Meals From The Marketplace

            I was five years old, and I was half-watching the game on our new television set with my father and uncle.  (The other half of me was looking at the pictures of the ball players on my collection of baseball cards.)

            The year was 1951, the month was October, and my dad and uncle were watching the game at our house because my uncle hadn’t yet purchased a television (TV was not yet the accepted word) for his family.  I knew the Dodgers and Giants were playing for the pennant, but I wasn’t too interested in the actual play of the game, other than to note that the Dodgers (the team I had grown fond of because they had an exciting player named Jackie Robinson) had taken the lead (much to my uncle’s delight) and appeared on their way to victory.

            Then, suddenly, both my uncle and father were shouting wildly, my uncle expressing disgust, my father mild amusement (he was a Yankee fan).  I looked up from my baseball cards to see pandemonium on the television screen.  Some guy named Bobby Thomson had hit a home run to win the game, and everyone at the ballpark seemed to be going crazy.  (“They’re going crazy; they’re going crazy!” was the latter part of Russ Hodges’ dramatic call on the radio, which I didn’t hear then, but have since heard about a gazillion times.)

            Bobby Thomson died last week at the age of 86.  The obituaries recalled the home run and most writers again proclaimed it the most dramatic home run in the history of organized baseball.  I suppose it probably is, although for my money the Kirk Gibson homer off of Dennis Eckersley in the first game of the 1988 World Series tops it.

            No matter; it was a classic moment in the history of the game, one that has endured as a “truth is greater than fiction” scene six decades after it happened.

            I suppose anyone who witnessed the home run and is still alive experienced an emotional reaction to the news of Thomson’s death.  Certainly that emotion wouldn’t have been a sense of sadness at his passing.  Bobby Thomson was probably a good guy who lived a fine, upstanding life after his playing days ended, but no one would suggest that his life was one to honor or that his passing was akin to the death of a president or a famous movie star or even a giant in the world of business.

            Thomson was famous for one moment in his life, a moment that elevated him from the good, but not great, all-around ballplayer he was over a fourteen year career, and made him an improbable hero.  And, to his credit, for the rest of his life, Thomson was always too humble to consider his feat anything other than a propitiously timed home run that just happened to win the National League pennant for his team. 

            Baseball is that kind of a game, whether it is played by the truly great athletes who make it to the major leagues or by the ten-year olds who play it in little league organizations in their home towns.  Most of the time, it’s a humbling game.  Big leaguers and little leaguers alike usually make an out about 70 percent of the time.  At every level, a .400 batting average is something to take note of, a rarity, even if it means the player still made an out sixty percent of the time.

            Actually, Thomson’s humility may also have been due to his awareness of the twist of fortunes he had experienced in that very game.  Playing third base in the eighth inning, Thomson had misplayed two balls hit to him.  Those misplays had led to three Dodgers runs, breaking a 1-1 tie and setting the stage for the Giants’ dramatic comeback in the bottom of the ninth.

            From goat to hero in the space of thirty minutes.  Only in the world of sports do such turnarounds occur, and only in baseball can one player have such an experience.  The other team sports (and goats only exist in team sports) are too dependent on the play of several teammates for the fate of the game to rest entirely on one player’s performance.

            Of course, there were stories on the other side of the field as well, albeit the stories there didn’t have the same happy ending.

            Ralph Branca was the Dodgers pitcher who served up the “shot heard ‘round the world.”  He had just come in to relieve the starter, Don Newcombe, who had been the Dodgers’ ace all year.  But Newcombe had run out of steam in the ninth (or, as some have suggested, maybe he just ran out of nerve). 

            Branca was hardly chopped liver.  He had been an all star three times and had won 13 games that year.  He was still only 25 years old, and should have had a significant career ahead of him.  But that home run pretty much finished him.  From 1952 to 1956, his last year, he only won another 12 games, never more than four in a season.  The Thomson home run may not have been the entire cause of his demise, but it certainly pierced any sense of invincibility he may previously have had.  Call it a different kind of humility.

            In comparison, my life, and I suppose the lives of most of the then five (or ten or fifteen) year olds who also watched (or half-watched) that game in October of 1951, has had neither Bobby Thomson nor Ralph Branca moments of greatness or humility.

            I’ve plodded along, probably hitting something less than the equivalent of .300 in my chosen fields of endeavor.  All things considered, I’ve been a fair-to-middling player in the game of life.  I’ve had my moments, to be sure, but none that are going to be cause for a major obituary when I die.

            Bobby Thomson had his.  Ralph Branca, too.  The rest of us just get to ponder it all as we watch it pass on by.

