For the last word on this subject, read Philip Stephens.

The scores of MPs who abused the House of Commons’ allowances system cannot expect sympathy. The refrain of ministers that claims were “within the rules” only stokes popular disdain. The gaming of the system was at best morally reprehensible and at worst downright sleazy.

But enough is enough. It is time to call a halt to the media show trials. These are misdemeanours rather than high crimes. The fulminating humbug of their well-heeled media tormenters – not least at the publicly-funded BBC – has become as distasteful as the chicanery on the part of MPs.”

As someone raised on the belief that democracy was the last great hope of civilization, the petty corruption of our elected officials is pretty dispiriting. Obviously, the sooner the system is cleaned up, the better. But what is more worrying to me is the ever-widening  “disconnect between politicians and citizens” that, as Stephens points out, only gets worse when a sensation-loving media “ignores serious political argument and amplifies personal frailties”.

We are less than a month away from one of the biggest trans-national elections in history. In June, 763 officials will be elected to represent 27 member states of the European Union. But how many of us will vote? As Peter Hain warns, the cost of not voting is serious:  the British National Party, and other far-right groups across Europe, will gleefully win ground where others lose. I’m pretty disillusioned with all the main parties at the moment, but I’m certainly voting, if only to make my voice heard against the extreme right. If you haven’t yet registered to vote, find out how here.

The first was a scathing attack on the general public for their assumptions about Susan Boyle, the 46-year old woman who’s become a youtube phenomenon after her performance on Britain’s Got Talent. I didn’t agree with everything Gold said, but I agreed with a lot of it, and more importantly, it felt invigorating to read: like a splash of cold water on the brain. Gold pins down and interrogates our social mores, and she does it in such fearless fashion that you can’t help but admire her guts.

The second, also in the Guardian’s Comment is Free, is about the multitude of Nazi references in popular culture. It starts off and it’s kind of jokey, like one of those rants about something that doesn’t really matter, just a rant for the sake of it. But half way through, Gold makes a really perceptive point, and it’s all the more powerful because it’s couched in comedy.

There is a point to all this Hitler porn, you may say. Snoopy Versus the Red Baron has a valuable lesson to teach us about tyranny. Cats Who Look Like Hitler have something to meow about the dangers of genocide. Bollocks, I say. There are genocides happening today, and they are being shot off the front pages by Nazi cows – Nazi cows! – and interviews with Mortensen talking about playing a depressed Nazi: “I spent a lot of time in Germany just looking at people.” Really? Five million have died in the Congo in the last 10 years, in a war for the minerals that we use. And Heil Honey I’m Home! has nothing to say about that.

On doing a bit of research (i.e. looking at her profile page on the Guardian) I discovered Ms Gold’s not new at all – she’s been writing for them since 2004. She does a nice line in experience features – going on the cheapest package holiday she could find (£99); speed dating; a series where she tries to give up smoking; taking diet pills (“I swallowed the small blue pill. It was like waiting for war to start“) and learning how to survive an apocalypse. I also found a hilarious if chilling piece she wrote for the Daily Mail, about auditioning and getting to the last rounds for Big Brother.

It says on the Guardian website that she’s freelance, and maybe that’s a personal choice which allows her to write for loads of different publications and cover a wider range of subjects. But regardless, the Guardian should snap her up while they can and commission her to write about all sorts of things in her inimitable style. Maybe even the five million dead in the Congo.

Back when I studied economics at A-level, my teacher instilled a healthy scepticism of absolutes. He had no time for teenage leanings towards purist doctrines; neither communism nor an uninhibited market economy, said Mr Walker, would ever succeed alone.

The only answer then, was a mixed economy – one that encouraged the best aspects of the market while tempering animal spirits with a certain degree of state intervention, in order to protect the weak and provide public goods such as healthcare and education.

But what ratio of ingredients would create the best mix?

