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New Hampshire

Absolutely fascinating. The one thought I had going to bed last night was that, for once, we New Yorkers (and Californians) were actually going to have a say in who gets to be our next President, given that the race is definitely going to be tight up through our primaries on Super Tuesday. That'll be a nice change.

One quick note on something that I found incredibly offensive last night: both Andrea Mitchell and Chris Matthews floated the idea that perhaps women voters had flocked to Hillary because they didn't like the way Edwards and Obama were "ganging up on her" in the debate. I thought that exchange was clearly pivotal, but it's just absurd to think that people vote for Presidential candidates because they feel sorry for them. Isn't it much more likely that the women voters liked the powerful and impassioned way she stood up to Edwards and Obama when they united in their attacks on her "status quo" campaign? She had a great set of counterpunches, I thought, and her later line about her likability ("Now you've hurt my feelings") was as deft and funny and original as anything that had been said in the debate.

Anyhow, this is going to be fun to watch. I've said all along that the best thing about this 08 Democrat field is that the roster of candidates across the board is very appealing -- they're all, in their different ways, top of their class. I'm pulling for Obama, and still think he'll end up winning. But if these first few days are any indication, it's going to be an extraordinary year.

Iowa, The Morning After

So far my predictions are looking pretty good. (I'd be enjoying it all even more if I didn't have a mean caucus-night hangover.) I imagine I'm not alone in getting a little choked up more than a few times during Obama's speech -- particularly during these passages:

I'll be a president who harnesses the ingenuity of farmers and scientists and entrepreneurs to free this nation from the tyranny of oil once and for all. And I'll be a president who ends this war in Iraq and finally brings our troops home... who restores our moral standing, who understands that 9/11 is not a way to scare up votes but a challenge that should unite America and the world against the common threats of the 21st century. Common threats of terrorism and nuclear weapons, climate change and poverty, genocide and disease.

Tonight, we are one step closer to that vision of America because of what you did here in Iowa.

... I know how hard it is. It comes with little sleep, little pay and a lot of sacrifice. There are days of disappointment. But sometimes, just sometimes, there are nights like this; a night that, years from now, when we've made the changes we believe in, when more families can afford to see a doctor, when our children -- when Malia and Sasha and your children inherit a planet that's a little cleaner and safer, when the world sees America differently, and America sees itself as a nation less divided and more united, you'll be able to look back with pride and say that this was the moment when it all began.

I love that temporal shift of projecting forward to our future recollection of the present -- "a night that, years from now, when we've made the changes we believe in..." It reminds me a little of the device Whitman uses in "Crossing Brooklyn Ferry" when he's directly addressing future city dwellers making the same passage across the East River:

I am with you, you men and women of a generation, or ever so many generations hence;
I project myself—also I return—I am with you, and know how it is.
Just as you feel when you look on the river and sky, so I felt;
Just as any of you is one of a living crowd, I was one of a crowd;
Just as you are refresh’d by the gladness of the river and the bright flow, I was refresh’d;	25
Just as you stand and lean on the rail, yet hurry with the swift current, I stood, yet was hurried;
Just as you look on the numberless masts of ships, and the thick-stem’d pipes of steamboats, I look’d. Those lines always choke me up as well -- but Whitman always does that to me. But political speeches almost never do. But maybe that, too, is about to change.

My Political Forecast

I've been meaning to write something about the Obama candidacy for a while now, and just haven't found the time, so now that it's the day of the Iowa caucus I thought I'd just jot down a quick thought and prediction that I've been pretty convinced of for the past month. And that prediction is that Obama is going to win it all -- Iowa, the nomination, the Presidency. And I think it ultimately comes down to the fact that he is a rare combination in American politics, in that he is both the "emotional" choice and the "electable" choice. The whole concept of an Obama presidency is just intrinsically inspiring, particularly after the last two terms. And yet at the same time, all the polls suggest that he's the candidate who can beat pretty much any Republican in the field -- unlike Hillary. All the independents in my extended family would vote for him in a heartbeat, and they'd never vote for Hillary. Everything I've read suggests that this pattern is going to repeat itself all across the country.

Traditionally, we've always had to make a tradeoff between the emotional and the electable choices -- "Sure this Howard Dean campaign is exciting, but the guy's never going to win a national election, so let's go with the politically experienced war hero." But with Obama the two sets overlap: you want the guy to win, and he also has the best chance of winning.

So there it is -- we'll see where things stand tomorrow. (My Iowa prediction last year turned out to be dead right, for what it's worth.) The other thing I've been thinking is that it's entirely possible that the Clinton campaign is going to implode quickly -- it's entirely possible that she could start the primary season with back-to-back third place finishes which would be a stunning early defeat. I wouldn't be at all surprised if we had an Edwards/Obama race by Feb 6.