            The scene is a remote outpost in the Korengal Valley near the Pakistan border in Afghanistan.  There, a group of the U.S. soldiers has just met with village elders about a cow the soldiers had killed.  The cow had wandered into a barbed-wire fence surrounding the outpost and was inextricably caught up in the barbs.  The soldiers killed it to put it out of its misery.

            The elders demanded monetary compensation for the cow, but the soldiers were not authorized to pay them anything.  They could only offer more food (rice and beans).  The elders reacted with disgust, telling the soldiers to “forget the road,” which was one project the Army had been using to “win the hearts” of the locals. 

            “One step forward, two steps back,” said one of the soldiers after the meeting, which effectively summarizes the impact of that part of the current U.S. strategy in this war that will soon mark its tenth anniversary, thus becoming by far the longest war the United States has ever engaged in.

            The film is “Restrepo,” a documentary by Tim Hetherington and Sebastian Junger, who spent ten months with these troops as they worked and fought in a part of Afghanistan that the Taliban has partially reclaimed since it was “evicted” in the early months of the war.  Obviously, in the years since, the war has not succeeded in keeping these religious fanatics out, which raises one of the many questions a viewer is left with after watching the film.

            If many parts of the country are now as dominated by the enemy as they were when the war started, what has the United States gained for its efforts?

            For every question the film raises, it presents evidence of the tragic folly of this war.  In another scene in which the troops interact with the local elders, the language barrier is laughingly depicted.  The troops have an interpreter/translator when they meet with the elders to explain to them why it is important to cooperate (in identifying Taliban members among other things).  A captain begins the “meeting” with a lengthy speech (in English).  He goes on for over a minute and then defers to the interpreter to translate it for his audience.

            It is immediately apparent that the elders get the “abridged version,” since the interpreter only speaks to them for about ten seconds.  And the looks on the elders’ faces indicate that they are not at all impressed with whatever has been translated for them.

            This month marks the end of combat operations in Iraq, which may be the kind of good news that a cancer patient receives when told the disease is in remission.  Iraq is still a mess, but it’s not a mess we choose to put any more military effort into. 

            At least for now.  In truth, no one knows what Iraq might become in the next few years, without an aggressive U.S. military presence there.  (Approximately 50,000 troops remain, their mission allegedly limited to training and providing logistical support.)

            The country is loosely governed by a corrupt administration that probably wouldn’t have survived to this point without the heavy arm of the U.S. military patrolling the “green zone” and keeping the peace in the more populated areas of the country.  But the Sunnis and Shiites haven’t resolved their centuries-long differences, and the Iranians loom on the horizon.  Whether al Qaeda might become active there is problematic, but either way, the country is hardly the beacon of democracy that a starry-eyed president predicted it would become when he ordered the invasion of it back in 2003.

            In fact, evil man though he was, Saddam Hussein was the best assurance the U.S. could have had of an Iraq that would be free of Islamic terrorists.  Saddam never would have tolerated their presence in his country, as they would have been a direct threat to his rule. 

            But that point has been made (by me and many others) for years.  The fact is that the Bush decision to go to war in Iraq was stupid at best and criminally negligent at worst.  Unfortunately, the adverse effects flowing from that decision are not limited to the continuing uncertainty of what a “free Iraq” will become.

            By taking his country to war in Iraq at a time when the war in Afghanistan was actually going pretty well, President Bush lost the advantage he had there.  Dismayed by the invasion of Iraq, the coalition of moderate Arab states that had been supporting the war withdrew that support, and in time, the Afghan war that had been all about defeating al Qaeda became a war that no one seemed to care about (least of all the president himself, who, it must be remembered, when asked where Osama bin Laden was, said he really didn’t care). 

            But the war in Iraq also gave the Taliban and al Qaeda a chance to regroup.  And regroup they have.  As is evident from the battles described in “Restrepo” (reason enough to see the film, with the similarities to the unwinnable war in Viet Nam all too obvious), the Taliban is newly empowered and every bit as committed to regaining control of the country, bit by bit, mountain village by mountain village.

            And, as reported by the New York Times last weekend, al Qaeda and its many affiliates are now active in so many countries throughout the region that the United States has active secret missions of one kind or another in Algeria, Morocco, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Iran, Kenya, Tajikistan, Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia.

            Meanwhile, President Obama appears committed to correcting the errors of his predecessor in pursuing a victory in Afghanistan, even as he claims that U.S. forces will begin to scale back their offensive actions a year from now, a claim that sounded even more hollow this week after his newly-appointed commander, David Petraeus, said he doubted the scale-back could be started in any meaningful way that soon.

            Whatever.  See “Restrepo.”  Decide for yourself.  If you’re like me, you’ll only be even more convinced that we have to end that war.