Although my teacher was fairly left-wing, with a hatred of Maggie Thatcher and her legacy, he believed a hearty helping of capitalism was the foundation of an ideal economy.

Why? Because the overrarching desire for profits means private companies allocate resources in the most efficient way possible, and certainly far better than an overworked civil servant – or so we were taught. And not just by Mr Walker, but by our textbooks, our politicians and particularly the architects of New Labour. As Peter Mandelson once said: “We are intensely relaxed about people getting filthy rich, as long as they pay their taxes”.

The idea that individual greed might help boost wider economic conditions and thus wider society too, was suggested in 1776 by the great Scottish economist and philosopher Adam Smith in his Wealth of Nations:

“By directing that industry in such a manner as its produce may be of the greatest value, (the individual) intends only his own gain, and he is in this, as in many other cases, led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was no part of his intention. Nor is it always the worse for the society that it was no part of it.

By pursuing his own interest he frequently promotes that of the society more effectually than when he really intends to promote it. I have never known much good done by those who affected to trade for the public good. It is an affectation, indeed, not very common among merchants, and very few words need be employed in dissuading them from it.”

Alas, this recipe has recently gone a bit wrong. Given free rein, the invisible hand of the market didn’t allocate resources quite as accurately as expected, as Tom Tomorrow‘s cartoon suggests (if the writing’s too small, go here for the original).

So a cartoon is questioning capitalism, so what? Well it’s not just cartoons. The paradigm shift that is taking place in the way we think about economic theory is demonstrated by the fact that my own paper, the Financial Times, is now running a series entitled The Future of Capitalism, with the sub-headline: “The credit crunch has destroyed faith in the free market ideology that has dominated Western economic thinking for a generation. But what can – and should – replace it?”

Martin Wolf has penned a deeply insightful opening overview on the idealogical vacuum we now face:

On June 19 2007, I concluded an article on the “new capitalism” with the observation that it remained “untested”. The test has come: it failed. The era of financial liberalisation has ended. Yet, unlike in the 1930s, no credible alternative to the market economy exists and the habits of international co-operation are deep.

And  Gillian Tett has written a brilliant analysis of the banks’ descent into creative mayhem. Now I’m not recommending these just because they’re from the FT, though I suppose I am a little biased – but because they’re among the finest journalists currently writing on the crisis, and if you want to understand some of what’s going on, you won’t find more reliable and knowledgeable guides.  There’s no doubt Mr Walker’s mixed economy is still the only answer, but the question of ratio – the role of the state in relation to the free market – is up for grabs.

My personal favourites:

Rarely is the question asked: Is our children learning?”—Florence, S.C., Jan. 11, 2000

And there is distrust in Washington. I am surprised, frankly, at the amount of distrust that exists in this town. And I’m sorry it’s the case, and I’ll work hard to try to elevate it.”—speaking on National Public Radio, Jan. 29, 2007

Families is where our nation finds hope, where wings take dream.”—LaCrosse, Wis., Oct. 18, 2000

McEwan’s piece is entitled The World’s Last Chance and basically argues that the fate of the world now rests on Obama’s shoulders.

McEwan, who wrote Saturday, Enduring Love, Atonement and most recently On Chesil Beach, believes climate change is “our most pressing problem, underpinning all others, requiring degrees of cooperation and rationality we might not even be capable of”.

He goes on to explain why with his signature elegance and charm, winding the science and politics up in simple evocative phrases that slide across the page and into your brain.

As Barack Obama steps forward, the smoke machines and mirrors are packed away – or perhaps we can never, or should never, let them go.

The burning forests, the dissolving coral reefs, the extinction of species – we have numbed ourselves with these familiar litanies.

We are still dreaming, still murmuring in our sleep as we grope for the levers that connect thoughts to actions.”

Earth egg, courtesy azrainman on creative commons

Not everyone will approve; it’s more of an essay than a newspaper article, and his word-play (“on the all-too-kickable stone we call the Earth”) and references to Samuel Johnson might seem too academic for the harried reader scouring for news.

