A Letter To My Ten-Year-Old Daughter

My sweet girl,

I want you to know that your mother and I see everything you do. 

We see you helping with little things around the house:  running upstairs to get a change of clothes for your sister, or giving your younger siblings a bath.   Not because we’ve promised you a reward, or even asked you do it.   You saw it needed to be done, so you did it. 

We see that no matter how many times your brother annoys you or ignores you, you keep trying to engage him.  You’ve never been anything but affectionate and kind. Before you knew what autism was, you realized your brother was special, different, and gifted.

We see you rising above the drama of fifth grade.   When a classmate badmouthed a mutual friend with a hyperbolic statement, you drolly replied, “That’s a bit of an overstatement.”   When the classmate then got upset, you refused to apologize for sticking up for a friend.  You have a maturity that we never had at your age.

We see you notice the affection and respect that your mother and I have for each other, and hope that we are somehow setting the standard for how you expect your future partners to treat you.  

We saw that on the day that your brother went missing and your parents were losing their heads, you were calmly finding a picture of him and scanning it in the printer, in order to make flyers to help people find him.

We see that you are equally comfortable with art and science.   You can talk to me about Greek mythology while you build a robot.   That precious balance will pay rich intellectual dividends for you in the future.

We have so many hopes for you.  Sometimes I worry you fear you might not be able to live up to them.  But here's the secret:  you already have.   At your relatively young age, you recognize that that the struggle to deepen the soul is more important than the climb to success. [1]  

You are on your way to being the best possible version of yourself, and we are so proud of you.

Your loving Father

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[1] David Brooks, “The Road to Character”, Random House 2015.

The Citizen's Dilemma

As an active-duty naval officer, writing a blog that discusses citizenship and politics during an election year can be fraught with peril.   It is certainly contrary to my oath of office and Department of Defense guidance to publicly endorse a particular candidate.   As military professionals, we are expected to be apolitical, loyal only to the constitution in the execution of our duties.   Yet unlike some countries, we do allow our uniformed service members to participate in the electoral process, and although I will keep my own counsel as to who I ultimately choose to mark on my ballot, it is certainly within the bounds of propriety for me to discuss the dynamics of the election and provide a few morsels for thought.

Quite frankly, in the big picture, there is very little in this election year worthy of endorsement.     This is an election in which many of the established rules and norms have been thrown out the window, including a sitting Supreme Court Justice making public comments disparaging a presidential candidate.  An election campaign during which a major party candidate has encouraged a foreign country to hack the emails of his competitor, who in turn chastised him for putting national security at risk, while at the same time denying that her careless use of an ad-hoc IT infrastructure was ever cause for similar concern, despite comments to the contrary by the Director of the FBI.

Cognitive dissonance, thy name is Election 2016.

And then we have the recent spectacle of a presidential candidate making disparaging comments about a gold-star family.  To be fair, the Khan family willingly entered the vicious arena of public discourse and therefore some observers may conclude they are fair game for criticism.   But it should go without saying that callously attacking the parents of a man who gave the ultimate sacrifice for his country shows incredibly poor judgment, discretion, and wisdom.   Yes, the Democrats set a trap for the Republican candidate.   And he walked right into it.

It may very well be an apocryphal story, but I seem to remember during the 1996 election, Bob Dole's campaign strategy was publicly criticized by John McCain in a rare (at the time) display of intra-party fratricide.  When asked about it at a press conference, Bob Dole replied something to the effect of, "That man spent seven years in a box for his country.  He's earned the right to say whatever he wants to about me."   Bob Dole is a true statesman, a man who himself suffered greatly for his country, and a former athlete who never forgot that one doesn't need to swing at every pitch that comes their way.

When I studied government and public policy as an undergrad in the mid-nineties, the overarching concern at the time was the dearth of political participation and voter turnout.   Countless academics and intellectuals feared that our fragile democracy was going to wither due to neglect.   Now we face a far different problem, in which the centrifugal forces of rabid partisanship and unwillingness to compromise threaten to spin apart the machinery of our democratic process. Although it is a recurring lament in the modern media age that our elections lack any substantive discussion of the issues, we are definitely at a new low in this particular cycle.  Have we as a society made the presidential election so vapid, so difficult, such a marathon slog through meaningless appearances and posturing, focusing more on avoiding the errant gaffe than providing anything remotely resembling vision and leadership, that we are finally getting the candidates we deserve?  Have we driven out the true servant leaders, leaving only the vain and self-entitled to vie for public office?  As Plato, quoting Socrates, wrote in The Republic, "He who refuses to rule is liable to be ruled by one who is worse than himself."  Quite possibly we are in for a string of one-term presidents, much like during the pre-Civil War period, until we get ourselves sorted out politically.  (Although I believe that such a "sorting" will be done without the violence of that previous era.)

So what is a citizen to do, in such an election when many voters find themselves opposed to a particular candidate more than they are inspired by another?

One option is to not vote at all.  In general this is something I would discourage.  Voting is not only the right of a citizenship, it is one of its most sacred obligations.  Yet there is a powerful statement sent by not voting, in withholding a mandate and making it clear through low voter turnout that no matter who wins, he or she does not speak for a vast portion of the American electorate.  My only advice, if one chooses to not vote for a presidential candidate, is to not ignore the state and local elections further down the ballot.