Amazing story about how the Bush Administration won't remove a creationist account of the Grand Canyon from the Park Service bookstore there. (It turns out the Grand Canyon may have been created by Noah's Flood. Who knew?) But I just love this line:

“As one park geologist said, this is equivalent of Yellowstone National Park selling a book entitled Geysers of Old Faithful: Nostrils of Satan,” Ruch added, pointing to the fact that previous NPS leadership ignored strong protests from both its own scientists and leading geological societies against the agency approval of the creationist book.

Denise Caruso's Intervention

When I first met Denise Caruso over ten years ago, she was writing the Digital Commerce column for the New York Times and running the influential Spotlight conference. At a time of great hype about all things digital, Denise offered a unique mix of intelligent skepticism and genuine long-term vision. (If you go back and read those Digital Commerce columns in the Times archives, you’ll see what I mean -- there was no one writing about the tech scene the way Denise was back then.) She then went on to explore a theme that’s also been central to my work -- interdisciplinary thinking -- by founding the Hybrid Vigor Institute, where she began exploring the question of risk assessment in times of immense scientific and technological change. That research led her to write her powerful and essential new book, Intervention: Confronting The Real Risks of Genetic Engineering And Life On A Biotech Planet.

Intervention takes as its primary case study the sorry state of real debate -- in the U.S. at least -- over the long-term implications of genetic engineering. As Denise writes, “We’re more than just ‘too far down the road’ with transgenic technologies. I’m not sure we even know what road we’re on; we’re driving too fast to read the signs.” But as crucial an issue as, say, genetically modified food is, Intervention is wrestling with an even more profound question: how we measure and anticipate risk with such complex, open-ended technologies. Denise makes it clear how “spectacularly nearsighted” we tend to be when evaluating radical new advances. And when we’re meddling with the primary forces of nature -- to quote Ned Beatty’s speech from Network -- we can’t afford to be nearsighted. Fortunately, we have people like Denise Caruso to improve our vision.

Should the Gatorade bomb plot help the Democrats? George Will seems to think so:

Cooperation between Pakistani and British law enforcement (the British draw upon useful experience combating IRA terrorism) has validated John Kerry's belief (as paraphrased by the New York Times Magazine of Oct. 10, 2004) that "many of the interdiction tactics that cripple drug lords, including governments working jointly to share intelligence, patrol borders and force banks to identify suspicious customers, can also be some of the most useful tools in the war on terror." In a candidates' debate in South Carolina (Jan. 29, 2004), Kerry said that although the war on terror will be "occasionally military," it is "primarily an intelligence and law enforcement operation that requires cooperation around the world."

Why The London Plot Helps The Democrats (Or At Least, Why It Should Help Them)

I hope the Democrats (or at least the anti-Iraq-war Democrats) are smart enough to recognize the Gatorade bombing plot actually supports their position on the war on terror. (Or, to put it less kindly, gives them an opportunity to actually formulate a coherent position, at last.) They should be saying something along these lines:

This plot demonstrates the seriousness of the threat posed against us, and, if all the early indications prove to be right, the continuing existence of the Al Qaeda network. It also demonstrates that top-notch law enforcement work, coupled with international collaboration -- and, yes, some wire-tapping -- can truly make us safer. If we had been in charge after 9/11, we would have devoted our military and law enforcement resources exclusively to tracking down Islamic terror networks, with the highest priority given to hunting down Osama Bin Laden. We wouldn't have introduced the huge distraction of Iraq, which has both been a terrible drain on resources and lives, and made us many new enemies in regions where we need more friends. If you elect us this fall, we promise a renewed focus on the enemies that actually threaten us directly. While we can't immediately withdraw from Iraq, we propose a steady re-allocation of manpower and money from Iraq to the immediate threats on American lives. We believe in the war on terror just as firmly as the Republicans do. We just think it should concentrate on capturing terrorists, not rebuilding the electrical grid in Bagdhad.

The Risk

Let's be clear about one thing: the way to win the war on terror is to not be terrified. Part of not being terrified comes from breaking up bomb plots. But it's just as important to do the math.

...it would seem to be reasonable for those in
charge of our safety to inform the public about how many
airliners would have to crash before flying becomes as dan-
gerous as driving the same distance in an automobile. It turns
out that someone has made that calculation: University of
Michigan transportation researchers Michael Sivak and
Michael Flannagan, in an article last year in American Scien-
tist, wrote that they determined there would have to be one
set of September 11 crashes a month for the risks to balance
out. More generally, they calculate that an American’s chance
of being killed in one nonstop airline flight is about one in
13 million (even taking the September 11 crashes into
account). To reach that same level of risk when driving on
America’s safest roads — rural interstate highways — one
would have to travel a mere 11.2 miles.

