroad. 

You scare me because you want to change America to a European style country where the government sector dominates instead of the private sector. 

You scare me because you want to replace our health care system with a government controlled one. 

You scare me because you prefer 'wind mills' to responsibly capitalizing on our own vast oil, coal and shale reserves. 

You scare me because you want to kill the American capitalist goose that lays the golden egg which provides the highest standard of living in the world. 

You scare me because you have begun to use 'extortion' tactics against certain banks and corporations. 

You scare me because your own political party shrinks from challenging you on your wild and irresponsible spending proposals. 

You scare me because you will not openly listen to or even consider opposing points of view from intelligent people. 

You scare me because you falsely believe that you are both omnipotent and omniscient. 

You scare me because the media gives you a free pass on everything you do. 

You scare me because you demonize and want to silence the Limbaughs, Hannitys, O'Relllys and Becks who offer opposing, conservative points of view. 

You scare me because you prefer controlling over governing.
 

Finally, you scare me because if you serve a second term I will probably not feel safe in writing a similar letter in 8 years. 

Lou Pritchett 

Mr. Pritchett confirmed to Snopes.com that he is the author of the above letter.  He said he sent the letter to The New York Times, which not surprisingly neither acknowledged nor published it. 

I hope Mr. Pritchett has a good lawyer and accountant who are standing by to represent him in connection with his upcoming audit by the Internal Revenue Service.   

The Truth Hurts

Have you ever known someone who was in the process of self-destruction?   Perhaps the person was drinking too much, using drugs, neglecting his or her family, failing to meet the expectations of his or her employer, studying too little, or otherwise ignoring his or her responsibilities or acting in an irresponsible manner.    

An individual who is in the process of self-destruction generally does not like to hear the truth about his or her failings.  The truth always hurts, but the truth needs to be told.    Some people will be more receptive to hearing the truth when the message is delivered by a friend or family member.   Others will be more receptive when a stranger delivers the message.  In many cases, the initial response to the message will be denial that a problem exists.   The goal, however, is that the message will serve as a “wake-up call” to the person receiving it and that he or she will respond by taking corrective action instead of continuing down the path of self-destruction.    

What happens when a country is moving in the wrong direction and is in the process of self-destruction?   Who should deliver the wake-up call to those who have the power to change the direction of the country and thereby avoid the problems that could lead to the country’s destruction?  

In my opinion, the United States of America needs a wake-up call.    Unfortunately, politicians who are in power are not receptive when politicians who are out of power complain about the direction of the country.   Most politicians have no credibility because they are expected to complain about the actions of the opposing political party regardless of what is at stake.   Complaints by those who are members of the minority political party are dismissed as being purely political rants, which they usually are.   In our current highly partisan political environment, any attempt by a politician or by someone with a strong political ideology to deliver a wake-up call will be ignored.   

Perhaps what we need is a series of wake-up calls delivered by observers outside the United States who are not involved in our internal political battles.   I don’t know whether anyone will pay attention, but we have recently received at least three such wake-up calls from outside observers.   

One wake-up call came yesterday from Venezuela President Hugo Chavez.    Let me make it clear I don’t have any respect for Chavez.   He is a Marxist who is doing great damage to Venezuela.   During the last decade, he has nationalized most of Venezuela’s key industries, including the oil industry, the telecommunications industry, and the banks.   Nevertheless, I think we should pay attention when Chavez says he and his Cuban ally, Fidel Castro, could end up being more conservative than President Barak Obama.  

According to a news report from Reuters, Chavez, perhaps jokingly, said, “Hey, Obama has just nationalized nothing more and nothing less than General Motors.  Comrade Obama!  Fidel, careful or we are going to end up to his right.”  

German Chancellor Angela Merkel also delivered a wake-up call of her own.   According to a report in yesterday’s edition of The Wall Street Journal, Ms. Merkel said the Federal Reserve Bank and its counterpart in Europe, the European Central Bank, have gone too far in fighting the financial crisis and may be laying the groundwork for another financial blowup.   Ms. Merkel called for a return to more independent central banks that are free of political pressure and that avoid extensive intervention in the economy.  