            When I was a kid, every Thursday night during the summer my dad used to take all of us to a farmer’s produce market not far from our summer home on the Jersey shore.  This was an old-style farmer’s market where the local farmers would load their trucks with baskets of their just-harvested fruits and vegetables and bring them to an empty lot where they’d line up in rows, unload their bushel baskets, and wait for the locals to come by and, hopefully, buy their produce.

            The baskets would be marked with a hand-written sign that indicated the price the farmer was charging.  And each farmer sought ways to make his (few woman were involved as I recall) fruits and vegetables look like a more appealing purchase than those displayed by the other farmers. 

            For example, if fresh corn was on our shopping list (as it almost always was for my dad), we might find some farmers might charging fifty cents a basket instead of the seventy-five cents most of the others were charging.  (Yes, a bushel of corn went for four bits back then, but, of course, we’re talking the late 1950s.) 

            Or some of those charging seventy-five cents might fill their baskets so they were nearly overflowing while others only filled theirs to the rim.  And some farmers peeled back the ears of the corn on the tops of their baskets to make them easier to size up, while others made the customers pull back the husks to look for themselves.

            All of these different approaches were basic marketing decisions, made by the farmers to sell more of their produce than their colleagues (or, at least, to sell as much of their produce as they could, since they made nothing from the produce they had to load back on their trucks and take back to their farms).

            The result was a form of competition that, on an admittedly very small scale, epitomized the classic market-driven economy.  Note the basic principles at play: Supply and demand kept the prices down, since there were usually many more farmers, with much more produce, than there were potential buyers.  And marketing strategies, starting with the prices charged, were of critical importance, since most of the buyers were not going to buy their corn from more than one of the farmers and most (unlike my dad, who sometimes seemed to spend hours considering his options) were not about to devote a whole lot of time to the process.

            The other aspect of the old-style farmers’ markets that made them work so well was the absence of any middle-persons or corporate branding.  Each farmer was an independent economic unit, free to make whatever pricing and other marketing decisions he felt brought the best results for his business.  And each buyer was free to spend as much or as little time studying the options and considering whether to make a purchase from any of them.

            Today’s economy is not as simple, not by a long shot.  In fact, to speak of a market-driven economy in today’s world of mega-corporations and layers of wholesalers and retailers is to make a mockery of the time in America when the same person who made or grew something sold it.  We aren’t that country anymore (even in the world of farming, which is now largely controlled by the agri-businesses that essentially lease the land to the individuals who grow the crops).

            Thus, much of the current political cry for a return to a free-market-driven economy unrealistically fantasizes and romanticizes the term.  To speak of a truly free market economy would require a return to sole proprietorships and individual entrepreneurs.  But, except for a relatively small number of niche businesses (private music lessons, the quaint bed and breakfast, and maybe your local barber shop are a few that come to mind) those entities don’t exist anymore.

            Instead, we are an economy built around and run by our corporations, and they are not as easily manipulated or influenced as the farmers my dad bought his corn from back in the day.  In fact, today’s corn is grown by farmers who work in one way or another for a corporation that sells the corn to a conglomerate that sells it to a super market chain that then distributes it to individual franchises that sell it to folks like my dad. 

            But those buyers aren’t able to go to the next aisle to check out a different farmer’s basket of corn.  Today’s buyers of corn (and any other edibles) go to their market of choice (usually the one closest to their home) and buy the corn that is there provided.  Their only choice is whether to buy corn that day or potatoes or lima beans, not whether to buy this farmer’s corn or that one’s.

            This change in our economy has occurred over the last fifty years, and it has led to a variety of problems.  The first and most significant is endemic to the basic structure of a corporation.  Although they are treated as human beings in the law of the land, corporations are, in fact, entirely impersonal, with decisions made by management teams that are guided by a board of directors that has as its principal motivation to maximize profits. 

            What we have now is a modified form of the classic free-market economy.  The freedom that my dad and the farmers used to have has now been severely restricted or lost entirely.  Buyers have less true freedom, because their choices are so much more limited.  And the farmers (and their equivalents) in today’s world have much less freedom because they are not able to sell directly to their intended customers, let alone decide how to market their wares (such as they are).

            In the absence of that direct buy-sell check on excessive profits and inadequate return, policy makers (i.e. governments) seek to intervene.  Thus, health and safety measures are passed to protect buyers from the impersonal, profit-driven decisions of corporations, and regulations are imposed to keep the “corn” fresh and edible.

            It isn’t a perfect economic model by any means, but given the reality of our society, it’s the best we can do.

            In less than two years, the Obama administration and Congressional Democrats have seen their big electoral victory of 2008 turned on its head.  All signs now indicate that in three months the party will suffer a seismic electoral defeat the likes of which haven’t been seen since 1994.