But I found the novelistic style deeply refreshing. And he makes some very good points:

Within the climate science community there is a faction darkly murmuring that it is already too late. The more widely held view is hardly more reassuring: we have less than eight years to start making a significant impact on CO2 and other greenhouse gas emissions…

Thereafter, as tipping points are reached, as feedback loops strengthen, the emissions curve will rise too quickly for us to restrain it.

In the words of John Schellnhuber, one of Europe’s leading climate scientists: “what is required is an industrial revolution for sustainability, starting now“.

“One of Mr Obama’s most dangerous enemies will be the impatience of our age: the ever present demands that tomorrow’s problems be fixed yesterday… but this is a moment for optimism. Once in a while, politicians do change the course of history.”

One day left, and we’re on the cusp of great change. Fingers crossed. A while back I read ‘Dreams from My Father‘, the memoir published 13 years ago, when Barack Obama was just 33; post his social justice work, post-Harvard; the book he wrote while working as a civil rights lawyer in Chicago.

As such, it’s an incredible historical document. What’s really fascinating is the window it gives into Obama’s motivations, offering anyone who can afford the price of a paperback the chance to see beyond the weighty rhetoric of his speeches; to get into his head.

Of course if we’re talking about historical documents, this one is hardly an objective source, and the cynics would say, why trust it? Couldn’t he just be telling us what we want to hear? Isn’t an autobiographical memoir the perfect way to reconstruct oneself and manipulate your readers’ reactions?

Language is surely powerful. But the cliche is correct: actions speak louder than words, and Obama’s actions are on his side. Indeed, one of the strongest endorsements of Obama’s integrity has to be the actual timeline of his life thus far. Not to mention that the man would have had to be ridiculously machiavellian to have thought of writing a manipulative memoir over a decade before he even ran for Senate.

Dreams from my Father, above all else, witnesses to something truly inspiring in a politician: someone who isn’t interested in power for its own sake. Near the end of the book, having worked in the deprived Chicago housing projects of Roseland and Altgeld, Obama describes his decision to study at Harvard:

I had things to learn in law school, things that would help me bring about real change… I would learn power’s currency in all its intricacy and detail, knowledge that would have compromised me before coming to Chicago but that I could now bring back to where it was needed, back to Roseland, back to Altgeld; bring it back like Promethean fire.”

Leave aside the lyricism of these sentences, their measured cadences; it is the actions that follow that best bespeak his integrity. Returning to Chicago, Obama worked as a lawyer and civil activist for a further three years before deciding to run for Senate. He revered the law but also recognized it’s limitations.

How do we transform mere power into justice, mere sentiment into love? The answers I find in law books don’t always satisfy me – for every Brown v. Board of Education I find a score of cases where conscience is sacrificed to expedience or greed.”

I love the barefaced idealism of these words. When Obama’s half-sister Auma visits him for the first time in Chicago, she asks him why he’s chosen a low-paid, undervalued job as an “organizer” (an American word for community advocate – a bit like a youth worker, except that it’s for all ages).

Are you doing this for them, Barack?” she asked, turning back to me. “This organizing business, I mean?”

I shrugged. “For them. For me.”

That same expression of puzzlement, and fear, returned to Auma’s face. “I don’t like politics much,” she said.

“Why’s that?”

“I don’t know. People always end up disappointed.”

That Obama includes this line in the book tells us something: he’s faced cynicism and doubt for a long time, even in the people closest to him. He understands why good people hardly ever bother to go into politics anymore, which makes his own career choice all the more admirable.

