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I’m still working on my Florida Vacation entry but the world hasn’t stopped to let me catch.  I figured I’d toss up a few words on my recent escapades and revisit my vacation later.

Bill Clinton spoke last night at the University of Albany.  I, along with a full basketball stadium of students, faculty, and ancillary others, piled into the bleacher seating to watch the former president as part of a speaker series entitled: The World Within Reach.  His presentation was approximately an hour and a half long including a short, five question Q&A session.

Clinton’s speech took the form of a discursus on frameworks, namely how to approach political questions and thusly make decisions.  The meat of the speech were the anecdotal quips and personal reminiscences – poignant when given by the president himself, but other pointless to transcribe -whereas the outline was broad and intellectual – summarized and interpreted below.

 

Clinton proposed that four questions must be asked as we proceed through an increasingly interdependent world: how are things now?, how do we want things to be?, how to get from here to there?, and finally what specific steps need to be undertaken?.

At current,  the world is unequal, unstable, and unsustainable.  In regards to the first, wide percentages of the world live in $2 a day or less, almost a billion people are malnourished, another billion lack clean water, and millions die of easily preventable disease.  The world’s instability is fairly obvious given revolt in Libya, Egypt, Tunisia, and a dozen other places, two ongoing wars lasting almost a decade, and the ongoing fear of terrorism throughout the world.  As for unsustainable, Mr. Clinton summarized briefly his former vice-president’s ongoing campaign to combat global climate change, concluding with the assessment that environmentalism will never be successful unless it can be shown to be profitable as well.

The question of how we want things to be is simply the reverse the previous question – we want the world to be less unequal, less unstable, and less unsustainable.  Any given issue can be approached in that context.  In abstract, however, the world’s issues are not universal but actually divided heavily between poor nations and rich nations.  The poor developing nations can combat these problems by creating systems, not just as bureaucracy, but as a methodology for rewarding success.  His example in the United States is the school and university system which progressively awards students with greater financial opportunity.  In poorer nations there is both a lack of and lack of capacity for systems that will reward the population with greater health, greater financial opportunity, and a fairer environment due larger to poverty, corruption, disease.

Richer nations have a different problem – their systems are mature and variously successful however the longer a system exists the less it continues to revolutionize.  There becomes a point where the desire to keep things the same, for sake of power, or money, or simple fear of change, brings the country to stagnation.  The trouble for richer nations is to continue reforming in face of this inertia toward the status quo.

The question of how to get from now to a better future, more specifically the question of how to reform aging systems in richer nations and create productive systems in poorer nations, is a question that must ultimately be addressed by research and data.  Ideological solutions irrespective of factual reality serve only to undermine successful reform.  This issue is compounded by a news media that emphasizes the quick sound bite over detailed analysis – Clinton’s example was the television news showing presidential speeches for an average of 25 seconds in a one minute news story back during the presidency of Eisenhower, whereas that average is now closer to 8 seconds.

Lastly, there is the question of specific steps to undertake.  This is the implementation of the how and basically consists of two issues: who does what, and where does the money come from.  The question of who is usually the strongest debate in politics at current – Democrats lean toward government, while Republicans prefer private enterprise.  Clinton’s positions was that strong nations have a strong government, a strong public section, and strong non-governmental organizations (charities, trusts, foundations etc.)  The question should never be between a strong government versus a strong private sector – both are required for a strong nation.  No policy should ever work to undermine either.

The question of finance is, of course, the big issue in congress right now both at the federal level and in various states.  The problem is that only about 13% (federally) of the budget goes toward discretionary funds like education, NASA, national endowment for the arts, etc.  The rest of the budget consists of Medicare, Medicaid, defense, and interest payments.  All of the current budget debates revolve around the discretionary funds with no serious discussion of tackling the big health care costs or social security, which in theory is self-sustaining.  Defense Secretary (outgoing) Gates has already suggested ways to decrease defense spending – our world requires small nimble forces more than billion dollar defense programs, currently unimplemented as well.

The biggest barrier going forward is that financial cuts are made for ideological reasons as opposed to where the money is actually located – the remaining 87% of non-discretionary funds.  Until the country seriously looks at its health funding in particular, no plan, regardless of party, policy, or issue can be made genuinely sustainable – further perpetuating the inequality, instability, and unsustainability of the world.

 

 

 

He was a tremendous speaker – hardly unexpected.  The sheer ability to recall, with no particular effort, all the facts and figures to support a particular position was impressive but in the context of speaking anecdotally  it was – well – presidential.  Even so, he made no effort to pull punches – he was polite and really very funny but he made it clear how he felt about specific policies.  It was not a political speech, but Bill Clinton has always been the consummate politician.  The framing merged with an undeniable charisma made for effective oration.

Sadly, the Q&A was a waste.  The questions were shoddy and mostly addressed issues he had already answered.  Given the opportunity, I think I would have asked whether he thought that Wikileaks and similar attempts – basically systems setup to support government whistleblowers – have a place in modern journalism.  Are government and corporate whistleblowers a few threads shy of traitors or a necessary checs on an increasingly complex and interdependent infrastructure?  Can crowd-sourced journalism in general counter the ‘infotainment’ issues reflecting by the 8 second presidential speeches?  It’s leaning question (not necessarily leading but not far off) but I’m curious whether he would have taken the government’s line (maintained in part by his wife, Hillary) or found a different vantage point to view what is, by necessity, a slightly more complex issue than is publically offered.  Perhaps next time…

 

Until then I’m back to the rest of the writing.  Adieu as usual.