Looking at all these images of endless security lines at the airports today, thanks to this foiled bombing plot, it occurs to me that the ideal solution would be the complete separation of passengers and their luggage. In other words, if the passengers boarded one plane and their luggage flew separately in another plane with only two pilots on board. (Perhaps the luggage plane could fly just a little bit faster, so your bags were waiting for you when you arrive.) Blowing up a plane full of luggage -- with a body count of two -- wouldn't have the same PR value for the terrorists, and passengers would be able to fly entirely secure (though without their laptops and lattes.) I realize, of course, that doubling the number of planes in the sky is not feasible, but still, if you were designing the system to be terrorism proof from scratch...

Boy and Girls and More

Very interesting op-ed by Judith Warner (a nice temporary addition to the Times page) on overhyping the crisis in boy's eduction, an issue I've been following relatively closely, both as a father of two (soon to be three) boys, and someone who is professionally interested in the state of U.S. education. The Education Sector report that Warner's column is based on, The Truth About Boys and Girls, is worth reading in detail:

It's clear that some gender differences in education are real, and there are some groups of disadvantaged boys in desperate need of help. But it's also clear that boys' overall educational achievement and attainment are not in decline—in fact, they have never been better. What accounts for the recent hysteria?

Despite the fact that a higher percentage boys are graduating from high school and college than ever before, the one area where the news is not uniformly good is the performance of 17-year-olds, compared to their equivalents over the past three decades. (Younger boys and girls are doing better today in pretty much every major category.) The Education Sector report suggests that this might be attributable to the fact the most education reform in the past decade or so has been focused on earlier grades, and thus the spottier record of 17-year-olds makes it clear that this reform should be extended to high school as well.

But isn't there another explanation here? Let's say -- for the sake of argument -- that our education system has been steadily improving over the past fifteen years or so, across the board. Now, if that's the case, then when you take a snapshot of test scores at all grades, presumably what you'll find is that the students who have been around the longest will have the worst scores, because they started school at the beginning of that upward slope of improvement. A seventeen-year-old in 2006 is, in part, a reflection of the state of grade schools in 1996. There's a lag that you have to account for here. The real test will be the seventeen-year-olds in 2012.

But still, the study I really would like to see -- and I can't believe this hasn't been done already somewhere -- is a comparison between the US education levels (both test scores and graduation rates) and the rest of the industrialized world's -- controlling for both poverty and immigration. If you're trying to figure out how well our schools are doing compared to the rest of the world's, it's not fair to blame the educators for the fact that they have far more low-income students or english-as-a-second-language immigrants to teach.

My gut feeling -- informed by some analysis, mostly armchair in nature -- is that we have an education system (not to mention a wider culture) that's working quite well, thank you very much, but that is hamstrung by the amazing amount of immigration we have in the U.S. and by the continuing problem of poverty. I'm very much pro-immigration, so I don't think that element is something we should try to "fix"; we should just recognize that, say, SAT verbal scores are not going to be as stellar as they might have been without a huge influx of native Spanish speakers in our schools. The poverty problem, on the other hand, we need to do something about. But that's another thread.

I love this: Lou Dobbs has a typical ranting op-ed on CNN.com denouncing the fatalistic attitude of today's politicians, and includes this graph:

Our public education system is failing nationwide. While SAT scores decline, teachers in every state fail competency exams, and our high school dropout rate shows no sign of real improvement. Both parties point to their bipartisan bandage, No Child Left Behind, rather than propose real and immediate solutions.

Sounds fair enough. The trouble is: SAT scores aren't declining. Math scores have never been higher -- they're 14 points above where they were 10 years ago. Verbal this past year is four points above where it was a decade ago. And yet, during that time period, there has been a 38% increase in the number of people taking the test -- a trend which has the effect of dragging down the average, since the new test takers tend to come from the bottom of the class. (Their equivalents in 1996 didn't bother taking the test because they didn't plan on going to college.) There's also a huge increase in minority test-takers, who tend -- again, on average -- to have lower scores than the rest of the population. So even with an expansion in test-takers, and a swelling minority population with many non-native English speakers, the overall average for both verbal and math has improved since 1996. It's one thing to be a fatalist about the state of the education system in the U.S. It's another thing to simply get the facts wrong.

Updated 6/1: A couple of you have written in to say that the problem with this logic is that the SAT tests have been re-normalized several times over the past decades so that 500 would be roughly the average score. This is true, but the last time it happened was 1994, so it's irrelevant to my point about trends over the past ten years. And secondly, the SAT folks and other education scholars are not idiots: they know the scores were adjusted, and so when they do long-term trend analyses, they adjust them back so that it's an apples-to-apples comparison. This chart shows you the adjusted history (along with the raw scores.) The picture is very clear: a steady decline from late sixties to about 1990, and then a steady increase since then. And for what it's worth, most, if not all, of that decline from 67-90 is attributable to the dramatic increase in SAT test-takers, not to some overal decline in educational standards.