On top of all this, the writing is crafted, elegant and often witty. A great writer has to have imagination; the compassionate vision to relate to anyone and everyone, to “climb into [their] skin and walk around in it“. It’s a quality that we should desire in our politicians, and yet it’s all too rare. In the course of telling his story, Obama demonstrates it constantly. Like when he describes trying to reason with four teenage boys who’ve pulled up in a car outside his flat:

One of them could be me. Standing there, I try to remember the days when I would have been sitting in a car like that, full of inarticulate resentments and desperate to prove my place in the world. The feelings of righteous anger as I shout at Gramps…

The blood rush of a high school brawl. The swagger that carries me into a classroom drunk or high, knowing that my teachers will smell beer or reefer on my breath…

That knotted, howling assertion of self… while these boys may be weaker or stronger than I was at their age, the only difference that matters is this:

The world in which I spent those difficult times was far more forgiving. These boys have no margin for error; if they carry guns, those guns will offer them no protection from that truth.”

Can you imagine a man with this level of compassion and intelligence, such understanding of human weakness and woe, in the White House? And did you get that bit, where he describes being “drunk or high” in class? The book isn’t a carefully censored, clean and tidy version of a life. It’s honest to the point where you know the writer didn’t intend to run for president when he wrote it – he just wanted to tell a truth.

Obama also talks about race with astonishing candour. It’s all very well to admire his Perfect Union speech (see below), but it’s almost more illuminating to read about the first time he visited Kenya:

“You could experience the freedom that comes from not feeling watched, the freedom of believing that your hair grows as it’s supposed to grow and that your rump sways the way a rump is supposed to sway. You could see a man talking to himself as just plain crazy, or read about the criminal on the front page of the daily paper and ponder the corruption of the human heart, without having to think about whether the criminal or lunatic said something about your own fate. Here the world was black, and so you were just you; you could discover all those things that were unique to your life without living a lie or committing betrayal.”

I’m still not certain what the title “Dreams from my Father” means, even after having read the book. It’s not ‘Dreams of my Father’ though it easily could have been, since the narrative is haunted by the absence of Obama’s dad, who left his wife and two-year-old son and returned only once.

All my life, I had carried a single image of my father, one that I had sometimes rebelled against but had never questioned… The brilliant scholar, the generous friend, the upstanding leader. All those things and more, because except for that one brief visit in Hawaii, he had never been present to foil the image”

So is it that Obama’s dreams were inherited from his father? Or are they the dreams his father would have wanted him to have? At the end of the day it doesn’t really matter: what counts is the nature of the dream. Here’s an excerpt from his speech, A More Perfect Union:

In the end, then, what is called for is nothing more, and nothing less, than what all the world’s great religions demand — that we do unto others as we would have them do unto us. Let us be our brother’s keeper, Scripture tells us. Let us be our sister’s keeper. Let us find that common stake we all have in one another, and let our politics reflect that spirit as well.”

Of course we can’t predict how well Obama will actually perform in office, if he does win tomorrow. In today’s Financial Times, Clive Crook argues: “The plain fact is, Mr Obama cannot deliver what he has promised. The problems he will confront are too difficult.” He’s right, in that to idolize anyone, to put unconditional faith in any human being given power, would be absurd. But I would argue that if Obama brings to office even just a little of what this book promises, we have good reason to be hopeful.

…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..
A few other key excerpts from A More Perfect Union:

23.23: “…to wish away the resentments of white americans, to label them as misguided… this too, widens the racial divide, and blocks the path to understanding. This is where we are right now. It’s a racial stalemate we’ve been stuck in for years. Contrary to the claims of some of my critics, black and white, I have never been so naïve as to believe that we can get beyond our racial divisions in a single election cycle, or with a single candidacy — particularly a candidacy as imperfect as my own.”

26.11: “The profound mistake of Rev. Wright’s sermons is not that he spoke about racism in our society. It’s that he spoke as if our society was static; as if no progress has been made; as if this country — a country that has made it possible for one of his own members to run for the highest office in the land and build a coalition of white and black, Latino and Asian, rich and poor, young and old — is still irrevocably bound to a tragic past.