The biggest wake-up call came from a Russian columnist writing in a Russian newspaper.  The Russian newspaper Pravda recently published a column by Stanislav Mishin entitled “American Capitalism Gone With a Whimper.”    In the column, Mr. Mishin said “the American decent into Marxism is happening with breath-taking speed” against the backdrop of a “passive, hapless” American public.    In essence, Mr. Mishin believes the American people are surrendering their freedoms and their souls.   He provides the following three reasons for America’s “decent into Marxism”:  

(1)  “[T]he population was dumbed down through a politicized and substandard education system based on pop culture, rather than the classics.  Americans know more about their favorite TV dramas than the drama in DC that directly affects their lives.”   

(2)  The American people’s “faith in God was destroyed, until their churches, all tens of thousands of different ‘branches and denominations’ were for the most part little more than Sunday circuses and their televangelists and top protestant mega preachers were more than happy to sell out their souls and flocks to be on the ‘winning’ side of one pseudo Marxist politician or another. … Even our Holy Orthodox churches are scandalously liberalized in America.” 

(3)   “The final collapse has come with the election of Barack Obama. His speed in the past three months has been truly impressive.   His spending and money printing has been a record setting, not just in America's short history but in the world.   If this keeps up for more than another year, and there is no sign that it will not, America at best will resemble the Wiemar Republic and at worst Zimbabwe.”

Mr. Mishin said it “should be no surprise” that President Obama and a group of his “unelected, chosen stooges will now redesign the entire automotive industry and will even be the guarantee of automobile policies.”   He added that Prime Minister Putin warned President Obama “not to follow the path of Marxism, it only leads to disaster.”   But he then observes that “we know nothing, as foolish, drunken Russians, so let our ‘wise’ Anglo-Saxon fools find out the folly of their own pride.”

Mr. Mishin observes that the members of the U.S. Congress have responded to recent developments by putting “up little more than a whimper to their masters.”  Likewise, “the American public has taken this with barely a whimper.”    He concludes by saying, “The proud American will go down into his slavery without a fight, beating his chest and proclaiming to the world how free he really is.  The world will only snicker.”

You can read Mr. Mishin’s column in its entirety by clicking on the link below:

http://english.pravda.ru/opinion/columnists/107459-0/ 

These three wake-up calls do not represent new insights into the current direction of our country.  Republican politicians and conservative commentators have made similar observations during the last several months.   Their observations have been disregarded because of the highly partisan nature of our current political environment.   It may be time to start paying attention, however, when comments such as those mentioned above are being made by a Venezuelan dictator, a German Chancellor, and a Russian columnist.   The truth hurts.  Is anyone listening to the wake-up call?     

The Making of a Supreme Court Justice

One of my personal heroes is Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas.   I like and respect Justice Thomas for several reasons.  First, he defied all the odds.   He was born in rural Georgia in 1948 into a life of deep poverty and discrimination against black people.   Although the deck was stacked against him, he never gave up and—through hard work and determination—rose to become one of the nine Justices on the U.S. Supreme Court.   Second, Justice Thomas is an independent thinker.    He is a black conservative, which makes him very unpopular with liberals, who expect all members of various ethnic and minority groups to act and think alike.   Finally, I have had the opportunity to hear Justice Thomas speak on several occasions, and I have had brief conversations with him on two occasions.    He has a warm and genuine personality, and he demonstrates sincere interest in other people and in their individual life stories.  

Justice Thomas has told his own life story in his own words in a book entitled My Grandfather’s Son, which was published in 2007.    My Grandfather’s Son is one of the most interesting and inspiring books I have ever read.    It tells the story of how young Clarence was raised by his grandparents after his father left his mother and his mother was unable to raise her two sons.  The grandparents who raised Clarence and his brother were extremely strict and had a strong work ethic and high moral values.    As a child and teenager, Clarence resented the discipline imposed on him by his grandfather, and he spent much of his adult life estranged from the man who taught him the values he now cherishes.   

Justice Thomas grew up as a devout Catholic and attended Catholic schools in Savannah, Georgia.   His grandparents made him work on a farm in the summers so he would not get in trouble hanging out with other young black men on the streets of Savannah.   As a teenager, he wanted to become a Catholic priest, and he became the first black student to attend Saint John Vianney, a minor Catholic seminary located near Savannah that also served as a high school.   Although poor, his grandfather agreed to pay the tuition ($400 a year) to allow his grandson to attend Saint John on two conditions.   The first was, “If you go, you have to stay.  You can’t quit.”   The second was, “Don’t shame me—and don’t shame our race.”   