Voting for a third party candidate, or a write-in nominee, is another obvious choice for those dissatisfied with the major party nominees and sends a similar, yet more focused message, than not voting at all.  However, third party voting presents a sort of prisoner's dilemma in that you are relying on the cooperation of numerous other voters to vote the same way in order to break the monopoly of our two-party system.   For better or worse, the design of our political ecosystem is one in which there is only enough oxygen to viably sustain two parties of consequence.  Sometimes the perfect can be the enemy of the good, and third-party voting risks allowing the election of the greater of two perceived evils.

In a political election, there are four characteristics a voter should look for in a candidate:  issue alignment, character, experience, and competence.   When none of the available options meets all (or even most) of the criteria, you have to prioritize.  Which leads to the final option, what I would describe in game theory parlance as a "minimax" strategy, that is to vote for the candidate that will do the least damage.  Or put more colloquially, if you don't like the direction any of them are driving, pick the one least likely to run the car into a ditch.

Regardless, you have an important choice to make this November.  Good luck.  We're all counting on you.

Any and all opinions are solely my own and do not represent the views of the Department of Defense

The Great Unraveling

On Thursday, the citizens of the United Kingdom chose, by a slim majority, to withdrawal from the European Union.   Prime Minister David Cameron agreed to the referendum due to mounting pressure from members within his own Conservative Party, who chafed at the various rules imposed by the EU and viewed the costs of membership (monetary and otherwise) as outweighing the benefits.  Of particular salience was the desire to regain control of the Great Britain’s borders, especially with regard to economic migration.  

Cameron supported Britain’s remaining in the EU.  Yesterday he made the painful decision that he could no longer lead the UK, given the newly established mandate.  He agreed to step down as Prime Minister by the fall.  His concession speech was remarkable for its grace and humility, at great contrast to the whining petulance we often hear from U.S. politicians when their agenda does not succeed. 

And yet despite the fact that this vote occurred overseas and under parliamentary processes, there are significant parallels to U.S. politics. 

First and foremost are the similarities between the arguments made by the “Vote Leave” campaign and the strains of populism, nationalism, and isolationism that the Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders campaigns have both harnessed.   There is a vast distrust of globalization from both sides of our political spectrum.   Trump specifically has gained support from working class voters whose wages have stagnated over the last decade, whose job prospects have diminished due to automation and global trade, and who feel that the policy elites in their own party have ignored them for too long.

The “Vote Leave” campaign was noticeable in its rejection of economic experts, who foretold of grave consequences for British and global markets. [1]   This mirrors a disturbing trend in American discourse, as politicians and voters alike dismiss expert opinion, whether on climate change, foreign policy, or the safety of immunizations and genetically modified food. 

Second is the unreliability of polls.  Prior to the vote, the polling data suggested a win by the “Remain” camp.   Yet the numbers indicate that likely “Exit” voters were less likely to answer candidly when asked face-to-face or via phone call than when they responded to anonymous Internet surveys.  A similar dynamic is at work with potential Trump voters, calling into question the current lead that Clinton holds in national polls.   Further,  “Vote Leave” gained victory despite a divided UK Conservative party.   Democrats in the U.S. who assume that the disarray in the Republican Party will automatically translate into electoral defeat may be dismayed come November. 

Finally, the Brexit vote once again demonstrates the perils of direct democracy in the form of voter referendums.[2]   By their very nature, such ballot questions must distill complex policy considerations with into grossly simplified yes or no questions.  ("Should I Stay or Should I Go?", to quote the Clash.)

The irony is that such a simply stated choice will ultimately result in an extremely complex policy process.  Withdrawal in and of itself will be a two-year process.  But beyond that, the UK must now renegotiate the myriad policy agreements that were painstakingly worked out over decades of integration into the EU.   Scotland, whose population overwhelmingly voted to remain in the UK, will see its independence movement reenergized.   Voters in Northern Ireland demonstrated a similar preference and may very well seek to reopen the discussion of reunification with the south.   Whether that would ultimately be a peaceful process remains to be seen. 

Robert Wright, in his powerful book “Non-Zero: The Logic of Human Destiny”, writes that even as the world grows complex, we experience- at the personal and national level- a drive toward greater cooperation and problem solving that is inherent in the cultural evolution of the human species.  Ultimately it was up to the voters of Great Britain, and well within their rights, to determine the cost-benefit analysis of staying within the EU.  But it certainly feels like a large step back from the forward progress of global integration and cooperation that’s occurred over the last century, a process that in the aggregate has been overwhelmingly positive.  Time will tell if the “Brexit” vote will lead to a greater global unraveling.   I for one certainly hope not.   

Any and all opinions are solely my own and do not represent the views of the Department of Defense

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[1] The British pound has subsequently crashed to its lowest levels in 31 years

[2] California Proposition 8 is an obvious example. Madison’s classic “Federalist No. 10” remains the quintessential treatise on the benefits of representative democracy.