Letter-20: Intellectual Poetry and Pretensions.

Letter #20: Intellectual Poetry and Pretensions.

The primary purpose of this letter is to refer family and friends to a blog being compiled by a friend of mine here in México with the Peace Corps followed by uninvited political bloviation by yours truly.

Mr Arpan Dasgupta exemplifies the type of Peace Corps volunteer praised in my last letter. In our training cycle, because his advanced Spanish speaking ability afforded him free time, Arpan has counselled young drug addicts here in Queretaro. Simply said, Arpan places principles firmly ahead of personalities.

Arpan has been writing out a blog – ‘The Next Cup of Chai’ – that remains oh-so-elegant in its simplicity. This blog celebrates the nitty-gritty of everyday life in México. It is as if Arpan has poetry in his fingertips as opposed to my more abstract (distracted) thoughts. The blog address is http://thenextcupofchai.blogspot.com/.

Now to the more selfish side of this essay. Discussing next week’s mid-term U.S. elections strays “out of my lane” for three reasons.
1. Politics has nothing to do with my work here or the reason for my letters home.
2. As a firm Republican who prides his vote for Senator John McCain in 2008 and remains a faithful fan of President George W. Bush, I have no business counselling Democrats.
3. Ignorance of the political landscape apparently has failed to deter me from bloviating.

Fortunately, I am limiting this essay to the customary length and can only do limited damage to my limited credibility. So here goes…Bluntly stated, my Democratic friends: think long and hard before you give up on President Obama and your political party.

Your party – particularly our President – needs more time in which to succeed or fail. As I described a few letters back, coming from reliable primary sources, President Obama proved his capacity for statesmanship with the delicate dismissal of General McCrystal in Afghanistan.

To limit my wording, I am not going to discuss all that I think is wrong with key Administration policies in the Middle East, in Afghanistan, on the stimulus package, on financial reform or within the health-care insurance law. There are many things I could say, and would, over coffee (perhaps chai).

What strikes me as outstanding, however, is the attempt to address so many problems so long in the making. Health-care is a prime example. Every President who has tried to do something to address this seventy year old political canker–-with the exception of Medicare and Medicaid under Presidents Kennedy and Johnson–-has, well, failed.

Why? Because there are tenacious interests involved in preventing meaningful change.

The venality of current politics dominated by moneyed special interests is neither new nor surprising. President James Madison detailed this fact of strife quite specifically in the Federalist Papers. President Madison was no prophet; however, ‘Jemmy’ was a keen observer of human nature.

So what did President Obama do? Nothing…at first. That apparent inaction proved to make the difference between attaining something and coming away bruised, humiliated and willing to let go of guiding principles to engineer a political comeback.

President Obama recognized, in a manner many Presidents have not, that the President relies mainly on the delegations of power granted him by Congress. Congress funds his initiatives, implements his treaties, operationalizes his policies.

Instead of alienating Congress as President Carter unfortunately did or trying to ignore Congress as President Clinton had attempted to do, President Obama apparently let Congress jawbone the health-care issue to its standard impasse. Only then did he step in with his Administration’s best (sic) thinking and submit a proposal.

This proposal was not intended to supplant debate but to nudge it toward resolution. President Obama used the moral suasion common to modern Presidents to prod his party and listeners on the other side toward an intermediate solution.

Did this ‘landmark’ health-care law resolve the long-running insurance crisis? Of course not. By focussing on progress rather than perfection as a yard-stick of political and electoral accountability, this bill represents an epochal breakthrough.

A policy door, locked tight for so long, has been wedged open, if only slightly. That imperfect bill can be the butt of current criticism or the buttress of a future solution.

But time takes time and my Democratic friends: your party deserves your continued support no matter how disappointing you find President Obama’s policies to date. After all, thanks to the President’s statesmanship and character, what seemed impossible ever to happen a year ago (i.e., comprehensive health reform) now seems improbable not to happen…eventually.

Letter--19: Unpalatable Patriotism

Letter-19 (from Querétaro): Being Palatably Correct for the Good of the Country.