After graduating from Saint John, Justice Thomas entered Immaculate Conception Seminary in Missouri, although he was already having second thoughts about the priesthood.   When he decided to drop out of the seminary, Justice Thomas had to face his grandfather.  It was not a pleasant experience, and it was the beginning of an unfortunate estrangement between Justice Thomas and the man who had raised him.        

After dropping out of the Catholic seminary, Justice Thomas attended and graduated from the College of Holy Cross and Yale Law School.   Despite facing discrimination in the job market, he continued to defy the odds and developed a successful legal career, which included his nomination in 1991 by the first President Bush for a seat on the U.S. Supreme Court.   After a very difficult and nasty confirmation hearing before the U.S. Senate, President Bush’s appointment of Justice Thomas was confirmed by a vote of 52 to 48, with most of the Democrats in the Senate voting against confirmation.   Justice Thomas discusses the confirmation hearing and responds to the allegations against him in My Grandfather’s Son.   It’s a great book.  I highly recommend it.  

There are many parallels between the life of Justice Thomas and the life of Judge Sonia Sotomayer, who was nominated this week by President Obama to fill the most recent vacancy on the U.S. Supreme Court.  Like Justice Thomas, Judge Sotomayer has an inspiring life story.   She also has defied the odds.   She grew up in a poor family living in a public housing project in the Bronx borough of New York.  Her parents were from Puerto Rico.  Like Justice Thomas, she faced discrimination as a Hispanic living in a predominately white society.   Judge Sotomayer was diagnosed with childhood diabetes at age 8, and her father died when she was 9.   Her mother was left with the responsibility of raising Judge Sotomayer and her brother under very difficult circumstances.  

Like Justice Thomas, Judge Sotomayer attended a Catholic high school.    Through her hard work and determination, she earned a scholarship to Princeton University and later graduated from Yale Law School, the same law school attended by Justice Thomas.   After law school, Judge Sotomayer worked as an assistant district attorney and as an attorney with a law firm before being nominated by the first President Bush to serve on the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York.   Ironically, the same Republican President appointed Justice Thomas to serve on the U.S. Supreme Court and Judge Sotomayer to serve on the U.S. District Court.   In 1998, President Clinton elevated Judge Sotomayer to a seat on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit.   

Another parallel between Justice Thomas and Judge Sotomayer is that race and politics both played major roles in their respective nominations to the Supreme Court.    When he nominated Justice Thomas to the Supreme Court, the first President Bush was under heavy pressure to appoint someone who was black because he was filling a vacancy created by the resignation of Thurgood Marshall, the first black Supreme Court Justice.   Likewise, President Obama was under heavy pressure from his liberal supporters to appoint a woman and from his Hispanic supporters to appoint a Hispanic to fill the current vacancy on the Supreme Court.   With Judge Sotomayer’s nomination, President Obama was able to please everyone except conservatives, who were not going to be happy regardless of whom he had appointed.   He was also able to create serious problems for conservative Republicans in the Senate who would like to oppose her nomination but who cannot afford to alienate the Hispanic community.  

It is regrettable—but also a fact of life—that race, gender, and ethnicity frequently are more important than merit in today’s political environment.   I am not suggesting Justice Thomas and Judge Sotomayer are not qualified to serve on the Supreme Court.    I doubt seriously, however, if either one would have received the appointment if the goal had been to select the most qualified person to serve on the nation’s highest court.        

Despite the parallels, there are many differences between Justice Thomas and Judge Sotomayer.    The most obvious is that Justice Thomas is a conservative who believes it is the role of judges to interpret rather than make the law, and Judge Sotomayer is a liberal who believes the law must be interpreted in light of changes in the contemporary society and culture.  Justice Thomas believes the Constitution and the laws adopted by legislative bodies must be interpreted as they were written—not as judges think they should have been written.   He believes he is required to interpret the law in a neutral manner without regard to his personal feelings and without regard to the interests that may be before him.  Judge Sotomayer has a more activist approach to judicial decision-making.   President Obama has consistently said he wanted to appoint judges who would be sympathetic and empathic to those whose cases they were considering.    He has found just such a person in Judge Sotomayer.   On numerous occasions, she has said she cannot ignore her personal feelings as a woman and as a Hispanic.   