“But what we know — what we have seen — is that America can change. That is the true genius of this nation. What we have already achieved gives us hope — the audacity to hope — for what we can and must achieve tomorrow.”

Was it greedy, bonus-chasing bankers? Laissez-faire governments, for failing to regulate? Consumers, for borrowing money they could never pay back? The answer is riddled with political risk. The nature of the crash has implications for whole economic ideologies.

Those on the left are quietly smug, for their worst predictions about the destructive force of market fundamentalism have come true, again and again. Those on the right, or even just the centre, are scuttling for cover, as their idol – free, unfettered capitalism – is knocked from its pedestal along with the high priests Lehman Brothers, Bear Sterns and Merrill Lynch.

But some capitalists are sticking to their besieged posts. While Will Hutton argues in The Observer:

This is a crisis that has been 30 years in the making – a Gordian knot of libertarian free-market fundamentalism, unregulated globalisation, the collapse of social and political forces committed to fairness, and the explosive impact of financial innovations such as ‘securitisation’, and sheer greed”,

the Economist‘s cover story, Capitalism at Bay, stubbornly attempts to decry government intervention and champion the free market.

Funnily enough, it feels as though the Economist writer doesn’t quite believe in what he’s writing. It’s like he’s become an agnostic, but someone is still dragging him to church.

Why? Because the Economist’s central, defining tenet is “economic liberty”. And not even the worst crash since the 30′s will let them betray that.

All the signs are pointing in the same direction: a larger role for the state, and a smaller and more constrained private sector,”

the leader-writer says, anxiously.

This newspaper hopes profoundly that this will not happen.”

Poor Economist. Not only has it signally failed to come to terms with the fact that it’s no longer a newspaper but a magazine, it also, bizarrely, feels personally threatened by the incursion of the state. The writer goes on to admit that, “In the short term defending capitalism means, paradoxically, state intervention”. Paradoxical indeed. Don’t worry though, that paradox doesn’t skew his wholly contradictory conclusion: “Capitalism, eventually, corrects itself.”

Hmm. Surely you can’t have it both ways. If capitalism requires state intervention in the short-term, then it won’t have corrected itself; the state will have.

All of which underscores that the ubiquity of political bias puts an ever higher premium on objective reporting. I’d like to recommend a reporter who’s left all prejudice at home and instead relied merely on facts, to shine an investigative light on something most of us know nothing about. Credit rating agencies. Here, a new suspect joins the line-up in the crime of the century, and there’s some solid evidence involved. Here’s what a U.S. Congressman said about them yesterday:

The credit rating agencies occupy a special place in our financial markets. Millions of investors rely on them for independent, objective assessments. The rating agencies broke this bond of trust, and federal regulators ignored the warning signs and did nothing to protect the public. The result is that our entire financial system is now at risk.”

Want to know more? Read Sam Jones’ excellent feature When Junk Was Gold, illustrated quite beautifully by Balint Zsako. And then read Jones’ equally incisive blog post from today’s Alphaville. Now that’s good journalism.

Read it here.

Medvedev looking coy, Davos 2007

The other day the Financial Times featured a piece written by… wait for it… Dmitry Medvedev. Scoop.

Of course my favourite thing about Russia’s President is his name, which regularly endures varied pronunciation by broadcast journalists, and which is perfect for rolling around the tongue when in experimental mood. Med-VYAY-dev? MED-vedev? Med-vyeah-deff? All pleasing in different ways.

The title of Mr Medvedev’s article:“Why I had to recognize Georgia’s breakaway regions“, is also entertaining, in sounding somehow reminiscent of a Take-a-Break special. One could imagine a similar piece: “Why I had to recognize Ashley’s breakaway regions” by Cheryl Cole.

Anyway, in the interests of fairness, I am happy to say the FT today published another comment piece, this time from Mikheil Saakashvili, President of Georgia. His headline was, perhaps appropriately, less confessional, more accusatory: “Moscow Plans to Redraw the Map of Europe“.