The Peace Corps has three basic missions, the latter two of which make its mission unique and long-lasting, especially with our younger compatriots. First is to convey technical knowledge, usually in things like agriculture, small business development, English or health. The second and third missions, however, make the difference.

These are to generate goodwill in host nations toward the United States and to bring unique cultures back home. From what I have seen in Mexico – though our Southern neighbor is an outlier among Peace Corps missions – the younger volunteers do a magnificent job.

Why?

They connect with younger professionals and will empower them professionally. These young host country counterparts represent the generational inflection points of their societies. It is their willingness to emulate the best Americans have to offer and pride their professionalism above economic opportunism that may turn the tide for these countries.

After all, I know people my age are simply too tired and too used to particular world views to change easily. So, it is a joy to see these young Yanks, whose professionalism sharpens their sincerity, do what I wish I had many years ago. Nevertheless, this old hoot has reasons to chuckle along the way.

For example, a dinner party I attended last evening. A new friend in Querétaro was celebrating her twenty-fifth anniversary and invited me to a very informal dinner. The invitation delighted me and so I picked up my wind-breaker and make-shift Spanish and went to the dinner. The people in attendance were all Mexicans and generally my age and I felt right at home bringing goodwill to Mexico like a Peace Corps Trooper.

Then came the test. The dish at the other end of the dining table with steaming hot corn tortillas looked like a chicken goulash to me. Great, I thought: no ‘puerco’; Mexico is the pork eating capital of the world, surpassing even Germany. The assumed goulash came my way just the way I wanted it and that meant lots of it. Only when it was in front of me did I realize that this was not chicken that everyone was eating but cooked chicharrón.

Chicharrón – yes, do roll those r’s once you have finished rolling your eyes – is basically the fatty part of pig-skin dried and spiced like a cheese doodle. As a munchies food, it is just awful. Though enamored of México in many ways, when I see chicharrón, I head for the hills like Pancho Villa from Woodrow Wilson’s army. I shuddered at the unspeakable horror sitting in front of me. I neither noticed nor cared that others loved their fare. As far as I was concerned this stuff made high-school cream-chipped beef on toast (a / k / a SH*t on a shingle) look like food fit for a king.

I looked quickly for a dog to which I could inflict this madness. None around, dammit. I was trapped by Peace Corp’s second mission. So with all of the earnestness at my command, I ate the slop with no outward hesitance, relying on years on careful training for stoicism to see me through. For all of the private melodrama, the food was not half-bad. I even had a second helping!

What is that last line of the national anthem again? Something about the home of the brave? The only drawback I found was that the chicharrón had the texture of calamari I used to eat in Manhattan trying very hard to impress some dinner date that I was sophisticated. I faked it then and I faked it last night. The critical difference? In Manhattan, I was ‘enjoying’ calamari for some rank courting opportunism. Last night, I ‘enjoyed’ chicharrón for the good of the country.

I apologize for the longer than usual letter. I wanted to answer Choate teacher, Tony Hodgin’s, e-mailed response to my admittedly over-the-top statement that forty Peace Corps volunteers would do more than four hundred USAID field reps in Afghanistan. Actually, there are seventy volunteers in Mexico and my statement was an exaggeration. The reasoning behind it remains the same. Tony understands development issues better than most people; he deserves an answer (long over-due).

The seventy Peace Corps volunteers in Mexico are in a country that wants us to be there working on small projects that people can replicate easily. These matters are all about legacy. What will today’s people think of our efforts in twenty years. I am willing to bet USAID’s bottom dollar (never my own, of course) that Mexicans will not remember the technical skills conveyance or some $5,000 project for bee-hives. What they will remember are that those damn Yankees were damned good Yankees; that they were worth emulating by their basic decency and integrity.

In Afghanistan, however, USAID is operating in a very unfriendly and difficult environment. Much of its effort is being dissipated, with little of the way in positive legacy to leave behind. If the U.S. government pulls development work back to secure and truly welcoming parts of Afghanistan, the aid dollar will go much further. That said, there are other, debilitating issues with USAID around funding out-sourced ‘development’ contracts to a highly in-bred development community.