            How this happened/will happen is not really a mystery, but the answer is more complicated than many pundits have suggested.  Herewith, therefore, are the definitive reasons.

            For openers, however, let’s understand how complete the Democrats’ victory was in ’08, when Barack Obama rode a wave of enthusiasm built around his cry for “change” to an Electoral College landslide that carried over to the races in many Congressional districts.  The result was an 80-vote majority in the House of Representatives (257-177) and, ultimately, when Minnesota’s nail biter was finally decided, a filibuster-proof 60 Democratic votes in the Senate.

            Democrats were overjoyed, and in his first Congressional address, the new president announced a three-pronged legislative agenda, aimed at bringing about the “change” he had promised in his campaign.  Those three prongs, for those who have forgotten, were medical reform, energy, and education.

            Oh, and then, of course, there was the economy, which, as the president is fond of saying, was most certainly “in the ditch” when he took office.  It needed help, lots of help, and the first challenge the new administration and its Congressional allies faced was to decide how to fashion that help.

            It came, with nary a Senate vote to spare, in the form of a $1.7 trillion “stimulus” package that was a sop for just about everyone, with one-third of the money represented by tax cuts, one-third for “shovel-ready” infrastructure projects, and one-third for longer range federal programs that included, quite candidly, a bunch of pork or, as it has come to be called in polite circles, “earmarks.”

            The package provided an immediate attack target for the out-of-power Republicans, who were already sounding warnings to their base about Obama, referring to him (through their cable news and talk radio surrogates) as a “socialist.” 

            The charge was based, and probably has always been based, on Obama’s liberal voting record in the Senate and not on his policy initiatives, which had hardly been formed at that point, and, in the end, were more or less centrist (perhaps with a slight tilt to the left) on the traditional American political spectrum.

            But the details didn’t dissuade the Republicans from spreading the word: this was a guy who couldn’t be trusted.  Indeed, picking up on that theme, the right-wing blogosphere, aided by the same usual suspects on cable TV (i.e. Fox News) and talk radio, started pushing the wholly ill-founded rumor that Mr. Obama was not born in America and was thus not an American citizen. 

            And around that time, the Tea Party was born.  It was either seeded by Glenn Beck of Fox News, or by grass roots organizers who jumped on the rapidly increasing budget deficits Obama’s programs and initiatives were creating, or by a combination of both.  Whatever its genesis, the Tea Party movement became a force to be reckoned with, at least within the Republican Party.

            And the two fed energy to each other, with Republican members of Congress picking up the rallying cry of “too much government spending” in response to the Tea Party’s equally vehement cry of “too much government, period.”  The combination created a national mood that flew in the face of everything Obama and the Democratic Congress were trying to accomplish.

            But, instead of responding forcefully with a counter-attack, the president reverted to his Harvard Law School way of dealing with problems and policy debates: he got professorial.  That persona may be the real Obama, but it doesn’t work when the other side isn’t interested in reaching accommodations. 

            And these Republicans are definitely not interested in reaching accommodations.  As the fight over health care showed, they were out to scuttle anything that had Obama’s name on it, and they almost succeeded.  Instead, on health care reform, they stalled the process long enough for grass roots opposition to crystallize so that by the time a watered-down bill was passed, well over half of the nation opposed it.

            Obama must bear much of the blame for the loss of support for that bill (and for his subsequent drop in popularity).  He has not used his office effectively either to rally his troops or to educate the electorate. 

            Skilled orator though he appeared to be during the campaign, in office he has rarely been electrifying or even particularly inspiring.  When he does speak (and his press conferences and other national addresses have been rare), he sounds as if he is afraid of saying anything that might be controversial. 

            The result is a president who may be working very hard behind the scenes, but is viewed as something of an enigma by the voters.  Thus, last week, the White House subtly let out the message that Obama will stay away from Congressional districts where his visibility will hurt the Democrat’s candidate.  If that strategy sounds familiar, it’s because it’s the same one George W. Bush used in “support” of Republican candidates in ’06.

            But, of course, the Democrats’ election prospects are not only hampered by an inarticulate and ineffective leader in Mr. Obama. 

            A confluence of other events (the pending appeal of Arizona’s immigration law, the belated resolution of the BP oil spill, serious ethics charges against two veteran House Democrats, and, of course, the continually struggling economy and the near 10 % unemployment rate) are combining to create the perfect storm that will lead to the party’s loss of control of the House (a swing of as many as 60 votes now seems entirely possible) and the potential loss of even the Senate (where several key races, including Barbara Boxer’s re-election campaign in California) could provide the swing of eleven seats needed to put the GOP back in control there.

            As I said at the outset, the explanation for the disaster that the Democrats are looking at three months from now is complicated. Complicated, but entirely understandable.