Headline of the Day

CNN, reporting from the fiftieth state:

Homeowner: 'It's very easy to outrun lava'

Hat tip to BOTWT.

Adventures in American Presidency

As the campaign of Barack Obama gained momentum, Kenyans - embroiled in campaigns of a more dangerous nature - noted with chagrin that the United States could have a Luo president before Kenya. This raises an interesting question: would Obama's ethnic roots help or hurt him as president?

Obama, of course, does not identify himself as a Luo. He may sympathize with Raila Odinga - a Luo who believes he was elected president of Kenya on December 27 - but if so because of Odinga's similarities to Al Gore circa 2000, not Obama's similarities to Odinga. No matter: those who send their scions on to great success in America remain fiercely proud and possessive.

Hopefully, the Kenyan crisis will be resolved soon. But if it is inherited by the next president, it is difficult to imagine Kikuyu leaders accepting President Obama as a fair arbitrator. The politics of ethnicity and identity could be played out elsewhere: Indonesians think Obama is one of their own; black Sudanese will claim him as "their kind" in conflicts with white Sudanese; a few deluded Sunni Muslims might even assume that Obama pere's conversion to Sunni Islam gives them the president's ear.

America has seen shadows of this before - Germany thought Theodore Roosevelt, fluent in German and a former exchange student there - would be particularly friendly. He was not; he carried an awfully big stick to chase the Kaiser's navy away from Venezuela (src). Obama, however, has already attracted more attention from the world than a whole stable of Anglo-European candidates. As president, he would garner still more attention: most of it good, and for good reason. The words "President Obama" would speak volumes about America's opportunity and openness, and his friendly (if not knowledgable) approach to the world would repair the damage from Bush's impatient diplomacy.

Nonetheless, his perceived identity would crop up again and again, and the world would have to get an education in American politics: that our leaders do not merely govern for those who look like them or talk like them. Obama's Kenyan relatives would probably be sorely disappointed by an Obama presidency; likewise other groups that assume they can cash in on some tie they think they have. Managing those demands and disappointments would be an interesting and bemusing job for Foggy Bottom.

Needless to say, none of this ought to have any impact on voters' choices. Obama, in my opinion, would be an extremely liberal and ultimately deeply divisive president, some of whose proposals risk dragging the U.S. into recession and plunging countries who depend on commerce with us into depression. But so would Hillary Clinton - and she's apparently a Kikuyu.

Show and Tell

WaPo columnist Michael Kinsley, tongue firmly in cheek, does a masterful job of pointing out how sleazy was last week's New York Times "story" about John McCain.

I have no evidence to suggest that the New York Times suggested with no evidence that Sen. McCain was having an affair. I was merely pointing out that by running an article that goes on at great length about some meeting eight years ago, and that seems to have no point except to imply that Sen. McCain was having an affair with a lobbyist, the newspaper may have created for some people (not me, of course) an appearance of suggesting that Sen. McCain had enjoyed an affair with a lobbyist...

...the most distressing possibility of all: that in this very article I may be creating the possibility that some people might worry that other people might think that I have created the appearance of suggesting that the New York Times has created the possibility that some people might worry that other people might think that McCain has created the appearance that some people might worry that other people might think that there could be an appearance that McCain was having an affair with a lobbyist.

So... What Do You Do With That?

Most economists, I think, often face the question, "What do you do, exactly?" It's a fair question. And Tim Harford - who calls himself "The Undercover Economist" - implicitly offers some answers to those questions in a WaPo article.

Dallas

Drudge today splashed big headlines about security being loosened at a huge Barack Obama speech in Dallas. Now, I understand that the Secret Service are professionals, and I assume they knew what they were doing.

But the location... hmm... Dallas... presidential security... what is it about Dallas?

Shocking Editorial

I don't know what's more shocking: the subject of Bob Herbert's editorial in NYTimes today, or my response to it.

The usually tangled Herbert hits hard on the tepid public response to a disgusting crime by one of New York's finest:

According to the Queens district attorney’s office, the detective, Wayne Taylor, and the girlfriend, Zalika Brown, would parade the girl at parties and other places where adult men had gathered and force her to have sex with them for money — $40 for oral sex, $80 for intercourse. The child was an investment. The couple allegedly told her that she had been purchased for $500 — purchased, like the slaves of old, only this time for use as a prostitute.

Shocking.

Several orders of magnitude below, it's shocking that Bob Herbert wrote a column the entirety of which I agree with. He slams the justice system for often picking on the young victims of pimps, rather than the pimps and johns themselves. It's a no-brainer that a teenage girl owned by a pimp should be cared for, not incarcerated, by the state, and the pimp should be sent to the Big House.

Of course, this is Herbert, and in his Herbertitude he manages to pick the most inapposite example to prove his point: in this case, the justice system seems to be functioning perfectly, apart from the corrupt cop who (allegedly) perpetrated the crime.

The ; Lives!

This NYTimes story scores high on unintentional humor (though I'm not really sure it's unintentional):

It was nearly hidden on a New York City Transit public service placard exhorting subway riders not to leave their newspaper behind when they get off the train. "Please put it in a trash can," riders are reminded. After which Neil Neches, an erudite writer in the transit agency's marketing and service information department, inserted a semicolon. The rest of the sentence reads, "that's good news for everyone." ... Geoffrey Nunberg, a professor of linguistics at the University of California, Berkeley, praised the "burgeoning of punctuational literacy in unlikely places."

I, for one, use semicolons frequently; the ability to juxtapose thoughts in writing as seamlessly as in speech is invaluable.