Justice Thomas acknowledges it is difficult for judges to ignore their personal feelings and to be impartial, but he insists this is their obligation and should be their goal.  In a lecture last year at the Manhattan Institute, Justice Thomas said, “No matter how ingenious, imaginative or artfully put, unless interpretative methodologies are tied to the original intent of the framers, they have no more basis in the Constitution than the latest football scores.  To be sure, even the most conscientious effort to adhere to the original intent of the framers of our Constitution is flawed, as all methodologies and human institutions are; but at least originalism has the advantage of being legitimate and, I might add, impartial.”  

Judge Sotomayer does not apologize for letting her personal feelings affect her decisions.   Within the last few days, some of her statements regarding her judicial philosophy have been widely quoted by the media.   In October 2001, she said, “I would hope a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion [as a judge] than a white male who hasn’t lived that life.”   She has acknowledged that her decisions are affected by her experiences as a women and as a person of color.   In February 2005, Judge Sotomayer even said the “Court of Appeals is where policy is made” before backtracking after realizing she had put her foot in her mouth.  

In a nutshell, Judge Sotomayer embraces her gender and her ethnicity and acknowledges she is unable to be a purely objective arbiter of the cases before her.   This is what President Obama wanted, and this appears to be what he got with her nomination.   Justice Thomas, on the other hand, does not believe his personal experiences and preferences should enter into his decisions.  Which judicial philosophy do you prefer?   What type of judge do you want when your case appears before the court?    I suppose your answer depends on whether the judge is going to empathize with you or with your opponent.    For me, I would not feel like I had received justice if I appeared before a judge who empathized with my opponent and as a result did not apply the law in a neutral and unbiased manner.   

The nomination of Judge Sotomayer to the U.S. Supreme Court is just one more reminder that elections have consequences.     If you voted for President Obama, you should be very happy with his nomination of Judge Sotomayer for a seat on the Supreme Court because she appears to be exactly the type of judge President Obama promised to appoint during the campaign.  If you voted against President Obama, you are probably very unhappy—but not surprised—with the appointment because you are getting exactly the type of activist judge you feared in the event of his election.    

A Distasteful Debate

The ongoing debate between liberals and conservatives about how best to protect the country against acts of terrorism is very distasteful to me.   I would like to think this subject is so important that those with different political perspectives could find common ground and could work together to do what is best for the country.    But it is becoming increasingly clear that it is naive to expect politicians to work together even when the goal is to protect the country and save lives.    Instead, politicians cannot resist the opportunity to take jabs at each other and to use every issue, including the subject of national security, to try to score points against their political opponents.   

The debate about how to protect the country against acts of terrorism was in full display yesterday when both President Barak Obama and former Vice President Dick Cheney delivered major speeches on the subject.   I have read the full text of both speeches and encourage you to do so.   You can easily find the full text of both speeches by doing a Google search on the internet.   Reading the speeches in their entirety is much more instructive than listing to sound bites on television or the radio or reading excerpts in the newspaper. 

The two speeches demonstrate clearly that grace and courtesy are no longer objectives for either side when it comes to political disagreements.    Perhaps they never were.   Former Vice President Cheney’s speech clearly violates what I used to think was an unwritten rule that it was inappropriate for former Presidents and Vice Presidents to criticize a sitting President.  Of course, former Vice President Cheney was not the first one to violate this rule.   The protocol against criticizing the sitting President was violated on numerous occasions during the eight years of the Bush Administration by former President Jimmy Carter, former President Bill Clinton, and former Vice President Al Gore.   Do you remember Al Gore screaming at the top of his lungs, “He betrayed this country?”    The protocol died on that day if not before. 

As for President Obama, his speech demonstrates his blatant hypocrisy and his continuing ability to talk out of both sides of his mouth at the same time.   President Obama continues to say he wants to look forward rather than backward.  He said again yesterday he does not want to spend his time “relitigating the policies of the last eight years,” but he then proceeded to criticize virtually every major policy implemented by the Bush Administration to protect the country against terrorism.  It seems that President Obama cannot open his mouth without looking backward and indicting his predecessor.   He is obsessed with disdain for everything that President Bush did.   Yesterday’s speech was full of harsh criticisms of the tactics and techniques used by the Bush Administration to keep the country safe.    President Obama gives no credit to the Bush Administration for actually keeping the country safe.   Even though I do not like the fact that former Vice President Cheney is being so openly critical of the current Administration, I cannot blame him for wanting to defend his record and the record of the Bush Administration in the face of unrelenting criticism from the current President.  

If you read the two speeches, there is only one thing on which President Obama and former Vice President Cheney seem to agree.  They both agree the country still faces a significant threat from terrorists who want to kill Americans.   President Obama said, “We know that al Qaeda is actively planning to attack us again.  We know that this threat will be with us for a long time, and that we must use all elements of our power to defeat it.”   He also said, “Right now, in distant training camps and in crowded cities, there are people plotting to take American lives.  That will be the case a year from now, five years from now, and—in all probability—10 years from now.”   Former Vice President Cheney said, “We understand the pressures that confront a president and his advisers.   Above all, we know what is at stake.   And though administrations and policies have changed, the stakes for American have not changed.”     These comments from two people who have both received highly classified security briefings and who disagree on almost everything imaginable should be chilling to all of us, especially those with short memories who have long forgotten September 11, 2001 and the following days and weeks. 

During last year’s campaign, President Obama promised that, if elected, he would bring a new tone to Washington, D.C.    There was no evidence of a new tone in his speech yesterday.   He maintains that President Bush’s policies “weakened our national security,” “served as a recruitment tool for terrorists,” and “increased the will of our enemies to fight us.”   He said President Bush “went off course,” “made decisions based on fear rather than foresight,” “trimmed facts and evidence to fit ideological predispositions,” and “set back the moral authority that is America’s strongest currency in the world.”   These are only some of President Obama’s accusations against his predecessor.   After making these accusations, President Obama, without realizing the contradiction, observed with remorse that there is a “tendency in Washington to spend our time pointing fingers at one another,” and he then repeated his assertion that an “extended relitigation of the last eight years” will “distract us from focusing our time, our efforts, and our politics on the challenges of the future.”   It takes a smooth politician to criticize what he himself is doing while he is doing it.      

All of us are products of our life experiences.    This is clearly evident in former Vice President Cheney’s speech, which serves as a vivid reminder of the circumstances that existed when the Bush Administration adopted the policies that President Obama is now criticizing.   The former Vice President recalled his personal experience on the morning of 9/11, when he was rushed into a fortified White House command post while the nation was under attack.   With respect to the days following 9/11, former Vice President Cheney said, “We could count on almost universal support back then, because everyone understood the environment we were in.  We’d just been hit by a foreign enemy, leaving 3,000 Americans dead, more than we lost at Pearl Harbor.  In Manhattan, we were staring at 16 acres of ashes.  The Pentagon took a direct hit, and the Capitol or the White House were spared only by the Americans on Flight 93, who died bravely and defiantly.   Everyone expected a follow-on attack, and our job was to stop it.  We didn’t know what was coming next, but everything we did know in the autumn of 2001 looked bad. … And foremost on our minds was the prospect of the very worst coming to pass—a 9/11 with nuclear weapons.”  

The former Vice President is not the least bit apologetic about the policies implemented by the Bush Administration.   In his speech, President Obama said the enhanced interrogation techniques that have been so widely criticized were not effective and did not produce useful information.   Former Vice President Cheney says these techniques were “used on hardened terrorists after other efforts failed” and were “legal, essential, justified, successful, and the right thing to do.”      He added that, “only detainees of the highest intelligence were ever subjected to enhanced interrogation.  You’ve heard endlessly about waterboarding.  It happened to three terrorists.  One of them was Khalid Sheikh Muhammed—the mastermind of 9/11, who has also boasted about beheading Daniel Pearl.   …  We didn’t know about al Qaeda’s plans, but Khalid Sheikh Muhammed and a few others did know.  And with many thousands of innocent lives potentially in the balance, we didn’t think it made sense to let the terrorists answer questions in their own good time, if they answered them at all.” 

Former Vice President Cheney flatly rejects the argument that enhanced interrogation techniques served as a “recruitment tool” for terrorists.  He said this argument “excuses the violent and blames America for the evil that others do.  It’s another version of that same old refrain from the Left, ‘We brought it on ourselves.’”   He also rejected the view that America had lost its moral values when he said “no moral value held dear by the American people obliges public servants ever to sacrifice innocent lives to spare a captured terrorist from unpleasant things.  And when an entire population is targeted by a terror network, nothing is more consistent with American values than to stop them.” 

In the final analysis, former Vice President Cheney supports the policies of the Bush Administration—and is proud of them—because they worked.   “After the most lethal and devastating terrorist attack ever, seven and a half years without a repeat is not a record to be rebuked and scorned, much less criminalized.  It is a record to be continued until the danger has passed.”     President Obama thinks the same policies weakened our national security and made the country less safe. 

The speeches yesterday covered in detail many aspects of the Bush Administration’s policies relating to the war on terror, including the enhanced interrogation techniques, the prison camp at Guantanamo Bay, and the question of how to deal with the cases pending against the prisoners at Guantanamo Bay.     There may never be a way to know conclusively who is right and who is wrong with respect to the effectiveness and usefulness of some of the Bush Administration’s policies.    With respect to at least one policy, however, the American people deserve more information than President Obama, who frequently talks about the importance of transparency, is willing to let them have.   Although President Obama has previously declassified and released the legal memos written by attorneys for the Bush Administration that provided the legal justification for the enhanced interrogation techniques, he has refused to release other documents that former Vice President Cheney says will show the enhanced interrogation techniques provided valuable information and saved lives.    It seems to me that the most damaging and sensitive information—the memos outlining the techniques that were used—has already been released.    Having released the memos outlining the interrogation techniques, I can only think of one reason why President Obama is refusing to release the documents showing whether the techniques produced valuable information.   These documents could show that former Vice President Cheney is right and that President Obama is wrong.   

I am disgusted by the never-ending debates and the continuing bitterness between those on the left and those on the right and between those who supported the Bush Administration and those who now support the Obama Administration.    Each side instinctively objects to and criticizes everything the other side says or does.     Even though I don’t like it, maybe these debates are useful.     If we are willing to pay attention, we will see a clear difference in philosophy, and we may ultimately realize which philosophy best protects the country and its citizens.     Perhaps the policies of the Bush Administration went too far in some respects, but we know they kept us safe.   We can only hope and pray that the policies of the Obama Administration, although different, will be just as effective in providing for our safety and security.   God help us if they are not.   

A Welcome Flip-Flop

The only thing worse than making a bad decision is failing to acknowledge and correct your mistake if you have the opportunity to do so. 

In my opinion, President Obama made a terrible decision when he announced several weeks ago that he would not seek to block the release of photographs showing abuse of prisoners by U.S. military personnel in Iraq and Afghanistan.   The Department of Defense had retained and used the photographs in order to punish those who were responsible for the abusive treatment.   The American Civil Liberties Union was not satisfied with the fact that the offenders were being punished.   It wanted to obtain copies of the photographs under the Freedom of Information Act and publish them for the whole world to see.   A lower federal court agreed with the ACLU.   Until yesterday, the Obama Administration was willing to allow the release of the photographs without appealing the lower court’s decision.    

Fortunately, President Obama yesterday reversed his earlier decision and will now seek to prohibit the release of the photographs.   I salute him for his willingness to acknowledge his error in judgment and to correct it before further damage could be done.  

In announcing that President Obama had reversed his earlier decision, the White House issued the following statement:  “The President strongly believes that the release of these photos, particularly at this time, would only serve the purpose of inflaming the theaters of war, jeopardizing U.S. forces, and making our job more difficult in places like Iraq and Afghanistan.” 

It is encouraging that President Obama was willing to listen to and consider the criticism of his initial decision.  He obviously listened to his defense and military advisers and took their advice.  For this I am grateful.  

I never understood why President Obama initially agreed to release the photographs.   Nothing good could come from their release.   The photographs, if released, would without doubt be inflammatory and would provide further justification to terrorists who already want to kill American citizens.    The release of the photographs would substantially weaken the effectiveness of our intelligence agencies and as a result would weaken our national security. 

President Obama’s initial decision to release the photographs was very popular with the far left-wing fringe of the Democratic Party.   The people who are part of this group would rather embarrass and damage the United States of America than protect it and its citizens.   These folks, of course, are now very unhappy with President Obama because he reversed his earlier decision to release the photographs.   It is refreshing that President Obama has made the right decision with full knowledge that his decision would be unpopular with some of those who helped get him elected.  

If you have been reading this blog, you know that my philosophy on political and economic matters is far removed from President Obama’s philosophy.   I have criticized and will continue to criticism him when I think he is wrong.    In the interest of fairness, I think I should salute him when I think he is right, which is what I am doing today.